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[
"Graeme Obree",
"The bike",
"What did Obree do with bikes?",
"Obree had built frames for his bike shop and made another for his record attempt."
]
| C_d388b067e509464dbca087ad7e42b702_0 | What kind of bikes did he build? | 2 | What kind of bikes did Graeme Obree build? | Graeme Obree | Obree had built frames for his bike shop and made another for his record attempt. Instead of traditional dropped handlebars it had straight bars like those of a mountain bike. He placed them closer to the saddle than usual and rode with the bars under his chest, his elbows bent and tucked into his sides like those of a skier. Watching a washing machine spin at 1,200rpm led him to take the bearings, which he assumed must be of superior quality, and fit them to his bike. Obree later regretted admitting to the bearings experiment, because journalists referred to that before his achievements and other innovations. Obree called his bike "Old Faithful". It has a narrow bottom bracket, around which the cranks revolve, to bring his legs closer together, as he thought this is the "natural" position. As shown in the film, he thought a tread of "one banana" would be ideal. The bike has no top tube, so that his knees did not hit the frame. The chainstays are not horizontal to the ground. Thus the cranks can pass with a narrow bottom bracket. The fork had only one blade, carefully shaped to be as narrow as possible. A French writer who tried it said the narrow handlebars made it hard to accelerate the machine in a straight line but, once it was at speed, he could hold the bars and get into Obree's tucked style. At a high enough speed, [I could] tuck in my arms. And, above all, get in a very forward position on the bike, on the peak of the saddle. The Obree position isn't advantageous simply aerodynamically, it also allows, by pushing the point of pedalling towards the rear, to benefit from greater pressure while remaining in the saddle. You soon get an impression of speed, all the greater because you've got practically nothing [deux fois rien] between your hands. Two other things I noticed after a few hundred metres: I certainly didn't have the impression of turning 53 x 13, and the Obree position is no obstruction to breathing. But I wasn't pedalling at 55kmh, 100 turns of the pedals a minute, yet my arms already hurt. CANNOTANSWER | Instead of traditional dropped handlebars it had straight bars like those of a mountain bike. | Graeme Obree (born 11 September 1965), nicknamed The Flying Scotsman, is a Scottish racing cyclist who twice broke the world hour record, in July 1993 and April 1994, and was the individual pursuit world champion in 1993 and 1995. He was known for his unusual riding positions and for the Old Faithful bicycle he built which included parts from a washing machine. He joined a professional team in France but was fired before his first race. He also competed in the men's individual pursuit at the 1996 Summer Olympics.
Obree has created some radical innovations in bicycle design and cycling position but has had problems with the cycling authorities banning the riding positions his designs required. Obree has been very open about living with bipolar disorder and depression, and the fact that he has attempted suicide three times in his life, using his experiences as a means of encouraging other sportspeople to talk about their own mental health.
His life and exploits have been dramatised in the 2006 film The Flying Scotsman and more recently in the documentary film Battle Mountain: Graeme Obree's Story, which follows his journey to Battle Mountain, Nevada to compete in the 2013 World Human Powered Speed Championships.
In March 2010 he was inducted into the Scottish Sports Hall of Fame.
Biography
Origins
Obree was born in Nuneaton, a large town in northern Warwickshire, England, but has lived almost all his life in Scotland and considers himself Scottish. An individual time triallist, his first race was a 10-mile time trial to which he turned up wearing shorts, anorak and Doc Marten boots. He thought the start and finish were at the same place and stopped where he had started, 100 metres short of the end. He had started to change his clothes when officials told him to continue. He still finished in "about 30 minutes."
In 2011 Obree came out as gay. Obree suffers from bipolar disorder. He attempted suicide in his teens by gassing himself. He was saved by his father, who had returned early from work. In the 1990s he took an overdose of aspirin washed down by water from a puddle. He had personality problems, sniffed the gas he used to weld bicycles, and was being chased for £492 owed in college fees.
The bike shop that he ran failed and he decided the way out of his problems was to attack the world hour velodrome record. It had been held for nine years by Francesco Moser, at 51.151 kilometres. Obree said:
The record had fascinated me since Moser broke it. It was the ultimate test – no traffic, one man in a velodrome against the clock. I didn't tell myself that I will attempt the record, I said I would break it. When your back is against the wall, you can say it's bad or you can say: 'I'll go for it.' I decided, that's it, I've as good as broken the record.
The bike
Obree had built frames for his bike shop and made another for his record attempt. Instead of traditional dropped handlebars it had straight bars like those of a mountain bike. He placed them closer to the saddle than usual and rode with the bars under his chest, his elbows bent and tucked into his sides like those of a skier. Watching a washing machine spin at 1,200rpm led him to take the bearings, which he assumed must be of superior quality, and fit them to his bike. Obree later regretted admitting to the bearings experiment, because journalists referred to that before his achievements and other innovations.
Obree called his bike "Old Faithful". It has a narrow bottom bracket, around which the cranks revolve, to bring his legs closer together, as he thought this is the "natural" position. As shown in the film, he thought a tread of "one banana" would be ideal. The bike has no top tube, so that his knees did not hit the frame. The chainstays are not horizontal to the ground. Thus the cranks can pass with a narrow bottom bracket. The fork had only one blade, carefully shaped to be as narrow as possible. A French writer who tried it said the narrow handlebars made it hard to accelerate the machine in a straight line but, once it was at speed, he could hold the bars and get into Obree's tucked style.
At a high enough speed, [I could] tuck in my arms. And, above all, get in a very forward position on the bike, on the peak of the saddle. The Obree position isn't advantageous simply aerodynamically, it also allows, by pushing the point of pedalling towards the rear, to benefit from greater pressure while remaining in the saddle. You soon get an impression of speed, all the greater because you've got practically nothing [deux fois rien] between your hands. Two other things I noticed after a few hundred metres: I certainly didn't have the impression of turning 53 × 13, and the Obree position is no obstruction to breathing. But I wasn't pedalling at 55 km/h, 100 turns of the pedals a minute, yet my arms already hurt.
Taking the record
Obree attacked Moser's record, on 16 July 1993, at the Vikingskipet velodrome in Norway. He failed by nearly a kilometre. He had booked the track for 24 hours and decided to come back the next day. The writer Nicholas Roe said:
To stop his aching body seizing up, Obree then took the unusual measure of drinking pint upon pint of water so that he had to wake up to go to the lavatory every couple of hours through the night. Each time he got up, he stretched his muscles. On the next weary day, he was up and out within minutes, at the deserted velodrome by 7:55 am and on the track ready to start just five minutes after that. He had barely slept. He had punished his body hugely the previous day. Surely this was a waste of time?
Obree said:
I was Butch Cassidy in terms of swagger. I didn't want any negativity. This was blitzkrieg. I'm going in there. Let me do it. I'm not going to be the timorous guy from Scotland. That's what the difference was. Purely mental state. The day before, I had been a mouse. Now I was a lion.
On 17 July 1993, Obree set a new record of 51.596 kilometres, beating Moser's record of 51.151 kilometres by 445 metres.
Losing the record
Obree's triumph lasted less than a week. On 23 July 1993, the British Olympic champion, Chris Boardman broke Obree's record by 674 metres, riding 52.270 km at Bordeaux. His bike had a carbon monocoque frame, carbon wheels, and a triathlon handlebar. Their rivalry grew: a few months later Obree knocked Boardman out of the world championship pursuit to take the title himself.
Regaining the record
Francesco Moser, whose record Obree had beaten, adopted Obree's riding position—adding a chest pad—and established not an outright world record but a veterans' record of 51.84 kilometres. He did it on 15 January 1994, riding in the thin air of Mexico City as he had for his outright record, whereas Obree and Boardman had ridden at close to sea level.
Obree retook the record on 27 April 1994, using the track that Boardman had used at Bordeaux. He had bolted his shoes to his pedals, to avoid what had happened in the final of the national pursuit championship, when he pulled his foot off the pedal during his starting effort.
He rode 52.713 kilometres, a distance beaten on 2 September 1994 by the Spanish Tour de France winner, Miguel Induráin.
Old Faithful banned
The world governing body, the Union Cycliste Internationale, grew concerned that changes to bicycles were making a disproportionate influence to track records. Among other measures, it banned his riding position: he did not find out until one hour before he began the world championship pursuit in Italy. Judges disqualified him when he refused to comply. The magazine Cycling Weekly blamed "petty-minded officialdom."
Obree developed another riding position, the "Superman" style, his arms fully extended in front, and he won the individual pursuit at the world championships with this and Old Faithful in 1995. That position was also banned. However, in May 2014 the UCI relented, acknowledging that fixing the kind of equipment to be used was hindering technical progress. It restored previous banned world records, from 2000, now to be described as "Best hour performance".
The original Old Faithful bike is on display at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, while two near-replicas built for use in the Flying Scotsman film are displayed in the Riverside Transport Museum in Glasgow.
In March 2018, Obree tested another replica of Old Faithful in the Mercedes-Benz F1 team's wind tunnel to gauge the aerodynamic efficiency of his various riding positions on the bike, having never previously participated in wind-tunnel testing. It was found that the (drag coefficient) of Obree's initial "tuck" or "crouch" position was 0.17, compared to a conventional 1990s bike position of 0.20 and a modern conventional position of 0.188, leading to an estimated gain in speed of about 2-2.5 km/h over his rivals in the 1990s and a gain of 1.5 km/h over contemporary track cyclists: meanwhile the "Superman" position was found only to be marginally more efficient than the 1990s conventional position, and less efficient than the modern conventional position. Obree however noted that the discomfort of the "crouch" position takes a lot of energy out of the rider through holding the hands and shoulders in place, whilst the "Superman" position was much more manageable.
Other achievements
Obree was individual pursuit world champion in 1993 and 1995. He broke the British 10-mile individual time trial record in 1993, won the RTTC 50-mile championship the same year (a record 1h 39m 1s), and won the 25-mile championship in 1996. In 1997 he joined forces with coach Joe Beer and clocked 18m 36s in a 10-mile time trial (V718 Hull) and next day won the British Cycling Federation 25-mile championship - this was part of building towards an hour record attempt that was to be eventually shelved.
The writer Peter Bryan, of The Times, said:
To see Obree in full flight, shoulders hunched and elbows tucked into his ribs, is a memorable sight. His face contorted with pain illustrates the effort he is putting in. And yet, not too many minutes after he has finished a ride the champion is sufficiently relaxed to talk with a queue of pressmen.
Professional career
Obree rode his hour records as an amateur. He took a professional licence after winning his first world championship, telling Bryan: "I reckon I can make more money on the bike than I get from unemployment benefit."
He joined Le Groupement, a French team but did not attend a meeting in Les Carroz d'Arâches (fr) and was fired for "lack of professionalism." Obree had been racing in Florida when the team first met. But he was on holiday there when the team met again for publicity photographs. He got to the next get-together but flew to Paris instead of Lille, where the meeting was held.
The team manager, Patrick Valcke, said:
"If a rider has that attitude, it's best to stop working together as soon as possible. We paid for his tickets [to fly from Glasgow to Geneva] and he didn't even turn up, didn't even phone to explain why he was not coming. He said that he did not want to leave his family so soon after the death of his brother (see below) but he could have phoned to tell us that. I don't want any more to do with him."
Obree said: "I was too ill to attend the get-together and had no success when I attempted to contact team officials on 1 January. My wife, Anne, who is a nurse, insisted I was not well enough to travel to France."
The Le Groupement team fell apart after a short time, when the sponsoring company was involved in scandal, with accusations that it was nothing but a pyramid selling scheme. Some of the team members claimed that they were owed money, and their wages had not been paid.
Attitude to doping
Obree said of his short professional career:
"I still feel I was robbed of part of my career. I was signed up to ride in the prologue of the Tour back in 1995, but it was made very obvious to me I would have to take drugs. I said no, no way, and I was sacked by my team. So there I was, 11 years later, sitting there waiting for the Tour cyclists to come by, and something welled up in me. I feel I was robbed by a lot of these bastards taking drugs. I also hate the way that people think anyone who has ever achieved anything on a bike must have been taking drugs. I was surprised how resentful I felt when I was in Paris. It had obviously been simmering away in there for years. That's something new I'll have to talk to my therapist about."
In 1996, he told the magazine L'Équipe:
"In my opinion, 99 percent of riders at élite level take EPO or a similar drug, not particularly to dope themselves but to be at the same level as the others. And that's rather sad."
His web site says:
"AND by the way, I never took drugs to improve my performance at any time as has been happening in the sport for a long time. I will be willing to stick my finger into a polygraph test if anyone with big media pull wants to take issue. In other words, if you buy a signed poster now it will not be tarnished later."
Further suicide attempt
Obree's brother, Gordon, died in a car crash in October 1994, and Graeme Obree again slid in and out of depression. In 2001 he was found unconscious at Bellsland Farm in Kilmaurs, 12 km from his Ayrshire home. The Obree family horse was stabled there, and he was discovered by a woman checking a barn. He had tried to hang himself. His wife, Anne, said he had been diagnosed as having severe bipolar disorder three years earlier.
Present day
Obree is divorced from his wife, with whom he has two children. He continues to race occasionally in individual time trials for Ayrshire-based Fullarton Wheelers cycling club. In May 2005, he crashed in the rain in the national 10-mile time trial championship near Nantwich in Cheshire. He was a member of the winning three-man club squad that took the team title in the Scottish 10-mile championship in May 2006. In December 2006, he competed in the track event, Revolution 15, in a four kilometre pursuit challenge.
In January 2011, Obree disclosed in an interview with the Scottish Sun that he is gay and that his difficulty with coming to terms with his sexual orientation contributed to his earlier suicide attempts. "I was brought up by a war generation; they grew up when gay people were put in jail. Being homosexual was so unthinkable that you just wouldn't be gay. I'd no inkling about anything, I just closed down." He came out to his family in 2005.
New Hour record attempt
In May 2009, Obree announced that he would make an attempt at the "Athlete's Hour" record on a bike he had built himself during 2009. Obree said in October 2009 that the attempt had been cancelled as the bike he'd built himself was not suitable for the conditions. He will not be attempting this again.
In December 2009, he was inducted into the British Cycling Hall of Fame while in March 2010, he was inducted into the Scottish Sports Hall of Fame.
Human-powered vehicle land speed record
In December 2011, Obree announced that he would make an attempt at the human-powered vehicle (HPV) land speed record, hoping to hit 100 mph. In May 2012, he revealed that the bike he is building for this attempt is a prone bike.
The attempt was originally to take place in Britain, and the record speed was then . However, he competed in the 2013 World Human Powered Speed Championships in Battle Mountain, Nevada, where the record was also set. He achieved a speed of on the morning of Friday, 13 September.
While Obree did not break the HPV land speed record, he did set a new record for a rider in the prone position. The previous day, Obree had set a speed of , which was a record speed in the prone position on a two-wheeled HPV (the overall prone record being held by a trike).
Book and films
He published his autobiography in 2003 titled The Flying Scotsman. He said: "It started with the psychologist saying it would do me good and ended up as my life story." A film based on the book premiered at the Edinburgh International Film Festival in 2006, starring Jonny Lee Miller and Billy Boyd. In November 2006 Metro-Goldwyn Mayer bought world distribution rights and the film was released in the US on 29 December 2006; it was given a UK release on 29 June 2007. The DVD was released in the UK on 5 November 2007.
Battle Mountain: Graeme Obree's Story, a documentary film about Obree's appearance at the 2013 World Human Powered Speed Championships in Battle Mountain, Nevada, premiered at the 2015 Edinburgh International Film Festival. The film, directed by David Street with music by Alun Woodward of Chemikal Underground, went on public release on 21 March 2016, with a tour of cinemas featuring a question-and-answer session with Obree following screenings. The film was crowdfunded through the Kickstarter website.
Notes
References
Related media
Flying Scotsman: Cycling to Triumph Through My Darkest Hours Graeme Obree VeloPress 2005
Flying Scotsman Graeme Obree Birlinn Books 2003
External links
Graeme Obree – Biography at CyclingInfo.co.uk
Graeme Obree's home made bike photograph
1965 births
Living people
Sportspeople from Nuneaton
Sportspeople from North Ayrshire
Scottish male cyclists
UCI Track Cycling World Champions (men)
People with bipolar disorder
Gay sportsmen
LGBT sportspeople from Scotland
LGBT cyclists
Scottish track cyclists
Olympic cyclists of Great Britain
Cyclists at the 1996 Summer Olympics | true | [
"Shinya Kimura is a Japanese born custom motorcycle builder. He founded Zero Engineering in 1992 and Chabott Engineering in 2002. He is the originator of the \"zero style\" custom bike.\n\nBiography\n\nZero Engineering\nKimura founded Zero Engineering in Okazaki Japan in 1992. Initially his shop was named Repair Shop Chabo but the name was changed the following year to Zero Engineering. He soon gained a reputation for his minimalistic and vintage looking bikes that combine form and function. His name was soon synonymous with what people often refer to as Zero-style. A Zero-style bike is typically based around a rigid \"gooseneck\" frame, a pre-1984 Harley Davidson engine, springer front end, spoked wheels and often includes parts of the bike remaining in bare metal. The inspiration came from wabi sabi (austere refinement) and the beauty of the raw materials and incorporating the essence of wa (harmony) into his designs. Kimura and his crew were also known for putting their work to the test by participating in different vintage race series with their motorcycles.\n\nIn 2002 Kimura expanded his business by opening an office in Las Vegas, Nevada,\nwhere he in 2005 built his entry the Biker Build-Off against Joe Martin from the Martin Brothers. Other bikes were built in 10 days in front of a film crew, the riders then met up in Las Vegas and rode to Palm Springs, California where a popular vote was held which Joe Martin won.\n\nKimura left Zero Engineering to launch his own studio named Chabott Engineering. Meanwhile, Zero Engineering is still in Japan and Las Vegas and have to this date created more than 200 custom bikes, including the new line of production bikes built in their facility in Las Vegas. At this time their line includes models based on Harley Davidson's Shovelhead and Evolution engine with two models based on the Sportster being released in the future. Recently two of the company's bikes were used in the 2008 film Iron Man.\n\nChabott Engineering\nIn 2006 Kimura set up his own shop named Chabott Engineering in Azusa, California to build both custom bikes as well as moving himself toward the world of art.\n\nKimura said, \"Since setting up in America, I've moved from being just a custom-bike builder to slightly changing my direction a little more toward the world of art. I don't know whether success or failure is awaiting me in the future. Can custom bikes become art? Maybe we'll know in 10 years' time.\"\n\nAlong with fellow bike builders Jesse James, Ian Barry and Billy Lane, Kimura was among the first custom bike builders to receive an invitation to the Legend of the Motorcycle - Concours d'Elegance exhibition.\n\nIn 2010, Kimura and Chabott Engineering were the subject of a documentary short by film maker Henrik Hansen, which was one of five documentaries to be nominated for a 2010 Vimeo documentary award.\n\nAwards\n Third place at Easy-Rider Show in Pomona, California 2004\n Best of Show at the L.A. Calendar Show 2004\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \n Hot Bike Magazine - Shinya Kimura\n Shinya Kimura, a documentary by Henrik Hansen\n\nMotorcycle builders\nLiving people\nYear of birth missing (living people)",
"Tommaso Bikes is a bicycle manufacturing company, headquartered in Denver, Colorado, United States. The bikes are designed in Italy, engineered in Colorado, and shipped direct to the consumer.\n\nHistory\nTommaso Bicycles was founded in 1985 as a road bike brand. The direct bicycle importer, TEN SPEED DRIVE of California, commissioned the original Tommaso frames to be built in Italy and then shipped over to the USA unpainted. They used the highest quality lugged Columbus cro-moly steel tubing frames. These raw frames were painted in a two toned paint design and delivered to the bikes shops ready to build. Original color choice was either blue and white fade or pink and white fade. \n \nSince then the brand has expanded to include track bikes, fixed gear bikes, triathlon bikes and cyclocross bikes. Tommaso bicycles had a line of steel road bicycles that expanded to titanium and currently consists of aluminum and carbon road bikes. In 2013 the core of the road line is the six aluminum road bike offerings paired up with six carbon road bikes. Tommaso offers three woman specific models. The Tommaso line-up also includes an aluminum cyclocross bike and two triathlon bikes (one aluminum and one monocoque carbon).\n \nIn 2013 the Tommaso brand was sold to an investment group.\n\nProducts\nTommaso do not use model years, allowing for modifications and upgrades to existing bike models without having to wait an entire year.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n Tommaso Bikes\n Giantnerd.com\n\nCycle manufacturers of the United States"
]
|
[
"Graeme Obree",
"The bike",
"What did Obree do with bikes?",
"Obree had built frames for his bike shop and made another for his record attempt.",
"What kind of bikes did he build?",
"Instead of traditional dropped handlebars it had straight bars like those of a mountain bike."
]
| C_d388b067e509464dbca087ad7e42b702_0 | What was special about his bike? | 3 | What was special about Graeme Obree's bike? | Graeme Obree | Obree had built frames for his bike shop and made another for his record attempt. Instead of traditional dropped handlebars it had straight bars like those of a mountain bike. He placed them closer to the saddle than usual and rode with the bars under his chest, his elbows bent and tucked into his sides like those of a skier. Watching a washing machine spin at 1,200rpm led him to take the bearings, which he assumed must be of superior quality, and fit them to his bike. Obree later regretted admitting to the bearings experiment, because journalists referred to that before his achievements and other innovations. Obree called his bike "Old Faithful". It has a narrow bottom bracket, around which the cranks revolve, to bring his legs closer together, as he thought this is the "natural" position. As shown in the film, he thought a tread of "one banana" would be ideal. The bike has no top tube, so that his knees did not hit the frame. The chainstays are not horizontal to the ground. Thus the cranks can pass with a narrow bottom bracket. The fork had only one blade, carefully shaped to be as narrow as possible. A French writer who tried it said the narrow handlebars made it hard to accelerate the machine in a straight line but, once it was at speed, he could hold the bars and get into Obree's tucked style. At a high enough speed, [I could] tuck in my arms. And, above all, get in a very forward position on the bike, on the peak of the saddle. The Obree position isn't advantageous simply aerodynamically, it also allows, by pushing the point of pedalling towards the rear, to benefit from greater pressure while remaining in the saddle. You soon get an impression of speed, all the greater because you've got practically nothing [deux fois rien] between your hands. Two other things I noticed after a few hundred metres: I certainly didn't have the impression of turning 53 x 13, and the Obree position is no obstruction to breathing. But I wasn't pedalling at 55kmh, 100 turns of the pedals a minute, yet my arms already hurt. CANNOTANSWER | Watching a washing machine spin at 1,200rpm led him to take the bearings, which he assumed must be of superior quality, and fit them to his bike. | Graeme Obree (born 11 September 1965), nicknamed The Flying Scotsman, is a Scottish racing cyclist who twice broke the world hour record, in July 1993 and April 1994, and was the individual pursuit world champion in 1993 and 1995. He was known for his unusual riding positions and for the Old Faithful bicycle he built which included parts from a washing machine. He joined a professional team in France but was fired before his first race. He also competed in the men's individual pursuit at the 1996 Summer Olympics.
Obree has created some radical innovations in bicycle design and cycling position but has had problems with the cycling authorities banning the riding positions his designs required. Obree has been very open about living with bipolar disorder and depression, and the fact that he has attempted suicide three times in his life, using his experiences as a means of encouraging other sportspeople to talk about their own mental health.
His life and exploits have been dramatised in the 2006 film The Flying Scotsman and more recently in the documentary film Battle Mountain: Graeme Obree's Story, which follows his journey to Battle Mountain, Nevada to compete in the 2013 World Human Powered Speed Championships.
In March 2010 he was inducted into the Scottish Sports Hall of Fame.
Biography
Origins
Obree was born in Nuneaton, a large town in northern Warwickshire, England, but has lived almost all his life in Scotland and considers himself Scottish. An individual time triallist, his first race was a 10-mile time trial to which he turned up wearing shorts, anorak and Doc Marten boots. He thought the start and finish were at the same place and stopped where he had started, 100 metres short of the end. He had started to change his clothes when officials told him to continue. He still finished in "about 30 minutes."
In 2011 Obree came out as gay. Obree suffers from bipolar disorder. He attempted suicide in his teens by gassing himself. He was saved by his father, who had returned early from work. In the 1990s he took an overdose of aspirin washed down by water from a puddle. He had personality problems, sniffed the gas he used to weld bicycles, and was being chased for £492 owed in college fees.
The bike shop that he ran failed and he decided the way out of his problems was to attack the world hour velodrome record. It had been held for nine years by Francesco Moser, at 51.151 kilometres. Obree said:
The record had fascinated me since Moser broke it. It was the ultimate test – no traffic, one man in a velodrome against the clock. I didn't tell myself that I will attempt the record, I said I would break it. When your back is against the wall, you can say it's bad or you can say: 'I'll go for it.' I decided, that's it, I've as good as broken the record.
The bike
Obree had built frames for his bike shop and made another for his record attempt. Instead of traditional dropped handlebars it had straight bars like those of a mountain bike. He placed them closer to the saddle than usual and rode with the bars under his chest, his elbows bent and tucked into his sides like those of a skier. Watching a washing machine spin at 1,200rpm led him to take the bearings, which he assumed must be of superior quality, and fit them to his bike. Obree later regretted admitting to the bearings experiment, because journalists referred to that before his achievements and other innovations.
Obree called his bike "Old Faithful". It has a narrow bottom bracket, around which the cranks revolve, to bring his legs closer together, as he thought this is the "natural" position. As shown in the film, he thought a tread of "one banana" would be ideal. The bike has no top tube, so that his knees did not hit the frame. The chainstays are not horizontal to the ground. Thus the cranks can pass with a narrow bottom bracket. The fork had only one blade, carefully shaped to be as narrow as possible. A French writer who tried it said the narrow handlebars made it hard to accelerate the machine in a straight line but, once it was at speed, he could hold the bars and get into Obree's tucked style.
At a high enough speed, [I could] tuck in my arms. And, above all, get in a very forward position on the bike, on the peak of the saddle. The Obree position isn't advantageous simply aerodynamically, it also allows, by pushing the point of pedalling towards the rear, to benefit from greater pressure while remaining in the saddle. You soon get an impression of speed, all the greater because you've got practically nothing [deux fois rien] between your hands. Two other things I noticed after a few hundred metres: I certainly didn't have the impression of turning 53 × 13, and the Obree position is no obstruction to breathing. But I wasn't pedalling at 55 km/h, 100 turns of the pedals a minute, yet my arms already hurt.
Taking the record
Obree attacked Moser's record, on 16 July 1993, at the Vikingskipet velodrome in Norway. He failed by nearly a kilometre. He had booked the track for 24 hours and decided to come back the next day. The writer Nicholas Roe said:
To stop his aching body seizing up, Obree then took the unusual measure of drinking pint upon pint of water so that he had to wake up to go to the lavatory every couple of hours through the night. Each time he got up, he stretched his muscles. On the next weary day, he was up and out within minutes, at the deserted velodrome by 7:55 am and on the track ready to start just five minutes after that. He had barely slept. He had punished his body hugely the previous day. Surely this was a waste of time?
Obree said:
I was Butch Cassidy in terms of swagger. I didn't want any negativity. This was blitzkrieg. I'm going in there. Let me do it. I'm not going to be the timorous guy from Scotland. That's what the difference was. Purely mental state. The day before, I had been a mouse. Now I was a lion.
On 17 July 1993, Obree set a new record of 51.596 kilometres, beating Moser's record of 51.151 kilometres by 445 metres.
Losing the record
Obree's triumph lasted less than a week. On 23 July 1993, the British Olympic champion, Chris Boardman broke Obree's record by 674 metres, riding 52.270 km at Bordeaux. His bike had a carbon monocoque frame, carbon wheels, and a triathlon handlebar. Their rivalry grew: a few months later Obree knocked Boardman out of the world championship pursuit to take the title himself.
Regaining the record
Francesco Moser, whose record Obree had beaten, adopted Obree's riding position—adding a chest pad—and established not an outright world record but a veterans' record of 51.84 kilometres. He did it on 15 January 1994, riding in the thin air of Mexico City as he had for his outright record, whereas Obree and Boardman had ridden at close to sea level.
Obree retook the record on 27 April 1994, using the track that Boardman had used at Bordeaux. He had bolted his shoes to his pedals, to avoid what had happened in the final of the national pursuit championship, when he pulled his foot off the pedal during his starting effort.
He rode 52.713 kilometres, a distance beaten on 2 September 1994 by the Spanish Tour de France winner, Miguel Induráin.
Old Faithful banned
The world governing body, the Union Cycliste Internationale, grew concerned that changes to bicycles were making a disproportionate influence to track records. Among other measures, it banned his riding position: he did not find out until one hour before he began the world championship pursuit in Italy. Judges disqualified him when he refused to comply. The magazine Cycling Weekly blamed "petty-minded officialdom."
Obree developed another riding position, the "Superman" style, his arms fully extended in front, and he won the individual pursuit at the world championships with this and Old Faithful in 1995. That position was also banned. However, in May 2014 the UCI relented, acknowledging that fixing the kind of equipment to be used was hindering technical progress. It restored previous banned world records, from 2000, now to be described as "Best hour performance".
The original Old Faithful bike is on display at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, while two near-replicas built for use in the Flying Scotsman film are displayed in the Riverside Transport Museum in Glasgow.
In March 2018, Obree tested another replica of Old Faithful in the Mercedes-Benz F1 team's wind tunnel to gauge the aerodynamic efficiency of his various riding positions on the bike, having never previously participated in wind-tunnel testing. It was found that the (drag coefficient) of Obree's initial "tuck" or "crouch" position was 0.17, compared to a conventional 1990s bike position of 0.20 and a modern conventional position of 0.188, leading to an estimated gain in speed of about 2-2.5 km/h over his rivals in the 1990s and a gain of 1.5 km/h over contemporary track cyclists: meanwhile the "Superman" position was found only to be marginally more efficient than the 1990s conventional position, and less efficient than the modern conventional position. Obree however noted that the discomfort of the "crouch" position takes a lot of energy out of the rider through holding the hands and shoulders in place, whilst the "Superman" position was much more manageable.
Other achievements
Obree was individual pursuit world champion in 1993 and 1995. He broke the British 10-mile individual time trial record in 1993, won the RTTC 50-mile championship the same year (a record 1h 39m 1s), and won the 25-mile championship in 1996. In 1997 he joined forces with coach Joe Beer and clocked 18m 36s in a 10-mile time trial (V718 Hull) and next day won the British Cycling Federation 25-mile championship - this was part of building towards an hour record attempt that was to be eventually shelved.
The writer Peter Bryan, of The Times, said:
To see Obree in full flight, shoulders hunched and elbows tucked into his ribs, is a memorable sight. His face contorted with pain illustrates the effort he is putting in. And yet, not too many minutes after he has finished a ride the champion is sufficiently relaxed to talk with a queue of pressmen.
Professional career
Obree rode his hour records as an amateur. He took a professional licence after winning his first world championship, telling Bryan: "I reckon I can make more money on the bike than I get from unemployment benefit."
He joined Le Groupement, a French team but did not attend a meeting in Les Carroz d'Arâches (fr) and was fired for "lack of professionalism." Obree had been racing in Florida when the team first met. But he was on holiday there when the team met again for publicity photographs. He got to the next get-together but flew to Paris instead of Lille, where the meeting was held.
The team manager, Patrick Valcke, said:
"If a rider has that attitude, it's best to stop working together as soon as possible. We paid for his tickets [to fly from Glasgow to Geneva] and he didn't even turn up, didn't even phone to explain why he was not coming. He said that he did not want to leave his family so soon after the death of his brother (see below) but he could have phoned to tell us that. I don't want any more to do with him."
Obree said: "I was too ill to attend the get-together and had no success when I attempted to contact team officials on 1 January. My wife, Anne, who is a nurse, insisted I was not well enough to travel to France."
The Le Groupement team fell apart after a short time, when the sponsoring company was involved in scandal, with accusations that it was nothing but a pyramid selling scheme. Some of the team members claimed that they were owed money, and their wages had not been paid.
Attitude to doping
Obree said of his short professional career:
"I still feel I was robbed of part of my career. I was signed up to ride in the prologue of the Tour back in 1995, but it was made very obvious to me I would have to take drugs. I said no, no way, and I was sacked by my team. So there I was, 11 years later, sitting there waiting for the Tour cyclists to come by, and something welled up in me. I feel I was robbed by a lot of these bastards taking drugs. I also hate the way that people think anyone who has ever achieved anything on a bike must have been taking drugs. I was surprised how resentful I felt when I was in Paris. It had obviously been simmering away in there for years. That's something new I'll have to talk to my therapist about."
In 1996, he told the magazine L'Équipe:
"In my opinion, 99 percent of riders at élite level take EPO or a similar drug, not particularly to dope themselves but to be at the same level as the others. And that's rather sad."
His web site says:
"AND by the way, I never took drugs to improve my performance at any time as has been happening in the sport for a long time. I will be willing to stick my finger into a polygraph test if anyone with big media pull wants to take issue. In other words, if you buy a signed poster now it will not be tarnished later."
Further suicide attempt
Obree's brother, Gordon, died in a car crash in October 1994, and Graeme Obree again slid in and out of depression. In 2001 he was found unconscious at Bellsland Farm in Kilmaurs, 12 km from his Ayrshire home. The Obree family horse was stabled there, and he was discovered by a woman checking a barn. He had tried to hang himself. His wife, Anne, said he had been diagnosed as having severe bipolar disorder three years earlier.
Present day
Obree is divorced from his wife, with whom he has two children. He continues to race occasionally in individual time trials for Ayrshire-based Fullarton Wheelers cycling club. In May 2005, he crashed in the rain in the national 10-mile time trial championship near Nantwich in Cheshire. He was a member of the winning three-man club squad that took the team title in the Scottish 10-mile championship in May 2006. In December 2006, he competed in the track event, Revolution 15, in a four kilometre pursuit challenge.
In January 2011, Obree disclosed in an interview with the Scottish Sun that he is gay and that his difficulty with coming to terms with his sexual orientation contributed to his earlier suicide attempts. "I was brought up by a war generation; they grew up when gay people were put in jail. Being homosexual was so unthinkable that you just wouldn't be gay. I'd no inkling about anything, I just closed down." He came out to his family in 2005.
New Hour record attempt
In May 2009, Obree announced that he would make an attempt at the "Athlete's Hour" record on a bike he had built himself during 2009. Obree said in October 2009 that the attempt had been cancelled as the bike he'd built himself was not suitable for the conditions. He will not be attempting this again.
In December 2009, he was inducted into the British Cycling Hall of Fame while in March 2010, he was inducted into the Scottish Sports Hall of Fame.
Human-powered vehicle land speed record
In December 2011, Obree announced that he would make an attempt at the human-powered vehicle (HPV) land speed record, hoping to hit 100 mph. In May 2012, he revealed that the bike he is building for this attempt is a prone bike.
The attempt was originally to take place in Britain, and the record speed was then . However, he competed in the 2013 World Human Powered Speed Championships in Battle Mountain, Nevada, where the record was also set. He achieved a speed of on the morning of Friday, 13 September.
While Obree did not break the HPV land speed record, he did set a new record for a rider in the prone position. The previous day, Obree had set a speed of , which was a record speed in the prone position on a two-wheeled HPV (the overall prone record being held by a trike).
Book and films
He published his autobiography in 2003 titled The Flying Scotsman. He said: "It started with the psychologist saying it would do me good and ended up as my life story." A film based on the book premiered at the Edinburgh International Film Festival in 2006, starring Jonny Lee Miller and Billy Boyd. In November 2006 Metro-Goldwyn Mayer bought world distribution rights and the film was released in the US on 29 December 2006; it was given a UK release on 29 June 2007. The DVD was released in the UK on 5 November 2007.
Battle Mountain: Graeme Obree's Story, a documentary film about Obree's appearance at the 2013 World Human Powered Speed Championships in Battle Mountain, Nevada, premiered at the 2015 Edinburgh International Film Festival. The film, directed by David Street with music by Alun Woodward of Chemikal Underground, went on public release on 21 March 2016, with a tour of cinemas featuring a question-and-answer session with Obree following screenings. The film was crowdfunded through the Kickstarter website.
Notes
References
Related media
Flying Scotsman: Cycling to Triumph Through My Darkest Hours Graeme Obree VeloPress 2005
Flying Scotsman Graeme Obree Birlinn Books 2003
External links
Graeme Obree – Biography at CyclingInfo.co.uk
Graeme Obree's home made bike photograph
1965 births
Living people
Sportspeople from Nuneaton
Sportspeople from North Ayrshire
Scottish male cyclists
UCI Track Cycling World Champions (men)
People with bipolar disorder
Gay sportsmen
LGBT sportspeople from Scotland
LGBT cyclists
Scottish track cyclists
Olympic cyclists of Great Britain
Cyclists at the 1996 Summer Olympics | true | [
"Pravegaya (English: velocity ) is a 2015 Sri Lankan Sinhala action thriller film directed by Donald Jayantha and produced by Sadesh Kumar. It stars Hemal Ranasinghe, and Udari Perera in lead roles along with Jayalath Manoratne, Pubudu Chathuranga, and Jackson Anthony in supporting roles. Music for the film is done by Bathiya and Santhush. It is the 1228th Sri Lankan film in the Sinhala cinema. The film is a remake of the 2007 film Polladhavan.\n\nPlot\nHemal is a happy-go-lucky middle-class family guy who spends time playing carrom in the streets with his friends Janith and Kumar. His father and he keep falling into minor misunderstandings, and he indulges in a hopeless romance with a strange girl who he meets at a bus stop. When he is caught in the act of stealing a pittance from his father for booze with his friends, Hemal questions his father’s responsibility towards his upbringing. His angry father gives Hemal some of his savings and tells him to do something with his life. Hemal purchases a TVS Apache bike instead and finds a job. The bike eventually saves his life from a freak incident and gets lost, subjecting him to interminable anguish as he searches for his bike. When his family members asks him about his bike, he tells them that he has given it for dealer service.\n\nHemal comes into conflict with the underworld when he witnesses a brutal murder planned by a gang of Smuggling don, Brando and his accomplices. Hemal finds out that his bike was stolen by a petty bike thief who turns out to be in connection with Brando's younger brother G.J.I. Hemal traces down the culprit as Chamara and hands him over to the local police station. A formal complaint is lodged on Chamara on the same night. Later that night Hemal confesses to his family that his bike was stolen. His Family is very upset with him due to his irresponsible behavior. The next morning G.J.I visits Hemal's residence and threatens him to withdraw the complaint against Chamara. When Hemal refuses, a fight breaks between Hemal and G.J.I, where G.J.I is joined by few of his accomplices, Hemal manages to fight them all and leaves G.J.I beaten and embarrassed among the public. Brando returns home in bail after a murder charge. When he finds out what happened to G.J.I, he gets furious and sends his henchmen to kill Hemal without knowing the reason for his brother's embarrassment. Meanwhile, Hemal, along with his friend and auto driver Kumar, meets Brando at his own residence. G.J.I is not home at that time. Hemal tells the truth to Brando but refuses to believe that his brother G.J.I and his men stole his bike. After hearing from his close ally Wasanth, Brando believes Hemal, apologizing for what happened and promises Hemal that he will do whatever he can to get his bike back. But it was too late for Hemal's father Jayalath Manoratne who receives the attack from G.J.I's men. He was admitted in a hospital and Hemal breaks down after knowing that his father may never walk again after his right leg is paralysed by the attack. Brando, G.J.I and their men visit Hemal to condole and apologize for what happened this time. Hemal turns down the apology and again an immediate fight was about to break between Hemal and G.J.I before Brando separates them both. Although he wants to stay away, Hemal invariably gets dragged into rubbing shoulders with the criminals who now target his family to seek revenge.\n\nHemal's bike was caught by Anti-Narcotics wing police and they nab Hemal suspecting him of Drug-smuggling in his bike. They release him after Hemal tells them that his bike was stolen and shows them his FIR copy. But he doesn't tell them about G.J.I or Brando. Now Hemal learns that his bike was stolen by Brando's men to escape from a murder scene but it was G.J.I who smuggled drugs in his bike's petrol tank. Hemal loses his job as an employee in his workplace since his bike was a source of transportation, and as he was kept at police custody for one night. Hemal also gets despair from Udari's father for being involved unwillingly with Brando's men. G.J.I makes one more attempt at Hemal's life but he was snubbed again by Hemal. Brando becomes unhappy about this and warns him to quit smuggling if he ever gets in Hemal's business anymore. G.J.I accuses Brando of being a non-caring brother and Out intervenes and warns G.J.I to mind his language. Then surprisingly Brando himself comes in support of his brother to lash out at Wasantha. Wasantha separates briefly from Brando after this conflict. The next day Brando and G.J.I gets attacked by unknown gangsters when they were traveling in their car outside the city. Brando asks his brother to stay inside the car and handles the killers on his own. He gets brutally injured though only to find out that he's been stabbed on back by his own Brother G.J.I. The attack was arranged by G.J.I himself to kill Brando. G.J.I delivers the killer blow before telling that Brando is too complacent of Hemal and he's going to kill him after killing Brando. Brando dies. G.J.I creates a scene among Brando's family, henchmen and Wasantha that he's not aware of who launched the assault on Brando. Wasantha gets furious and vows to kill every enemy of his mentor Brando including Hemal.\n\nHemal gets his bike back and was relieved for a brief time before coming to know what is going on and G.J.I is after him and his family. He first goes to save Udari. After securing her, he goes to save his family. He thinks the only way to stop this is to confront G.J.I himself. he takes down all the men sent by G.J.I who comes in his way. Meanwhile, Hemal's family were chased down in Mahen's auto-rickshaw by G.J.I's men. Hemal finds G.J.I hiding in an Ice-factory and engages him in a fight. Hemal gets G.J.I under the knife, threatening him to ask his men to leave Hemal's family. G.J.I does so. When Heaml is about to leave, G.J.I provokes him to continue the fight until death. Hemal manages to dodge G.J.I's swing of his knife and gets a steel rod to fatally knock down G.J.I. Wasantha arrives at the scene. Surprisingly he tells G.J.I that he discovered G.J.I's conspiracy of killing Brando before G.J.I dies. Hemal leaves the scene in his much beloved Apache bike.\n\nBackground\nPravegeya is an official sinhala remake of the Indian Tamil film Polladhavan which starred Dhanush and Divya Spandana in its lead roles. It is considered to be the most expensive and the biggest budgeted film ever done in Sri Lanka. Jacqueline Fernandez was cast into a lead role in September 2011 for Rs.8 million which is considered as the highest budget ever been paid to an actress in Sri Lanka, however, the production met initial difficulties when Fernandez failed to appear on her initial shooting date. Filming was done in Sri Lanka at locations including Colombo, Nuwara Eliya and Galle.\n\nCast\n Hemal Ranasinghe as Hemal Suriyabandara\n Udari Perera as Udari\n Jackson Anthony as Brando\n Pubudu Chathuranga as Maligawatte Wasantha\n Gajan Ganeshan as G.J.I\n Jayalath Manoratne as Hemal's father, Saranapala\n Maureen Charuni as Hemal's mother, Sheela\n Mahendra Perera as Mahen (Hemal's friend)\n Janith Wickremage as Janiya \n(Hemal's friend)\n Eranga Jeewantha as Jeewa\n(Hemal's friend)\n Damitha Abeyratne as Brando's Wife\n Hemantha Iriyagama as a Police Officer \n Nandana Hettiarachchi as Chutte\n Bagya Gurusinghe as Hemal's young sister \n Anura Bandara Rajaguru as Illegal Businessman/ Broker\n D.B. Gangodathenna as Bike shop owner\n Ranjan Ramanayake as Office Manager, Guest appearance.\n Sanath Gunathilake as the CID Officer\n Sridhar in a cameo appearance \n Upeksha Swarnamali - Special Appearance in \"Mal Sara\" (song)\n Yureni Noshika - Special Appearance in \"Mal Sara\" (song)\n\nSoundtrack\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n \n Pravegaya on Facebook\n Pravegaya on YouTube\n\nSri Lankan films\n2015 films\nSinhala-language films\nFilms featuring an item number\nRemakes of Sri Lankan films",
"capitalbike.ca\n\nThe Greater Victoria Cycling Coalition (GVCC) was a cycling advocacy group based in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. In 2021 the Greater Victoria Cycling Coalition merged with the Greater Victoria Bike to Work Society to form 'Capital Bike'. \n\nOriginally founded in 1991, the GVCC was one of Canada's oldest cycling advocacy organizations. The GVCC was a volunteer organization dedicated to improving cycling in Victoria, BC, and increasing ridership through advocacy, participation, and education.\n\nThe GVCC's focuses included cycling advocacy, publication of Cycle Therapy, a quarterly magazine, Bike Sense, the cycling safety manual for British Columbia, weekly recreational rides, themed rides including the annual Architectural Bike Tour in conjunction with the Architectural Institute of British Columbia, production of cycling maps and on special events, such as 2009's Velo Victoria.\n\nThe GVCC hosted several international transportation symposia in its history, including the National Center for Bicycling an Walking's Pro Walk/Pro Bike conference in 2004, the Streets Are For People conference in 1998, and the Traffic Calming Conference in 1995.\n\nThe GVCC was instrumental in the development of the Galloping Goose Regional Trail, having organized the first cleanup of what would become the trail. GVCC members provided input to the development of the E&N Railway Trail and the Capital Regional District's Bicycle and Pedestrian Master Plan.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n Capital Bike's official website\n\nCycling organizations in Canada\nOrganizations based in Victoria, British Columbia\nTransport in Victoria, British Columbia"
]
|
[
"Graeme Obree",
"The bike",
"What did Obree do with bikes?",
"Obree had built frames for his bike shop and made another for his record attempt.",
"What kind of bikes did he build?",
"Instead of traditional dropped handlebars it had straight bars like those of a mountain bike.",
"What was special about his bike?",
"Watching a washing machine spin at 1,200rpm led him to take the bearings, which he assumed must be of superior quality, and fit them to his bike."
]
| C_d388b067e509464dbca087ad7e42b702_0 | What other features does his bike have? | 4 | What other features did Graeme Obree's bike have in addition to the bearings? | Graeme Obree | Obree had built frames for his bike shop and made another for his record attempt. Instead of traditional dropped handlebars it had straight bars like those of a mountain bike. He placed them closer to the saddle than usual and rode with the bars under his chest, his elbows bent and tucked into his sides like those of a skier. Watching a washing machine spin at 1,200rpm led him to take the bearings, which he assumed must be of superior quality, and fit them to his bike. Obree later regretted admitting to the bearings experiment, because journalists referred to that before his achievements and other innovations. Obree called his bike "Old Faithful". It has a narrow bottom bracket, around which the cranks revolve, to bring his legs closer together, as he thought this is the "natural" position. As shown in the film, he thought a tread of "one banana" would be ideal. The bike has no top tube, so that his knees did not hit the frame. The chainstays are not horizontal to the ground. Thus the cranks can pass with a narrow bottom bracket. The fork had only one blade, carefully shaped to be as narrow as possible. A French writer who tried it said the narrow handlebars made it hard to accelerate the machine in a straight line but, once it was at speed, he could hold the bars and get into Obree's tucked style. At a high enough speed, [I could] tuck in my arms. And, above all, get in a very forward position on the bike, on the peak of the saddle. The Obree position isn't advantageous simply aerodynamically, it also allows, by pushing the point of pedalling towards the rear, to benefit from greater pressure while remaining in the saddle. You soon get an impression of speed, all the greater because you've got practically nothing [deux fois rien] between your hands. Two other things I noticed after a few hundred metres: I certainly didn't have the impression of turning 53 x 13, and the Obree position is no obstruction to breathing. But I wasn't pedalling at 55kmh, 100 turns of the pedals a minute, yet my arms already hurt. CANNOTANSWER | It has a narrow bottom bracket, around which the cranks revolve, to bring his legs closer together, | Graeme Obree (born 11 September 1965), nicknamed The Flying Scotsman, is a Scottish racing cyclist who twice broke the world hour record, in July 1993 and April 1994, and was the individual pursuit world champion in 1993 and 1995. He was known for his unusual riding positions and for the Old Faithful bicycle he built which included parts from a washing machine. He joined a professional team in France but was fired before his first race. He also competed in the men's individual pursuit at the 1996 Summer Olympics.
Obree has created some radical innovations in bicycle design and cycling position but has had problems with the cycling authorities banning the riding positions his designs required. Obree has been very open about living with bipolar disorder and depression, and the fact that he has attempted suicide three times in his life, using his experiences as a means of encouraging other sportspeople to talk about their own mental health.
His life and exploits have been dramatised in the 2006 film The Flying Scotsman and more recently in the documentary film Battle Mountain: Graeme Obree's Story, which follows his journey to Battle Mountain, Nevada to compete in the 2013 World Human Powered Speed Championships.
In March 2010 he was inducted into the Scottish Sports Hall of Fame.
Biography
Origins
Obree was born in Nuneaton, a large town in northern Warwickshire, England, but has lived almost all his life in Scotland and considers himself Scottish. An individual time triallist, his first race was a 10-mile time trial to which he turned up wearing shorts, anorak and Doc Marten boots. He thought the start and finish were at the same place and stopped where he had started, 100 metres short of the end. He had started to change his clothes when officials told him to continue. He still finished in "about 30 minutes."
In 2011 Obree came out as gay. Obree suffers from bipolar disorder. He attempted suicide in his teens by gassing himself. He was saved by his father, who had returned early from work. In the 1990s he took an overdose of aspirin washed down by water from a puddle. He had personality problems, sniffed the gas he used to weld bicycles, and was being chased for £492 owed in college fees.
The bike shop that he ran failed and he decided the way out of his problems was to attack the world hour velodrome record. It had been held for nine years by Francesco Moser, at 51.151 kilometres. Obree said:
The record had fascinated me since Moser broke it. It was the ultimate test – no traffic, one man in a velodrome against the clock. I didn't tell myself that I will attempt the record, I said I would break it. When your back is against the wall, you can say it's bad or you can say: 'I'll go for it.' I decided, that's it, I've as good as broken the record.
The bike
Obree had built frames for his bike shop and made another for his record attempt. Instead of traditional dropped handlebars it had straight bars like those of a mountain bike. He placed them closer to the saddle than usual and rode with the bars under his chest, his elbows bent and tucked into his sides like those of a skier. Watching a washing machine spin at 1,200rpm led him to take the bearings, which he assumed must be of superior quality, and fit them to his bike. Obree later regretted admitting to the bearings experiment, because journalists referred to that before his achievements and other innovations.
Obree called his bike "Old Faithful". It has a narrow bottom bracket, around which the cranks revolve, to bring his legs closer together, as he thought this is the "natural" position. As shown in the film, he thought a tread of "one banana" would be ideal. The bike has no top tube, so that his knees did not hit the frame. The chainstays are not horizontal to the ground. Thus the cranks can pass with a narrow bottom bracket. The fork had only one blade, carefully shaped to be as narrow as possible. A French writer who tried it said the narrow handlebars made it hard to accelerate the machine in a straight line but, once it was at speed, he could hold the bars and get into Obree's tucked style.
At a high enough speed, [I could] tuck in my arms. And, above all, get in a very forward position on the bike, on the peak of the saddle. The Obree position isn't advantageous simply aerodynamically, it also allows, by pushing the point of pedalling towards the rear, to benefit from greater pressure while remaining in the saddle. You soon get an impression of speed, all the greater because you've got practically nothing [deux fois rien] between your hands. Two other things I noticed after a few hundred metres: I certainly didn't have the impression of turning 53 × 13, and the Obree position is no obstruction to breathing. But I wasn't pedalling at 55 km/h, 100 turns of the pedals a minute, yet my arms already hurt.
Taking the record
Obree attacked Moser's record, on 16 July 1993, at the Vikingskipet velodrome in Norway. He failed by nearly a kilometre. He had booked the track for 24 hours and decided to come back the next day. The writer Nicholas Roe said:
To stop his aching body seizing up, Obree then took the unusual measure of drinking pint upon pint of water so that he had to wake up to go to the lavatory every couple of hours through the night. Each time he got up, he stretched his muscles. On the next weary day, he was up and out within minutes, at the deserted velodrome by 7:55 am and on the track ready to start just five minutes after that. He had barely slept. He had punished his body hugely the previous day. Surely this was a waste of time?
Obree said:
I was Butch Cassidy in terms of swagger. I didn't want any negativity. This was blitzkrieg. I'm going in there. Let me do it. I'm not going to be the timorous guy from Scotland. That's what the difference was. Purely mental state. The day before, I had been a mouse. Now I was a lion.
On 17 July 1993, Obree set a new record of 51.596 kilometres, beating Moser's record of 51.151 kilometres by 445 metres.
Losing the record
Obree's triumph lasted less than a week. On 23 July 1993, the British Olympic champion, Chris Boardman broke Obree's record by 674 metres, riding 52.270 km at Bordeaux. His bike had a carbon monocoque frame, carbon wheels, and a triathlon handlebar. Their rivalry grew: a few months later Obree knocked Boardman out of the world championship pursuit to take the title himself.
Regaining the record
Francesco Moser, whose record Obree had beaten, adopted Obree's riding position—adding a chest pad—and established not an outright world record but a veterans' record of 51.84 kilometres. He did it on 15 January 1994, riding in the thin air of Mexico City as he had for his outright record, whereas Obree and Boardman had ridden at close to sea level.
Obree retook the record on 27 April 1994, using the track that Boardman had used at Bordeaux. He had bolted his shoes to his pedals, to avoid what had happened in the final of the national pursuit championship, when he pulled his foot off the pedal during his starting effort.
He rode 52.713 kilometres, a distance beaten on 2 September 1994 by the Spanish Tour de France winner, Miguel Induráin.
Old Faithful banned
The world governing body, the Union Cycliste Internationale, grew concerned that changes to bicycles were making a disproportionate influence to track records. Among other measures, it banned his riding position: he did not find out until one hour before he began the world championship pursuit in Italy. Judges disqualified him when he refused to comply. The magazine Cycling Weekly blamed "petty-minded officialdom."
Obree developed another riding position, the "Superman" style, his arms fully extended in front, and he won the individual pursuit at the world championships with this and Old Faithful in 1995. That position was also banned. However, in May 2014 the UCI relented, acknowledging that fixing the kind of equipment to be used was hindering technical progress. It restored previous banned world records, from 2000, now to be described as "Best hour performance".
The original Old Faithful bike is on display at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, while two near-replicas built for use in the Flying Scotsman film are displayed in the Riverside Transport Museum in Glasgow.
In March 2018, Obree tested another replica of Old Faithful in the Mercedes-Benz F1 team's wind tunnel to gauge the aerodynamic efficiency of his various riding positions on the bike, having never previously participated in wind-tunnel testing. It was found that the (drag coefficient) of Obree's initial "tuck" or "crouch" position was 0.17, compared to a conventional 1990s bike position of 0.20 and a modern conventional position of 0.188, leading to an estimated gain in speed of about 2-2.5 km/h over his rivals in the 1990s and a gain of 1.5 km/h over contemporary track cyclists: meanwhile the "Superman" position was found only to be marginally more efficient than the 1990s conventional position, and less efficient than the modern conventional position. Obree however noted that the discomfort of the "crouch" position takes a lot of energy out of the rider through holding the hands and shoulders in place, whilst the "Superman" position was much more manageable.
Other achievements
Obree was individual pursuit world champion in 1993 and 1995. He broke the British 10-mile individual time trial record in 1993, won the RTTC 50-mile championship the same year (a record 1h 39m 1s), and won the 25-mile championship in 1996. In 1997 he joined forces with coach Joe Beer and clocked 18m 36s in a 10-mile time trial (V718 Hull) and next day won the British Cycling Federation 25-mile championship - this was part of building towards an hour record attempt that was to be eventually shelved.
The writer Peter Bryan, of The Times, said:
To see Obree in full flight, shoulders hunched and elbows tucked into his ribs, is a memorable sight. His face contorted with pain illustrates the effort he is putting in. And yet, not too many minutes after he has finished a ride the champion is sufficiently relaxed to talk with a queue of pressmen.
Professional career
Obree rode his hour records as an amateur. He took a professional licence after winning his first world championship, telling Bryan: "I reckon I can make more money on the bike than I get from unemployment benefit."
He joined Le Groupement, a French team but did not attend a meeting in Les Carroz d'Arâches (fr) and was fired for "lack of professionalism." Obree had been racing in Florida when the team first met. But he was on holiday there when the team met again for publicity photographs. He got to the next get-together but flew to Paris instead of Lille, where the meeting was held.
The team manager, Patrick Valcke, said:
"If a rider has that attitude, it's best to stop working together as soon as possible. We paid for his tickets [to fly from Glasgow to Geneva] and he didn't even turn up, didn't even phone to explain why he was not coming. He said that he did not want to leave his family so soon after the death of his brother (see below) but he could have phoned to tell us that. I don't want any more to do with him."
Obree said: "I was too ill to attend the get-together and had no success when I attempted to contact team officials on 1 January. My wife, Anne, who is a nurse, insisted I was not well enough to travel to France."
The Le Groupement team fell apart after a short time, when the sponsoring company was involved in scandal, with accusations that it was nothing but a pyramid selling scheme. Some of the team members claimed that they were owed money, and their wages had not been paid.
Attitude to doping
Obree said of his short professional career:
"I still feel I was robbed of part of my career. I was signed up to ride in the prologue of the Tour back in 1995, but it was made very obvious to me I would have to take drugs. I said no, no way, and I was sacked by my team. So there I was, 11 years later, sitting there waiting for the Tour cyclists to come by, and something welled up in me. I feel I was robbed by a lot of these bastards taking drugs. I also hate the way that people think anyone who has ever achieved anything on a bike must have been taking drugs. I was surprised how resentful I felt when I was in Paris. It had obviously been simmering away in there for years. That's something new I'll have to talk to my therapist about."
In 1996, he told the magazine L'Équipe:
"In my opinion, 99 percent of riders at élite level take EPO or a similar drug, not particularly to dope themselves but to be at the same level as the others. And that's rather sad."
His web site says:
"AND by the way, I never took drugs to improve my performance at any time as has been happening in the sport for a long time. I will be willing to stick my finger into a polygraph test if anyone with big media pull wants to take issue. In other words, if you buy a signed poster now it will not be tarnished later."
Further suicide attempt
Obree's brother, Gordon, died in a car crash in October 1994, and Graeme Obree again slid in and out of depression. In 2001 he was found unconscious at Bellsland Farm in Kilmaurs, 12 km from his Ayrshire home. The Obree family horse was stabled there, and he was discovered by a woman checking a barn. He had tried to hang himself. His wife, Anne, said he had been diagnosed as having severe bipolar disorder three years earlier.
Present day
Obree is divorced from his wife, with whom he has two children. He continues to race occasionally in individual time trials for Ayrshire-based Fullarton Wheelers cycling club. In May 2005, he crashed in the rain in the national 10-mile time trial championship near Nantwich in Cheshire. He was a member of the winning three-man club squad that took the team title in the Scottish 10-mile championship in May 2006. In December 2006, he competed in the track event, Revolution 15, in a four kilometre pursuit challenge.
In January 2011, Obree disclosed in an interview with the Scottish Sun that he is gay and that his difficulty with coming to terms with his sexual orientation contributed to his earlier suicide attempts. "I was brought up by a war generation; they grew up when gay people were put in jail. Being homosexual was so unthinkable that you just wouldn't be gay. I'd no inkling about anything, I just closed down." He came out to his family in 2005.
New Hour record attempt
In May 2009, Obree announced that he would make an attempt at the "Athlete's Hour" record on a bike he had built himself during 2009. Obree said in October 2009 that the attempt had been cancelled as the bike he'd built himself was not suitable for the conditions. He will not be attempting this again.
In December 2009, he was inducted into the British Cycling Hall of Fame while in March 2010, he was inducted into the Scottish Sports Hall of Fame.
Human-powered vehicle land speed record
In December 2011, Obree announced that he would make an attempt at the human-powered vehicle (HPV) land speed record, hoping to hit 100 mph. In May 2012, he revealed that the bike he is building for this attempt is a prone bike.
The attempt was originally to take place in Britain, and the record speed was then . However, he competed in the 2013 World Human Powered Speed Championships in Battle Mountain, Nevada, where the record was also set. He achieved a speed of on the morning of Friday, 13 September.
While Obree did not break the HPV land speed record, he did set a new record for a rider in the prone position. The previous day, Obree had set a speed of , which was a record speed in the prone position on a two-wheeled HPV (the overall prone record being held by a trike).
Book and films
He published his autobiography in 2003 titled The Flying Scotsman. He said: "It started with the psychologist saying it would do me good and ended up as my life story." A film based on the book premiered at the Edinburgh International Film Festival in 2006, starring Jonny Lee Miller and Billy Boyd. In November 2006 Metro-Goldwyn Mayer bought world distribution rights and the film was released in the US on 29 December 2006; it was given a UK release on 29 June 2007. The DVD was released in the UK on 5 November 2007.
Battle Mountain: Graeme Obree's Story, a documentary film about Obree's appearance at the 2013 World Human Powered Speed Championships in Battle Mountain, Nevada, premiered at the 2015 Edinburgh International Film Festival. The film, directed by David Street with music by Alun Woodward of Chemikal Underground, went on public release on 21 March 2016, with a tour of cinemas featuring a question-and-answer session with Obree following screenings. The film was crowdfunded through the Kickstarter website.
Notes
References
Related media
Flying Scotsman: Cycling to Triumph Through My Darkest Hours Graeme Obree VeloPress 2005
Flying Scotsman Graeme Obree Birlinn Books 2003
External links
Graeme Obree – Biography at CyclingInfo.co.uk
Graeme Obree's home made bike photograph
1965 births
Living people
Sportspeople from Nuneaton
Sportspeople from North Ayrshire
Scottish male cyclists
UCI Track Cycling World Champions (men)
People with bipolar disorder
Gay sportsmen
LGBT sportspeople from Scotland
LGBT cyclists
Scottish track cyclists
Olympic cyclists of Great Britain
Cyclists at the 1996 Summer Olympics | true | [
"The Kawasaki W175 is a air-cooled four-stroke single-cylinder motorcycle made by Kawasaki since 2017. It is a retro styled, like the Kawasaki W series along with the Estrella (now called as W250), W650, and W800.\n\nKawasaki held the world premiere launch for this bike at Jakarta in November 2017, thus began selling this bike for the Indonesian domestic market. As for now, the bike has been exported for Thailand, Philippines, and Latin American market such as Uruguay, Mexico and Bolivia.\n\nThe engine is fuelled by a Mikuni VM24 carburetor, aimed for easier maintenance. Like the W800, the bike does not have a kick start, instead it is equipped with electric start. No center stand (although a side stand does come as standard), no tachometer, and no fuel indicator.\n\nThis bike gained some popularity among bike modification enthusiasts and public figures, including President Jokowi of Indonesia who owns a chopper-style modified version of this bike and Governor Ridwan Kamil of West Java.\n\nIt is sold in a few different versions, including the W175 Standard, W175 Cafe, and W175 TR dual purpose. All versions except the dual-purpose have a teardrop styled fuel tank. The dual purpose TR models have a 7.5 L fuel tank. For the lighting equipment, the bike uses halogen bulbs for the H4 60/55 headlight with clear multi reflectors. As for the turning signal lights and side mirrors, the bike use the same parts from Kawasaki KLX150.\n\nPerformance wise, the bike was tested by an automotive journalist team and got a top speed figure of 110.1 km/h. Based on the test, the bike could accelerate to 100 km/h speed in 16.3 seconds.\n\nReferences \n\nW175",
"A party bike, Beercycle, fietscafé, bierfiets, pedal crawler, pedal pub, beer bike, bar bike, pedal bar or bierbike is a multi-passenger human powered vehicle, invented in 1997 by Het Fietscafe BV from the Netherlands. A party bike is sometimes mistaken for a larger-scale version of a pedicab, but it is not, since the party bike is powered by the passengers while the steering and braking is controlled by a driver who does not provide pedaling power. Some also double as rolling refreshment stands.\n Human-powered party bikes have been in use for decades and have grown into several families of vehicles for a variety of purposes, including tourist rentals and private touring. Party bikes are often used for staff parties and bachelor or bachelorette parties. They are often available at tourist attractions where they are rented by the hour or day and often serve as a rolling refreshment stand. When used in conjunction with alcohol, a party bike usually is hired with a driver.\n\nConstruction\nA modern tourist party bike usually features open seating for eight or more riders in a sociable configuration. These vehicles are often designed to look like early 20th century trolley cars and have side seating for the pedalers, a bench seat in the rear, rack-and-pinion steering, and a canopy top. A few manufacturers offer an electric assist motor to aid the riders on hilly terrain. Modern party bikes are typically fifteen to twenty feet long, seven feet wide and eight feet tall. Because they are driven on municipal streets, some have headlights, tail lights, and turn signals, as well as lighting for use at night.\n\nServing beer\n\nThese pubs-on-wheels have become popular in the United States, as well as the Netherlands, Germany and France. Some party bikes can have up to 16 cycling passengers, three non-cycling passengers, bar tenders and a driver. In many European municipalities, it is legal to consume alcohol while pedaling or riding on the party bike, provided the driver is not imbibing. However, strict state-based open container laws in the United States prevent most party bike passengers from consuming alcohol while on board except in certain municipalities. In some locations, the driver is required to have a chauffeur's driver's license to operate on public streets. Generally, a company or individual will own the party bike and rent it out to the public for tours. The party bike is often associated with the micro beer tourism industry. It can be seen used by corporations for team building and retreat activities, groups such as wedding parties, birthday parties, coffee drinkers, exercise groups, and sightseers.\n\nAccidents and incidents\n\nIn 2011 in downtown Minneapolis, a full party bike was briefly \"attacked\" by a large mob of youth, with no injuries and only a BlackBerry phone stolen.\n\nOn August 15, 2013, in downtown Minneapolis, a full party bike operated by a large beer bike company, tipped onto its right side. Two of the riders were taken to the hospital by ambulance. A police spokesperson stated that \"Alcohol does not appear to be a factor.\" Earlier in the year, the city had entertained introducing new regulations and licensing for party bikes.\"\n\nOn May 23, 2015, in downtown Minneapolis, six people were arrested after they pelted a party bike with water balloons and used squirt guns, after a series of organized attacks on two previous party bikes. The riders of the pub and an off duty police officer helped hold the attackers down until other police arrived. The suspects were booked on suspicion of offenses including terroristic threats, fifth-degree assault and disorderly conduct, and released on bail. One of those arrested accused the off-duty officers of using excessive force\n\nA month later, on June 24, 2015, 12 people were injured, three seriously when a car rear-ended a party bike on a bridge in Minneapolis. The suspect was jailed on suspicion of drunken driving and felony criminal vehicular operation causing injury. It was the first collision with a car by a party bike operated by this Minneapolis company, after more than 11,000 tours in nine years in the city.\n\nProblems with noise and traffic jams has led to a ban on beer bikes in the centre of Amsterdam from the end of 2017.\n\nSee also\n\nConference Bike\n Outline of cycling\n\nReferences\n\nCycle types\nTransport in Amsterdam"
]
|
[
"Graeme Obree",
"The bike",
"What did Obree do with bikes?",
"Obree had built frames for his bike shop and made another for his record attempt.",
"What kind of bikes did he build?",
"Instead of traditional dropped handlebars it had straight bars like those of a mountain bike.",
"What was special about his bike?",
"Watching a washing machine spin at 1,200rpm led him to take the bearings, which he assumed must be of superior quality, and fit them to his bike.",
"What other features does his bike have?",
"It has a narrow bottom bracket, around which the cranks revolve, to bring his legs closer together,"
]
| C_d388b067e509464dbca087ad7e42b702_0 | Does the bike have other custom features? | 5 | Does the bike have other custom features besides the narrow bottom bracket? | Graeme Obree | Obree had built frames for his bike shop and made another for his record attempt. Instead of traditional dropped handlebars it had straight bars like those of a mountain bike. He placed them closer to the saddle than usual and rode with the bars under his chest, his elbows bent and tucked into his sides like those of a skier. Watching a washing machine spin at 1,200rpm led him to take the bearings, which he assumed must be of superior quality, and fit them to his bike. Obree later regretted admitting to the bearings experiment, because journalists referred to that before his achievements and other innovations. Obree called his bike "Old Faithful". It has a narrow bottom bracket, around which the cranks revolve, to bring his legs closer together, as he thought this is the "natural" position. As shown in the film, he thought a tread of "one banana" would be ideal. The bike has no top tube, so that his knees did not hit the frame. The chainstays are not horizontal to the ground. Thus the cranks can pass with a narrow bottom bracket. The fork had only one blade, carefully shaped to be as narrow as possible. A French writer who tried it said the narrow handlebars made it hard to accelerate the machine in a straight line but, once it was at speed, he could hold the bars and get into Obree's tucked style. At a high enough speed, [I could] tuck in my arms. And, above all, get in a very forward position on the bike, on the peak of the saddle. The Obree position isn't advantageous simply aerodynamically, it also allows, by pushing the point of pedalling towards the rear, to benefit from greater pressure while remaining in the saddle. You soon get an impression of speed, all the greater because you've got practically nothing [deux fois rien] between your hands. Two other things I noticed after a few hundred metres: I certainly didn't have the impression of turning 53 x 13, and the Obree position is no obstruction to breathing. But I wasn't pedalling at 55kmh, 100 turns of the pedals a minute, yet my arms already hurt. CANNOTANSWER | The bike has no top tube, so that his knees did not hit the frame. The chainstays are not horizontal to the ground. | Graeme Obree (born 11 September 1965), nicknamed The Flying Scotsman, is a Scottish racing cyclist who twice broke the world hour record, in July 1993 and April 1994, and was the individual pursuit world champion in 1993 and 1995. He was known for his unusual riding positions and for the Old Faithful bicycle he built which included parts from a washing machine. He joined a professional team in France but was fired before his first race. He also competed in the men's individual pursuit at the 1996 Summer Olympics.
Obree has created some radical innovations in bicycle design and cycling position but has had problems with the cycling authorities banning the riding positions his designs required. Obree has been very open about living with bipolar disorder and depression, and the fact that he has attempted suicide three times in his life, using his experiences as a means of encouraging other sportspeople to talk about their own mental health.
His life and exploits have been dramatised in the 2006 film The Flying Scotsman and more recently in the documentary film Battle Mountain: Graeme Obree's Story, which follows his journey to Battle Mountain, Nevada to compete in the 2013 World Human Powered Speed Championships.
In March 2010 he was inducted into the Scottish Sports Hall of Fame.
Biography
Origins
Obree was born in Nuneaton, a large town in northern Warwickshire, England, but has lived almost all his life in Scotland and considers himself Scottish. An individual time triallist, his first race was a 10-mile time trial to which he turned up wearing shorts, anorak and Doc Marten boots. He thought the start and finish were at the same place and stopped where he had started, 100 metres short of the end. He had started to change his clothes when officials told him to continue. He still finished in "about 30 minutes."
In 2011 Obree came out as gay. Obree suffers from bipolar disorder. He attempted suicide in his teens by gassing himself. He was saved by his father, who had returned early from work. In the 1990s he took an overdose of aspirin washed down by water from a puddle. He had personality problems, sniffed the gas he used to weld bicycles, and was being chased for £492 owed in college fees.
The bike shop that he ran failed and he decided the way out of his problems was to attack the world hour velodrome record. It had been held for nine years by Francesco Moser, at 51.151 kilometres. Obree said:
The record had fascinated me since Moser broke it. It was the ultimate test – no traffic, one man in a velodrome against the clock. I didn't tell myself that I will attempt the record, I said I would break it. When your back is against the wall, you can say it's bad or you can say: 'I'll go for it.' I decided, that's it, I've as good as broken the record.
The bike
Obree had built frames for his bike shop and made another for his record attempt. Instead of traditional dropped handlebars it had straight bars like those of a mountain bike. He placed them closer to the saddle than usual and rode with the bars under his chest, his elbows bent and tucked into his sides like those of a skier. Watching a washing machine spin at 1,200rpm led him to take the bearings, which he assumed must be of superior quality, and fit them to his bike. Obree later regretted admitting to the bearings experiment, because journalists referred to that before his achievements and other innovations.
Obree called his bike "Old Faithful". It has a narrow bottom bracket, around which the cranks revolve, to bring his legs closer together, as he thought this is the "natural" position. As shown in the film, he thought a tread of "one banana" would be ideal. The bike has no top tube, so that his knees did not hit the frame. The chainstays are not horizontal to the ground. Thus the cranks can pass with a narrow bottom bracket. The fork had only one blade, carefully shaped to be as narrow as possible. A French writer who tried it said the narrow handlebars made it hard to accelerate the machine in a straight line but, once it was at speed, he could hold the bars and get into Obree's tucked style.
At a high enough speed, [I could] tuck in my arms. And, above all, get in a very forward position on the bike, on the peak of the saddle. The Obree position isn't advantageous simply aerodynamically, it also allows, by pushing the point of pedalling towards the rear, to benefit from greater pressure while remaining in the saddle. You soon get an impression of speed, all the greater because you've got practically nothing [deux fois rien] between your hands. Two other things I noticed after a few hundred metres: I certainly didn't have the impression of turning 53 × 13, and the Obree position is no obstruction to breathing. But I wasn't pedalling at 55 km/h, 100 turns of the pedals a minute, yet my arms already hurt.
Taking the record
Obree attacked Moser's record, on 16 July 1993, at the Vikingskipet velodrome in Norway. He failed by nearly a kilometre. He had booked the track for 24 hours and decided to come back the next day. The writer Nicholas Roe said:
To stop his aching body seizing up, Obree then took the unusual measure of drinking pint upon pint of water so that he had to wake up to go to the lavatory every couple of hours through the night. Each time he got up, he stretched his muscles. On the next weary day, he was up and out within minutes, at the deserted velodrome by 7:55 am and on the track ready to start just five minutes after that. He had barely slept. He had punished his body hugely the previous day. Surely this was a waste of time?
Obree said:
I was Butch Cassidy in terms of swagger. I didn't want any negativity. This was blitzkrieg. I'm going in there. Let me do it. I'm not going to be the timorous guy from Scotland. That's what the difference was. Purely mental state. The day before, I had been a mouse. Now I was a lion.
On 17 July 1993, Obree set a new record of 51.596 kilometres, beating Moser's record of 51.151 kilometres by 445 metres.
Losing the record
Obree's triumph lasted less than a week. On 23 July 1993, the British Olympic champion, Chris Boardman broke Obree's record by 674 metres, riding 52.270 km at Bordeaux. His bike had a carbon monocoque frame, carbon wheels, and a triathlon handlebar. Their rivalry grew: a few months later Obree knocked Boardman out of the world championship pursuit to take the title himself.
Regaining the record
Francesco Moser, whose record Obree had beaten, adopted Obree's riding position—adding a chest pad—and established not an outright world record but a veterans' record of 51.84 kilometres. He did it on 15 January 1994, riding in the thin air of Mexico City as he had for his outright record, whereas Obree and Boardman had ridden at close to sea level.
Obree retook the record on 27 April 1994, using the track that Boardman had used at Bordeaux. He had bolted his shoes to his pedals, to avoid what had happened in the final of the national pursuit championship, when he pulled his foot off the pedal during his starting effort.
He rode 52.713 kilometres, a distance beaten on 2 September 1994 by the Spanish Tour de France winner, Miguel Induráin.
Old Faithful banned
The world governing body, the Union Cycliste Internationale, grew concerned that changes to bicycles were making a disproportionate influence to track records. Among other measures, it banned his riding position: he did not find out until one hour before he began the world championship pursuit in Italy. Judges disqualified him when he refused to comply. The magazine Cycling Weekly blamed "petty-minded officialdom."
Obree developed another riding position, the "Superman" style, his arms fully extended in front, and he won the individual pursuit at the world championships with this and Old Faithful in 1995. That position was also banned. However, in May 2014 the UCI relented, acknowledging that fixing the kind of equipment to be used was hindering technical progress. It restored previous banned world records, from 2000, now to be described as "Best hour performance".
The original Old Faithful bike is on display at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, while two near-replicas built for use in the Flying Scotsman film are displayed in the Riverside Transport Museum in Glasgow.
In March 2018, Obree tested another replica of Old Faithful in the Mercedes-Benz F1 team's wind tunnel to gauge the aerodynamic efficiency of his various riding positions on the bike, having never previously participated in wind-tunnel testing. It was found that the (drag coefficient) of Obree's initial "tuck" or "crouch" position was 0.17, compared to a conventional 1990s bike position of 0.20 and a modern conventional position of 0.188, leading to an estimated gain in speed of about 2-2.5 km/h over his rivals in the 1990s and a gain of 1.5 km/h over contemporary track cyclists: meanwhile the "Superman" position was found only to be marginally more efficient than the 1990s conventional position, and less efficient than the modern conventional position. Obree however noted that the discomfort of the "crouch" position takes a lot of energy out of the rider through holding the hands and shoulders in place, whilst the "Superman" position was much more manageable.
Other achievements
Obree was individual pursuit world champion in 1993 and 1995. He broke the British 10-mile individual time trial record in 1993, won the RTTC 50-mile championship the same year (a record 1h 39m 1s), and won the 25-mile championship in 1996. In 1997 he joined forces with coach Joe Beer and clocked 18m 36s in a 10-mile time trial (V718 Hull) and next day won the British Cycling Federation 25-mile championship - this was part of building towards an hour record attempt that was to be eventually shelved.
The writer Peter Bryan, of The Times, said:
To see Obree in full flight, shoulders hunched and elbows tucked into his ribs, is a memorable sight. His face contorted with pain illustrates the effort he is putting in. And yet, not too many minutes after he has finished a ride the champion is sufficiently relaxed to talk with a queue of pressmen.
Professional career
Obree rode his hour records as an amateur. He took a professional licence after winning his first world championship, telling Bryan: "I reckon I can make more money on the bike than I get from unemployment benefit."
He joined Le Groupement, a French team but did not attend a meeting in Les Carroz d'Arâches (fr) and was fired for "lack of professionalism." Obree had been racing in Florida when the team first met. But he was on holiday there when the team met again for publicity photographs. He got to the next get-together but flew to Paris instead of Lille, where the meeting was held.
The team manager, Patrick Valcke, said:
"If a rider has that attitude, it's best to stop working together as soon as possible. We paid for his tickets [to fly from Glasgow to Geneva] and he didn't even turn up, didn't even phone to explain why he was not coming. He said that he did not want to leave his family so soon after the death of his brother (see below) but he could have phoned to tell us that. I don't want any more to do with him."
Obree said: "I was too ill to attend the get-together and had no success when I attempted to contact team officials on 1 January. My wife, Anne, who is a nurse, insisted I was not well enough to travel to France."
The Le Groupement team fell apart after a short time, when the sponsoring company was involved in scandal, with accusations that it was nothing but a pyramid selling scheme. Some of the team members claimed that they were owed money, and their wages had not been paid.
Attitude to doping
Obree said of his short professional career:
"I still feel I was robbed of part of my career. I was signed up to ride in the prologue of the Tour back in 1995, but it was made very obvious to me I would have to take drugs. I said no, no way, and I was sacked by my team. So there I was, 11 years later, sitting there waiting for the Tour cyclists to come by, and something welled up in me. I feel I was robbed by a lot of these bastards taking drugs. I also hate the way that people think anyone who has ever achieved anything on a bike must have been taking drugs. I was surprised how resentful I felt when I was in Paris. It had obviously been simmering away in there for years. That's something new I'll have to talk to my therapist about."
In 1996, he told the magazine L'Équipe:
"In my opinion, 99 percent of riders at élite level take EPO or a similar drug, not particularly to dope themselves but to be at the same level as the others. And that's rather sad."
His web site says:
"AND by the way, I never took drugs to improve my performance at any time as has been happening in the sport for a long time. I will be willing to stick my finger into a polygraph test if anyone with big media pull wants to take issue. In other words, if you buy a signed poster now it will not be tarnished later."
Further suicide attempt
Obree's brother, Gordon, died in a car crash in October 1994, and Graeme Obree again slid in and out of depression. In 2001 he was found unconscious at Bellsland Farm in Kilmaurs, 12 km from his Ayrshire home. The Obree family horse was stabled there, and he was discovered by a woman checking a barn. He had tried to hang himself. His wife, Anne, said he had been diagnosed as having severe bipolar disorder three years earlier.
Present day
Obree is divorced from his wife, with whom he has two children. He continues to race occasionally in individual time trials for Ayrshire-based Fullarton Wheelers cycling club. In May 2005, he crashed in the rain in the national 10-mile time trial championship near Nantwich in Cheshire. He was a member of the winning three-man club squad that took the team title in the Scottish 10-mile championship in May 2006. In December 2006, he competed in the track event, Revolution 15, in a four kilometre pursuit challenge.
In January 2011, Obree disclosed in an interview with the Scottish Sun that he is gay and that his difficulty with coming to terms with his sexual orientation contributed to his earlier suicide attempts. "I was brought up by a war generation; they grew up when gay people were put in jail. Being homosexual was so unthinkable that you just wouldn't be gay. I'd no inkling about anything, I just closed down." He came out to his family in 2005.
New Hour record attempt
In May 2009, Obree announced that he would make an attempt at the "Athlete's Hour" record on a bike he had built himself during 2009. Obree said in October 2009 that the attempt had been cancelled as the bike he'd built himself was not suitable for the conditions. He will not be attempting this again.
In December 2009, he was inducted into the British Cycling Hall of Fame while in March 2010, he was inducted into the Scottish Sports Hall of Fame.
Human-powered vehicle land speed record
In December 2011, Obree announced that he would make an attempt at the human-powered vehicle (HPV) land speed record, hoping to hit 100 mph. In May 2012, he revealed that the bike he is building for this attempt is a prone bike.
The attempt was originally to take place in Britain, and the record speed was then . However, he competed in the 2013 World Human Powered Speed Championships in Battle Mountain, Nevada, where the record was also set. He achieved a speed of on the morning of Friday, 13 September.
While Obree did not break the HPV land speed record, he did set a new record for a rider in the prone position. The previous day, Obree had set a speed of , which was a record speed in the prone position on a two-wheeled HPV (the overall prone record being held by a trike).
Book and films
He published his autobiography in 2003 titled The Flying Scotsman. He said: "It started with the psychologist saying it would do me good and ended up as my life story." A film based on the book premiered at the Edinburgh International Film Festival in 2006, starring Jonny Lee Miller and Billy Boyd. In November 2006 Metro-Goldwyn Mayer bought world distribution rights and the film was released in the US on 29 December 2006; it was given a UK release on 29 June 2007. The DVD was released in the UK on 5 November 2007.
Battle Mountain: Graeme Obree's Story, a documentary film about Obree's appearance at the 2013 World Human Powered Speed Championships in Battle Mountain, Nevada, premiered at the 2015 Edinburgh International Film Festival. The film, directed by David Street with music by Alun Woodward of Chemikal Underground, went on public release on 21 March 2016, with a tour of cinemas featuring a question-and-answer session with Obree following screenings. The film was crowdfunded through the Kickstarter website.
Notes
References
Related media
Flying Scotsman: Cycling to Triumph Through My Darkest Hours Graeme Obree VeloPress 2005
Flying Scotsman Graeme Obree Birlinn Books 2003
External links
Graeme Obree – Biography at CyclingInfo.co.uk
Graeme Obree's home made bike photograph
1965 births
Living people
Sportspeople from Nuneaton
Sportspeople from North Ayrshire
Scottish male cyclists
UCI Track Cycling World Champions (men)
People with bipolar disorder
Gay sportsmen
LGBT sportspeople from Scotland
LGBT cyclists
Scottish track cyclists
Olympic cyclists of Great Britain
Cyclists at the 1996 Summer Olympics | true | [
"Villy Custom is an American lifestyle brand specializing in a luxury custom fashion designed cruiser bicycles for adults. Based in Dallas, the company was founded and is privately owned by entrepreneur Fleetwood Hicks, a former menswear fashion designer, and health enthusiast, and it was chosen by Entrepreneur Magazine as one of the 100 Most Brilliant Business Ideas of 2010. The company also \naired in season 3 of ABC's show Shark Tank according to WFAA\n\nHistory \n\nIn 2006 Hicks discovered beach cruiser bike riding on Venice Beach while in Los Angeles on a business trip. After renting a beach cruiser for a scheduled one-hour ride, he brought the rental back 6 hours later and was hooked; relishing the simplicity, comfort and style of the bike and the fact that you could wear street clothes and look stylish riding. Two years later, Villy Custom was founded in 2008 and began as a brick and mortar retail store (selected by Daily Candy as “Sweetest Things” 2009) specializing in sales of Felt Cruisers, Hawk Classic Cruiser bikes, specialty accessories and apparel. After experimenting with minor bike customization, Hicks soon realized he could infuse fashion, texture and unique color combinations to create a customizable luxury fashion bicycle company. The Icon of the Brand is the owner's Bullmastiff dog, named DeVille. The Brand is known for its unexpected product features, such as powder coated handlebars, neck stems, seat post, seat post clamps, fender braces, seat hardware, and wheels in a multitude of colors.\n\nInnovation \nVilly Custom is a “fashion” brand of cruiser bike. Villy Custom uses an e-commerce platform with a 3D Flash-based user interface, allowing customers to change, add and remove features and colors.\nIn June 2010, Entrepreneur magazine awarded Villy Custom with one of the 100 Most Brilliant Business Ideas of the year.\n\nLogos \nThe official company logo is a shield including a graphic of DeVille's (nickname “Villy”) head wearing a starred collar. The color scheme is Gold, Black, Red and Silver.\n\nCompany headquarters \nThe company's warehouse and assemblage facility is located in downtown Dallas, Texas. Villy Custom also has a few bicycles showcased at the Omni Dallas Hotel.\n\nMentions in the press \n Selected by Entrepreneur magazine as one of the 100 Most Brilliant Business Ideas for 2010 (June 2010 edition)\n Feb 2011 featured on national T.V. by NBC's First Look\n Full feature by the Dallas Morning News as the Sunday “Entrepreneur” feature (Sept. 2010) business section\n AOL National feature story \n Modern Luxury magazine (April 2011 issue, Page 121)\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n Official website\n\nCycle manufacturers of the United States\nManufacturing companies based in Dallas",
"The World Championship of Custom Bike Building is a competition held annually by American Motorcycle Dealer (AMD) magazine. The first competition was held in 2004 as an extension of the AMD ProShow custom engineering competition held in Europe in conjunction with Custom Chrome since 2002, which by some was already unofficially acknowledged as a European championship The top three finishers from the European Championship are rewarded with an entry to the World Championship and an expenses contribution to help with bike freight costs. There are also a number of affiliate events in various countries in Western Europe as well as in Russia, Japan, Australia and Mexico. The winner of each Affiliate event also wins expenses towards competing at the World Championship each year. The judging of the World Championship is done by 'peer review', in that all competitors collectively decide the winner, together with a select panel of invited judges from the press and aftermarket industry.\n\nClasses\n Freestyle (World Championship) - The Freestyle Class accepts all bikes of any design and/or with any modifications. The winner of this class will be declared World Champion Custom Bike Builder for the period of one year.\n Modified Harley-Davison - Frame and engine case must be original Harley-Davidson, any modifications to the frame and the motors cylinders or heads are accepted.\n Production Manufacturer - This class is designed for entrants whose principal business is selling production motorcycles, all entries must be manufactured in 50 or more units per year.\n Metric World Championship - All entries must be built around an import metric-based engine. The winner of this class will be declared Metric World Champion Custom Bike Builder for the period of one year.\n\nOfficial voting results\n\n2004 World Championship\n\n2005 World Championship\n\n2005 European Championship\n\n2006 World Championship\n\n2006 European Championship\n\n2007 World Championship\n\n2007 European Championship\n\n2008 World Championship\n\n2008 European Championship\n\n2009 World Championship\n\n2009 European Championship\n\n2010 World Championship\n\n2010 European Championship\n\n2011 World Championship\n\n2012 World Championship\n\n2013 World Championship\n\n2014 World Championship\n\n2016 World Championship\n\n2018 World Championship\n\nAffiliate events\nEntrants in these events can be rewarded with free entries to the European or world championships.\nArneitz Custom Show - Faaker See, Austria\nBigtwin Bikeshow & Expo - Rosmalen, Netherlands\nCool Breaker Custom Show - Yokohama, Japan\nGold Coast Bike Week - Carrara, Queensland, Australia\nCologne Custom Championship - Cologne, Germany\nIrish Motorbike & Scooter Show - Dublin, Ireland\nLlunatica Benicassim - Benicassim, Spain\nMad Builders Custom Show - Jocotepec, Mexico\nMoscow Custom & Tuning Show - Moscow, Russia\nMoto Clube Faro Bike Show - Faro, Algarve, Portugal\nMotor Bike Expo - Verona, Italy\nMULAFEST International Bike Show - Madrid, Spain\nSwedish Custom Bike Show - Norrtälje, Sweden\nViva La Clusaz! - La Clusaz, France\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nAMD-championship Official Website\nDealer World\n\nVehicle modification\nMotorcycling events\nMotorcycling mass media\nMotorcycle customization\nEngineering competitions"
]
|
[
"Graeme Obree",
"The bike",
"What did Obree do with bikes?",
"Obree had built frames for his bike shop and made another for his record attempt.",
"What kind of bikes did he build?",
"Instead of traditional dropped handlebars it had straight bars like those of a mountain bike.",
"What was special about his bike?",
"Watching a washing machine spin at 1,200rpm led him to take the bearings, which he assumed must be of superior quality, and fit them to his bike.",
"What other features does his bike have?",
"It has a narrow bottom bracket, around which the cranks revolve, to bring his legs closer together,",
"Does the bike have other custom features?",
"The bike has no top tube, so that his knees did not hit the frame. The chainstays are not horizontal to the ground."
]
| C_d388b067e509464dbca087ad7e42b702_0 | What other things did he add to the bike? | 6 | Aside from the narrow bottom bracket, what other things did Graeme Obree add to the bike? | Graeme Obree | Obree had built frames for his bike shop and made another for his record attempt. Instead of traditional dropped handlebars it had straight bars like those of a mountain bike. He placed them closer to the saddle than usual and rode with the bars under his chest, his elbows bent and tucked into his sides like those of a skier. Watching a washing machine spin at 1,200rpm led him to take the bearings, which he assumed must be of superior quality, and fit them to his bike. Obree later regretted admitting to the bearings experiment, because journalists referred to that before his achievements and other innovations. Obree called his bike "Old Faithful". It has a narrow bottom bracket, around which the cranks revolve, to bring his legs closer together, as he thought this is the "natural" position. As shown in the film, he thought a tread of "one banana" would be ideal. The bike has no top tube, so that his knees did not hit the frame. The chainstays are not horizontal to the ground. Thus the cranks can pass with a narrow bottom bracket. The fork had only one blade, carefully shaped to be as narrow as possible. A French writer who tried it said the narrow handlebars made it hard to accelerate the machine in a straight line but, once it was at speed, he could hold the bars and get into Obree's tucked style. At a high enough speed, [I could] tuck in my arms. And, above all, get in a very forward position on the bike, on the peak of the saddle. The Obree position isn't advantageous simply aerodynamically, it also allows, by pushing the point of pedalling towards the rear, to benefit from greater pressure while remaining in the saddle. You soon get an impression of speed, all the greater because you've got practically nothing [deux fois rien] between your hands. Two other things I noticed after a few hundred metres: I certainly didn't have the impression of turning 53 x 13, and the Obree position is no obstruction to breathing. But I wasn't pedalling at 55kmh, 100 turns of the pedals a minute, yet my arms already hurt. CANNOTANSWER | The fork had only one blade, carefully shaped to be as narrow as possible. | Graeme Obree (born 11 September 1965), nicknamed The Flying Scotsman, is a Scottish racing cyclist who twice broke the world hour record, in July 1993 and April 1994, and was the individual pursuit world champion in 1993 and 1995. He was known for his unusual riding positions and for the Old Faithful bicycle he built which included parts from a washing machine. He joined a professional team in France but was fired before his first race. He also competed in the men's individual pursuit at the 1996 Summer Olympics.
Obree has created some radical innovations in bicycle design and cycling position but has had problems with the cycling authorities banning the riding positions his designs required. Obree has been very open about living with bipolar disorder and depression, and the fact that he has attempted suicide three times in his life, using his experiences as a means of encouraging other sportspeople to talk about their own mental health.
His life and exploits have been dramatised in the 2006 film The Flying Scotsman and more recently in the documentary film Battle Mountain: Graeme Obree's Story, which follows his journey to Battle Mountain, Nevada to compete in the 2013 World Human Powered Speed Championships.
In March 2010 he was inducted into the Scottish Sports Hall of Fame.
Biography
Origins
Obree was born in Nuneaton, a large town in northern Warwickshire, England, but has lived almost all his life in Scotland and considers himself Scottish. An individual time triallist, his first race was a 10-mile time trial to which he turned up wearing shorts, anorak and Doc Marten boots. He thought the start and finish were at the same place and stopped where he had started, 100 metres short of the end. He had started to change his clothes when officials told him to continue. He still finished in "about 30 minutes."
In 2011 Obree came out as gay. Obree suffers from bipolar disorder. He attempted suicide in his teens by gassing himself. He was saved by his father, who had returned early from work. In the 1990s he took an overdose of aspirin washed down by water from a puddle. He had personality problems, sniffed the gas he used to weld bicycles, and was being chased for £492 owed in college fees.
The bike shop that he ran failed and he decided the way out of his problems was to attack the world hour velodrome record. It had been held for nine years by Francesco Moser, at 51.151 kilometres. Obree said:
The record had fascinated me since Moser broke it. It was the ultimate test – no traffic, one man in a velodrome against the clock. I didn't tell myself that I will attempt the record, I said I would break it. When your back is against the wall, you can say it's bad or you can say: 'I'll go for it.' I decided, that's it, I've as good as broken the record.
The bike
Obree had built frames for his bike shop and made another for his record attempt. Instead of traditional dropped handlebars it had straight bars like those of a mountain bike. He placed them closer to the saddle than usual and rode with the bars under his chest, his elbows bent and tucked into his sides like those of a skier. Watching a washing machine spin at 1,200rpm led him to take the bearings, which he assumed must be of superior quality, and fit them to his bike. Obree later regretted admitting to the bearings experiment, because journalists referred to that before his achievements and other innovations.
Obree called his bike "Old Faithful". It has a narrow bottom bracket, around which the cranks revolve, to bring his legs closer together, as he thought this is the "natural" position. As shown in the film, he thought a tread of "one banana" would be ideal. The bike has no top tube, so that his knees did not hit the frame. The chainstays are not horizontal to the ground. Thus the cranks can pass with a narrow bottom bracket. The fork had only one blade, carefully shaped to be as narrow as possible. A French writer who tried it said the narrow handlebars made it hard to accelerate the machine in a straight line but, once it was at speed, he could hold the bars and get into Obree's tucked style.
At a high enough speed, [I could] tuck in my arms. And, above all, get in a very forward position on the bike, on the peak of the saddle. The Obree position isn't advantageous simply aerodynamically, it also allows, by pushing the point of pedalling towards the rear, to benefit from greater pressure while remaining in the saddle. You soon get an impression of speed, all the greater because you've got practically nothing [deux fois rien] between your hands. Two other things I noticed after a few hundred metres: I certainly didn't have the impression of turning 53 × 13, and the Obree position is no obstruction to breathing. But I wasn't pedalling at 55 km/h, 100 turns of the pedals a minute, yet my arms already hurt.
Taking the record
Obree attacked Moser's record, on 16 July 1993, at the Vikingskipet velodrome in Norway. He failed by nearly a kilometre. He had booked the track for 24 hours and decided to come back the next day. The writer Nicholas Roe said:
To stop his aching body seizing up, Obree then took the unusual measure of drinking pint upon pint of water so that he had to wake up to go to the lavatory every couple of hours through the night. Each time he got up, he stretched his muscles. On the next weary day, he was up and out within minutes, at the deserted velodrome by 7:55 am and on the track ready to start just five minutes after that. He had barely slept. He had punished his body hugely the previous day. Surely this was a waste of time?
Obree said:
I was Butch Cassidy in terms of swagger. I didn't want any negativity. This was blitzkrieg. I'm going in there. Let me do it. I'm not going to be the timorous guy from Scotland. That's what the difference was. Purely mental state. The day before, I had been a mouse. Now I was a lion.
On 17 July 1993, Obree set a new record of 51.596 kilometres, beating Moser's record of 51.151 kilometres by 445 metres.
Losing the record
Obree's triumph lasted less than a week. On 23 July 1993, the British Olympic champion, Chris Boardman broke Obree's record by 674 metres, riding 52.270 km at Bordeaux. His bike had a carbon monocoque frame, carbon wheels, and a triathlon handlebar. Their rivalry grew: a few months later Obree knocked Boardman out of the world championship pursuit to take the title himself.
Regaining the record
Francesco Moser, whose record Obree had beaten, adopted Obree's riding position—adding a chest pad—and established not an outright world record but a veterans' record of 51.84 kilometres. He did it on 15 January 1994, riding in the thin air of Mexico City as he had for his outright record, whereas Obree and Boardman had ridden at close to sea level.
Obree retook the record on 27 April 1994, using the track that Boardman had used at Bordeaux. He had bolted his shoes to his pedals, to avoid what had happened in the final of the national pursuit championship, when he pulled his foot off the pedal during his starting effort.
He rode 52.713 kilometres, a distance beaten on 2 September 1994 by the Spanish Tour de France winner, Miguel Induráin.
Old Faithful banned
The world governing body, the Union Cycliste Internationale, grew concerned that changes to bicycles were making a disproportionate influence to track records. Among other measures, it banned his riding position: he did not find out until one hour before he began the world championship pursuit in Italy. Judges disqualified him when he refused to comply. The magazine Cycling Weekly blamed "petty-minded officialdom."
Obree developed another riding position, the "Superman" style, his arms fully extended in front, and he won the individual pursuit at the world championships with this and Old Faithful in 1995. That position was also banned. However, in May 2014 the UCI relented, acknowledging that fixing the kind of equipment to be used was hindering technical progress. It restored previous banned world records, from 2000, now to be described as "Best hour performance".
The original Old Faithful bike is on display at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, while two near-replicas built for use in the Flying Scotsman film are displayed in the Riverside Transport Museum in Glasgow.
In March 2018, Obree tested another replica of Old Faithful in the Mercedes-Benz F1 team's wind tunnel to gauge the aerodynamic efficiency of his various riding positions on the bike, having never previously participated in wind-tunnel testing. It was found that the (drag coefficient) of Obree's initial "tuck" or "crouch" position was 0.17, compared to a conventional 1990s bike position of 0.20 and a modern conventional position of 0.188, leading to an estimated gain in speed of about 2-2.5 km/h over his rivals in the 1990s and a gain of 1.5 km/h over contemporary track cyclists: meanwhile the "Superman" position was found only to be marginally more efficient than the 1990s conventional position, and less efficient than the modern conventional position. Obree however noted that the discomfort of the "crouch" position takes a lot of energy out of the rider through holding the hands and shoulders in place, whilst the "Superman" position was much more manageable.
Other achievements
Obree was individual pursuit world champion in 1993 and 1995. He broke the British 10-mile individual time trial record in 1993, won the RTTC 50-mile championship the same year (a record 1h 39m 1s), and won the 25-mile championship in 1996. In 1997 he joined forces with coach Joe Beer and clocked 18m 36s in a 10-mile time trial (V718 Hull) and next day won the British Cycling Federation 25-mile championship - this was part of building towards an hour record attempt that was to be eventually shelved.
The writer Peter Bryan, of The Times, said:
To see Obree in full flight, shoulders hunched and elbows tucked into his ribs, is a memorable sight. His face contorted with pain illustrates the effort he is putting in. And yet, not too many minutes after he has finished a ride the champion is sufficiently relaxed to talk with a queue of pressmen.
Professional career
Obree rode his hour records as an amateur. He took a professional licence after winning his first world championship, telling Bryan: "I reckon I can make more money on the bike than I get from unemployment benefit."
He joined Le Groupement, a French team but did not attend a meeting in Les Carroz d'Arâches (fr) and was fired for "lack of professionalism." Obree had been racing in Florida when the team first met. But he was on holiday there when the team met again for publicity photographs. He got to the next get-together but flew to Paris instead of Lille, where the meeting was held.
The team manager, Patrick Valcke, said:
"If a rider has that attitude, it's best to stop working together as soon as possible. We paid for his tickets [to fly from Glasgow to Geneva] and he didn't even turn up, didn't even phone to explain why he was not coming. He said that he did not want to leave his family so soon after the death of his brother (see below) but he could have phoned to tell us that. I don't want any more to do with him."
Obree said: "I was too ill to attend the get-together and had no success when I attempted to contact team officials on 1 January. My wife, Anne, who is a nurse, insisted I was not well enough to travel to France."
The Le Groupement team fell apart after a short time, when the sponsoring company was involved in scandal, with accusations that it was nothing but a pyramid selling scheme. Some of the team members claimed that they were owed money, and their wages had not been paid.
Attitude to doping
Obree said of his short professional career:
"I still feel I was robbed of part of my career. I was signed up to ride in the prologue of the Tour back in 1995, but it was made very obvious to me I would have to take drugs. I said no, no way, and I was sacked by my team. So there I was, 11 years later, sitting there waiting for the Tour cyclists to come by, and something welled up in me. I feel I was robbed by a lot of these bastards taking drugs. I also hate the way that people think anyone who has ever achieved anything on a bike must have been taking drugs. I was surprised how resentful I felt when I was in Paris. It had obviously been simmering away in there for years. That's something new I'll have to talk to my therapist about."
In 1996, he told the magazine L'Équipe:
"In my opinion, 99 percent of riders at élite level take EPO or a similar drug, not particularly to dope themselves but to be at the same level as the others. And that's rather sad."
His web site says:
"AND by the way, I never took drugs to improve my performance at any time as has been happening in the sport for a long time. I will be willing to stick my finger into a polygraph test if anyone with big media pull wants to take issue. In other words, if you buy a signed poster now it will not be tarnished later."
Further suicide attempt
Obree's brother, Gordon, died in a car crash in October 1994, and Graeme Obree again slid in and out of depression. In 2001 he was found unconscious at Bellsland Farm in Kilmaurs, 12 km from his Ayrshire home. The Obree family horse was stabled there, and he was discovered by a woman checking a barn. He had tried to hang himself. His wife, Anne, said he had been diagnosed as having severe bipolar disorder three years earlier.
Present day
Obree is divorced from his wife, with whom he has two children. He continues to race occasionally in individual time trials for Ayrshire-based Fullarton Wheelers cycling club. In May 2005, he crashed in the rain in the national 10-mile time trial championship near Nantwich in Cheshire. He was a member of the winning three-man club squad that took the team title in the Scottish 10-mile championship in May 2006. In December 2006, he competed in the track event, Revolution 15, in a four kilometre pursuit challenge.
In January 2011, Obree disclosed in an interview with the Scottish Sun that he is gay and that his difficulty with coming to terms with his sexual orientation contributed to his earlier suicide attempts. "I was brought up by a war generation; they grew up when gay people were put in jail. Being homosexual was so unthinkable that you just wouldn't be gay. I'd no inkling about anything, I just closed down." He came out to his family in 2005.
New Hour record attempt
In May 2009, Obree announced that he would make an attempt at the "Athlete's Hour" record on a bike he had built himself during 2009. Obree said in October 2009 that the attempt had been cancelled as the bike he'd built himself was not suitable for the conditions. He will not be attempting this again.
In December 2009, he was inducted into the British Cycling Hall of Fame while in March 2010, he was inducted into the Scottish Sports Hall of Fame.
Human-powered vehicle land speed record
In December 2011, Obree announced that he would make an attempt at the human-powered vehicle (HPV) land speed record, hoping to hit 100 mph. In May 2012, he revealed that the bike he is building for this attempt is a prone bike.
The attempt was originally to take place in Britain, and the record speed was then . However, he competed in the 2013 World Human Powered Speed Championships in Battle Mountain, Nevada, where the record was also set. He achieved a speed of on the morning of Friday, 13 September.
While Obree did not break the HPV land speed record, he did set a new record for a rider in the prone position. The previous day, Obree had set a speed of , which was a record speed in the prone position on a two-wheeled HPV (the overall prone record being held by a trike).
Book and films
He published his autobiography in 2003 titled The Flying Scotsman. He said: "It started with the psychologist saying it would do me good and ended up as my life story." A film based on the book premiered at the Edinburgh International Film Festival in 2006, starring Jonny Lee Miller and Billy Boyd. In November 2006 Metro-Goldwyn Mayer bought world distribution rights and the film was released in the US on 29 December 2006; it was given a UK release on 29 June 2007. The DVD was released in the UK on 5 November 2007.
Battle Mountain: Graeme Obree's Story, a documentary film about Obree's appearance at the 2013 World Human Powered Speed Championships in Battle Mountain, Nevada, premiered at the 2015 Edinburgh International Film Festival. The film, directed by David Street with music by Alun Woodward of Chemikal Underground, went on public release on 21 March 2016, with a tour of cinemas featuring a question-and-answer session with Obree following screenings. The film was crowdfunded through the Kickstarter website.
Notes
References
Related media
Flying Scotsman: Cycling to Triumph Through My Darkest Hours Graeme Obree VeloPress 2005
Flying Scotsman Graeme Obree Birlinn Books 2003
External links
Graeme Obree – Biography at CyclingInfo.co.uk
Graeme Obree's home made bike photograph
1965 births
Living people
Sportspeople from Nuneaton
Sportspeople from North Ayrshire
Scottish male cyclists
UCI Track Cycling World Champions (men)
People with bipolar disorder
Gay sportsmen
LGBT sportspeople from Scotland
LGBT cyclists
Scottish track cyclists
Olympic cyclists of Great Britain
Cyclists at the 1996 Summer Olympics | true | [
"2 Seconds () is a Canadian drama film, released in 1998. This film premiered in 1999 at the Sundance Film Festival. Written and directed by Manon Briand, 2 Seconds stars Charlotte Laurier as Laurie, a bisexual woman who takes a job as a bike courier in Montreal after being fired from her previous job as a professional downhill racer. \nLaurie is forcefully retired as a downhill racer when her concerns about her signs of aging cause her to lose her last race by 2 seconds (hence the name of the movie). Laurie and the one bike she was allowed to keep then move in with her geeky, physics-loving brother who is trying very hard to find a girlfriend. While putting her bike together, Laurie discovers that she is missing a gear on her bicyclette so she makes do with what she has. Because of this, she breaks the chain on her bike one day, leading to her meeting with her soon-to-be best friend Lorenzo . Lorenzo is an ex Italian professional racer who currently works as a bike mechanic in his own bike shop. offered her a job at the bicycle company, but one of her co workers, Willie, tries to make her life miserable. After talking to Lorenzo, Laurie figures out what she needs to do to help herself and try to resolve things.\n\nCast\n\nReception\n\nCritical reception \n\nBrendan Kelly of Variety praised the film, saying \"there is no shortage of nifty visual flourishes. . .Soundtrack is an appropriately cool urban mix of jazz and modern-rock sounds.\" The Melbourne International Film Festival called it \"An understated film with an extraordinarily simple premise\"\n\nAwards\n\nSee also \n List of LGBT films directed by women\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n \n\n1998 films\nCanadian drama films\n1990s French-language films\n1998 drama films\nFilms set in Quebec\nFilms directed by Manon Briand\nCanadian LGBT-related films\nLGBT-related drama films\n1998 LGBT-related films\nLesbian-related films\nCanadian films",
"Capital Bikeshare (also abbreviated CaBi) is a bicycle-sharing system which serves Washington, D.C.; Arlington County, Virginia; the cities of Alexandria, Virginia and Falls Church, Virginia; Montgomery County, Maryland and Fairfax County, Virginia. As of May 2021, it had 627 stations and 5,400+ bicycles, all owned by these local governments and operated by contractor Motivate International. Opened in September 2010, the system was the largest bike sharing service in the United States until New York City's Citi Bike began operations in May 2013.\n\nHistory\n\nGenesis\n\nThe SmartBike DC bike sharing service, a predecessor to Capital Bikeshare, debuted in 2008 with 10 stations and 120 bicycles. It was the first of its kind in the United States. D.C. Department of Transportation Director Gabe Klein came into office four months later and was eager to expand it, but found the private partner had a \"lackluster commitment.\" Because the agreement specifically prohibited DDOT from paying for anything related to SmartBike, an expansion required DDOT to renegotiate the contract. But in his first meeting with Clear Channel he found that Clear Channel believed they had gotten a bad deal on the original contract that created SmartBike; that following their purchase by Bain Capital they were no longer interested in \"municipal street furniture\" and that they had neither desire nor obligation to expand the program. In addition, it was difficult and expensive to install new stations, because they required the local utility company to bring electricity to each station. As a result, Klein chose to end the program and instead work with Arlington County, Virginia, to build a new, regional bikesharing program to be called Capital Bikeshare.\n\nCapital Bikeshare was to be owned by the local governments and operated by a private operator. Alta Bike Share received the operations contract. Planning and implementation costs for the new system totaled $5 million.\n\nLaunch\nThe new service launched in September 2010 with 400 bicycles at 49 stations. Shortly thereafter, in January 2011, SmartBike DC ceased operations.\n\nPlanning and implementation costs for Capital Bikeshare totaled $5 million, with additional first-year operating costs of million for 100 stations. The District's share of planning, implementation and first-year operating costs was partially financed by a $6 million grant by the United States Department of Transportation. Arlington County's operating cost share of the plan was $835,000 for the first year, funded by public contributions including a grant from the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation as well as subsidies from Arlington County Transportation, Crystal City Business Improvement District, and the Potomac Yard Transportation Management Association. In April 2011, Capital Bikeshare administrators said they expect earned revenue to cover 50% of the system's annual operating costs. The District of Columbia also planned to sell advertising on Capital Bikeshare stations with the goal of raising .\n\nBy February 2011, Capital Bikeshare had expanded to 100 stations in the District of Columbia and 14 stations in the Pentagon City, Potomac Yard, and Crystal City neighborhoods in Arlington. In April 2011, it had 11,000 members and 1,100 bikes in circulation. In September 2011, Capital Bikeshare announced it had reached 18,000 members and one million rides in its first year of operation, doubling initial expectations. During the summer of 2013, riders averaged almost 300,000 rides per month. That means that during the peak season, each bike was being used about four times per day. Throughout 2013, users traveled almost 2.5 million miles and burned 100 million calories. The average weekly savings was calculated as $15.39; the total annual savings for the roughly 24,000 members was about $370,000.\n\nThe National Park Service originally prohibited Capital Bikeshare stations on the property it manages, including large areas such as the National Mall. However, the agency later reversed itself and said that it would work to include new stations in future expansions. The first two of five approved Capital Bikeshare stations opened on the National Mall on March 16, 2012, shortly before the start of the 2012 National Cherry Blossom Festival.\n\nIn 2010, an unlisted Bikeshare station was installed on the White House grounds, inaccessible to the public. It was removed in August 2017 at the request of the Trump Administration, and returned in September 2021 at the request of the Biden administration.\n\nAlso in March 2012, the Arlington County government gave away 550 red Capital Bikeshare helmets and twice as many flashing safety lights as part of a promotion.\n\nExpansion\n\nCapital Bikeshare has grown steadily, which has driven demand for more stations and bikes. Transportation agencies in each jurisdiction select the location of the rental stations, as well as the number of bike docks, depending on planners' estimates of local demand. Most of the system's users live in or near central business districts; stations in the poorer eastern portion of the city are comparatively underused. Bikeshare stations near tourist destinations and local parks are also popular.\n\nIn 2010, a local transportation official said that the system could be expanded further throughout the D.C. area and have as many as 5,000 bicycles within a few years.\n\nIn fall 2011, the District Department of Transportation announced plans to add 32 stations and expand 18 existing ones by year's end, then add 50 more in 2012.\n\nArlington County also announced plans to add 30 stations in fall 2011, primarily along the densely populated corridor between the Rosslyn and Ballston neighborhoods, and 30 more in 2012.\n\nIn October 2011, the neighboring city of Alexandria, Virginia, approved plans to deploy 54 bicycles at six stations in the Old Town and Carlyle neighborhoods in 2012, then add six more stations in 2013. The cost of the first year would be $400,000, including operating costs of $100,440. The first eight Alexandria stations were deployed in August 2012.\n\nMontgomery County, Maryland, similarly approved plans to install 20 stations and 200 bikes in the Rockville and Shady Grove areas near Washington Metro stations and high-traffic destinations such as Montgomery College and Rockville Town Center. The expansion will be paid for by a $1.288 million grant from the National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board with a $688,000 local match. Officials also cited plans to add 50 stations and 400 bicycles in southern areas of the county, including Bethesda, Silver Spring, Friendship Heights, and Takoma Park. However, bicycling advocates cautioned that clusters of stations in the county could be too far from each other as well as the larger network of stations within neighboring Washington, D.C. There was also concern that the county has too few bike lanes and trails to support the expected number of users. Despite these concerns, Montgomery County added its first stations in May 2013.\n\nBy September 2012, these additions and expansions were to have brought the network to 288 stations and 2,800 bikes in four jurisdictions.\n\nIn 2014, plans to add about 60 stations were put on hold after CaBi's main source for the bikes, the Montreal-based Public Bike System Co., went bankrupt. Over the next year, Capital Bikeshare bought used bikes and docks from the Ottawa bike-share system and new bikes from Motivate, a \"New York-based company formed by investors who purchased previous operator Alta Bicycle Share.\" The expansion resumed in late 2015. In August 2015, Capital Bikeshare announced that it had found a new equipment supplier and would add 435 bikes and 40 stations in D.C. and 140 bikes and 20 stations elsewhere. It also reported having 29,000 members who had taken a total of more than 10.5 million trips.\n\nOn September 1, 2016, the system celebrated the installation of its 400th station at Division Ave & Foote St NE in Washington, DC. On October 21, 2016, Fairfax County, Virginia deployed 29 stations and 212 bikes in the Reston and Tysons Corner areas.\n\nOn June 1, 2018, Capital Bikeshare expanded its territory for bike rentals, establishing itself in Prince George’s County, which became the sixth jurisdiction to join the system. An official ceremony kicking off the service was held on June 1. Stations are located in Largo and Hyattsville with an expansion planned along the Route 1 corridor and National Harbor.\n\nIn September 2018, Capital Bikeshare began offering e-bike as a pilot, Capital Bikeshare Plus. However, brake problems ended the pilot on April 14, 2019. An updated e-bike model returned to the fleet in July 2020 as more than 1,500 e-bikes were deployed. Unlike previous bikes, the new e-bike has a lock allowing users to lock it to a fixed object for an extra fee instead of docking it at a station.\n\nIn May 2019, 11 new stations were added in the seventh member jurisdiction, Falls Church, Virginia.\n\nTechnology\n\nCapital Bikeshare uses the BIXI-branded system provided by Montreal-based PBSC Urban Solutions. The platform behind the bike share system is created by 8D Technologies, who also supply the server technology for BIXI Montréal, Citi Bike in New York City, Santander Cycles in London, and others.\n\nRental stations are automated and powered by solar panels, allowing them to be located anywhere space is available. A wireless data link connects the docks and station kiosk to a central bike-tracking and billing database. Riders can use the Capital Bikeshare website and smartphone applications to see where rental stations are located and how many bikes and empty docks they have.\n\nEach bike dock has a repair button; users press this to report a damaged or malfunctioning bike and take it out of service. Riders are expected to notify Capital Bikeshare if a bike cannot dock at a station and are responsible for the rented bike until it has been returned.\n\nThe red-colored aluminum unisex bicycles have three gears, an adjustable seat, a front basket, and a headlight and twin red taillights powered whenever the bicycle is in motion.\n\nUnlike some other networks, Capital Bikeshare maintains service year-round except during severe weather.\n\nWhile all seven member jurisdictions own the physical infrastructure (bikes and docks), operations are handled by Motivate which has been owned by Lyft since 2018.\n\nIn May 2011, it cost $41,500 to install a station with six docks and $49,300 each for larger stations with 14 docks. Each bicycle cost about $1,000, and the annual operating cost per bike was $1,860.\n\nPricing\n\nIn October 2021, the seven-member jurisdictions which own Capital Bikeshare made the largest adjustment to pricing since the system began operation. Members pay now $95 per year and receive 45 minutes of free ride time per trip, paving $0.05 per minute after 45 minutes. Members pay $0.10 minute for each e-bike ride to help offset its higher operating cost. Non-members pay $1 to unlock a bicycle and $0.05 per minute. For a single trip, non-members pay $1 to unlock an e-bike and $0.15 per minute. Both members and non-members pay $2 to leave an e-bike outside of a dock, within the e-bike service area.\n\nA replacement fee of $1,200 is charged to the credit card on file if a rented bike is not returned within 24 hours.\n\nThe one-trip fare was introduced in June 2016 during WMATA's SafeTrack program, which would shut down segments of the Washington Metro for the following year.\n\nSee also\n Baltimore Bike Share\n Nice Ride Minnesota\n SmartBike DC\n Transportation in Washington, D.C.\n Vélo'v\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\n Capital Bikeshare official website\n\n2010 establishments in Virginia\n2010 establishments in Washington, D.C.\nCommunity bicycle programs\nCycling in Maryland\nCycling in Virginia\nCycling in Washington, D.C.\nTransportation in Alexandria, Virginia\nTransportation in Fairfax County, Virginia\nTransportation in Montgomery County, Maryland\nBicycle sharing in the United States"
]
|
[
"Fairport Convention",
"1998--present"
]
| C_f6c0f186ff404c2a9abd89ac79601c3d_0 | What was Fairport Convention doing during 1998 | 1 | What was Fairport Convention doing during 1998? | Fairport Convention | In 1998, Dave Mattacks moved to the USA and Gerry Conway took over on drums and percussion. Fairport produced two more studio albums for Woodworm Records: The Wood and the Wire (2000) and XXXV (2002). Then for Over the Next Hill (2004) they established a new label: Matty Grooves Records. In this period the band toured extensively in the UK, Europe, Australasia, Europe, the USA and Canada, and staged a major fund raiser for Dave Swarbrick at the Birmingham Symphony Hall. In 1998, members of the band began their association with the Breton musician Alan Simon. Working in collaboration with numerous others, members of Fairport (predominantly Nicol and Leslie) have performed in and participated in the recordings of all Simon's rock operas, including the Excalibur trilogy (1998, 2007, 2010) and Anne de Bretagne (2008). 2007 was their fortieth anniversary year and they celebrated by releasing a new album, Sense of Occasion. They performed the whole of the Liege & Lief album live at Cropredy, since 2004 renamed Fairport's Cropredy Convention, featuring the 1969 line-up of Dave Swarbrick, Ashley Hutchings, Dave Mattacks, Simon Nicol and Richard Thompson, with singer-songwriter Chris While taking the place of Sandy Denny. Footage of the festival, although not the Liege and Lief performance, was released as part of a celebratory DVD. The band's first official YouTube video appeared in April 2008. Edited from footage shot for the DVD, the nine-minute mini-documentary includes interviews with Lulu, Jools Holland, Seth Lakeman, Mike Harding, Geoff Hughes and Frank Skinner. In 2011, the band released a new studio album Festival Bell, the first new album in four years. This was followed in 2012 by Babbacombe Lee Live Again recorded live during the 2011 tour revisiting the Babbacombe Lee album first issued in 1971. In 2012, the band also released By Popular Request, a reworking in the studio of a number of the most popular songs in the band's repertoire (as determined by a mysterious consultation and voting process conducted by the band with its fans). In January 2015, four years after their previous studio album of original material (Festival Bell), Fairport Convention released a new one entitled Myths and Heroes. CANNOTANSWER | Fairport produced two more studio albums for Woodworm Records: | Fairport Convention are a British folk rock band, formed in 1967 by guitarists Richard Thompson and Simon Nicol, bassist Ashley Hutchings and drummer Shaun Frater (with Frater replaced by Martin Lamble after their first gig.) They started out heavily influenced by American folk rock, with a setlist dominated by Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell songs and a sound that earned them the nickname "the British Jefferson Airplane". Vocalists Judy Dyble and Iain Matthews joined them before the recording of their self-titled debut in 1968; afterwards, Dyble was replaced by Sandy Denny, with Matthews later leaving during the recording of their third album.
Denny began steering the group towards traditional British music for their next two albums, What We Did on Our Holidays and Unhalfbricking (both 1969); the latter featured fiddler Dave "Swarb" Swarbrick, most notably on the song "A Sailor's Life", which laid the groundwork for British folk rock by being the first time a traditional British song was combined with a rock beat. Shortly before the album's release, a crash on the M1 motorway killed Lamble and Jeannie Franklyn, Thompson's then-girlfriend; this resulted in the group retiring most of their prior material and turning entirely towards British folk music for their seminal album Liege & Lief, released the same year. This style became the band's focus ever since. For this album Swarbrick joined full time alongside drummer Dave Mattacks. Both Denny and Hutchings left before the year's end; the latter replaced by Dave Pegg, who has remained the group's sole consistent member to this day; Thompson would leave after the recording of 1970's Full House.
The 1970s saw numerous lineup changes around the core of Swarbrick and Pegg – Nicol being absent for the middle of the decade – and declining fortunes as folk music fell out of mainstream favour. Denny, whose partner Trevor Lucas had been a guitarist in the group since 1972, returned for the pop-oriented Rising for the Moon album in 1975 in a final bid to crack America; this effort failed, and after three more albums minus Denny and Lucas, the group disbanded in 1979. They played a farewell concert in the village of Cropredy, Oxfordshire, where they had held small concerts since 1976, and this marked the beginning of the Cropredy Festival (since 2005 known as Fairport's Cropredy Convention) which has become the largest folk festival in Britain, with annual attendances of 20,000.
The band was reformed by Nicol, Pegg, and Mattacks in 1985, joined by Maartin Allcock (guitar, vocals) and Ric Sanders (fiddle, keyboards), and they have remained active since. Allcock was replaced by Chris Leslie in 1996, and Gerry Conway replaced Mattacks in 1998, with this lineup remaining unchanged since and marking the longest-lasting of the group's history. Their 28th studio album, 50:50@50, released to mark their 50th anniversary, was released in 2017, and they continue to headline Cropredy each year.
Despite little mainstream success – their only top 40 single being "Si Tu Dois Partir", a French-language cover of the Dylan song "If You Gotta Go, Go Now" from Unhalfbricking – Fairport Convention remain highly influential in British folk rock and British folk in general. Liege & Lief was named the "Most Influential Folk Album of All Time" at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards in 2006, and Pegg's playing style, which incorporates jigs and reels into his basslines, has been imitated by many in the folk rock and folk punk genres. Additionally, many former members went on to form or join other notable groups in the genre, including Fotheringay, Steeleye Span, and the Albion Band; along with solo careers, most notably Thompson and Denny. Sandy Denny's career ended with her death in 1978, though she is now regarded as being amongst Britain's finest female singer-songwriters; her song "Who Knows Where the Time Goes?" – recorded by Fairport on Unhalfbricking – has become a signature song for herself and the band.
History
Origins
Bassist Ashley Hutchings met guitarist Simon Nicol in North London in 1966 when they both played in the Ethnic Shuffle Orchestra. They rehearsed on the floor above Nicol's father's medical practice in a house called "Fairport" on Fortis Green in Muswell Hill – the same street on which Ray and Dave Davies of the Kinks grew up. The house name lent its name to the group they formed together as Fairport Convention in 1967 with Richard Thompson on guitar and Shaun Frater on drums. After their initial performance at St Michael's Church Hall in Golders Green on 27 May 1967, they had their first of many line-up changes as one member of the audience, drummer Martin Lamble, convinced the band that he could do a better job than Frater and replaced him. They soon added a female singer, Judy Dyble, which gave them a distinctive sound among the many London bands of the period.
1967–69: The first three albums
Fairport Convention were soon playing regularly at underground venues such as UFO and The Electric Garden, which later became the Middle Earth club. After only a few months, they caught the attention of manager Joe Boyd who secured them a contract with Polydor Records. Boyd suggested they augment the line-up with another male vocalist. Singer Iain Matthews (then known as Ian MacDonald) joined the band, and their first album, Fairport Convention, was recorded in late 1967 and released in June 1968. At this early stage Fairport looked to North American folk and folk rock acts such as Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, and The Byrds for material and inspiration. The name "Fairport Convention" and the use of two lead vocalists led many new listeners to believe that they were an American act, earning them the nickname 'the British Jefferson Airplane' during this period. Fairport Convention played alongside Jefferson Airplane at the First Isle of Wight Festival, 1968.
After disappointing album sales they signed a new contract with Island Records. Before their next recording Judy Dyble left – she described it as being "unceremoniously dumped" – and was replaced by the band with Sandy Denny, a folk singer who had previously recorded as a soloist and with Strawbs. Denny's distinctive voice, described by Clive James as "open space, low-volume, high-intensity", is one of the characteristics of two albums released in 1969: What We Did on Our Holidays and Unhalfbricking. These recordings marked the growth of much greater musicality and song-writing ability among the band. The first of these featured the Thompson-penned "Meet on the Ledge", which became their second single and eventually the band's unofficial anthem.
During the recording of Unhalfbricking, Matthews left after having sung on only one song, eventually to form Matthews Southern Comfort. He was not replaced; the other male members covered his vocal parts. The album featured a guest appearance by Birmingham folk fiddler Dave Swarbrick on a recording of "A Sailor's Life", a traditional song brought to the band by Denny from her folk club days. The recording of this track marked an important turning point for the band, sparking an interest in traditional music in Ashley Hutchings that led him to detailed research in the English Folk Dance and Song Society Library at Cecil Sharp House; this theme would become the basis for their next, much more ambitious, recording project.
These two albums began to gain the band wider recognition. Radio DJ John Peel championed their music, playing their albums on his influential BBC shows. Peel also recorded a number of sessions which were later released as the album Heyday (1987). They enjoyed some mainstream success when they entered the singles charts with "Si Tu Dois Partir", a French-language version of Bob Dylan's "If You Gotta Go, Go Now". The record just missed the top twenty, but secured the band a slot on Top of the Pops, Britain's most popular television pop music programme at the time. In 1969 four members of the band, one uncredited and three with pseudonyms, featured as backing musicians on the album Love Chronicles by Scottish folk artist Al Stewart.
Developing British folk rock
On 12 May 1969, on the way home from a gig at Birmingham venue Mothers, Fairport's van crashed on the M1 motorway. Martin Lamble, aged only nineteen, and Jeannie Franklyn, Richard Thompson's girlfriend, were killed. The rest of the band suffered injuries of varying severity. They nearly decided to disband. However, they reconvened with Dave Mattacks taking over drumming duties and Dave Swarbrick, having made contribution to Unhalfbricking, now joined as a full member. Boyd set the band up in a rented house in Farley Chamberlayne near Winchester in Hampshire, where they recuperated and worked on the integration of British folk music into rock and roll, which would result in the fourth album Liege & Lief.
Usually considered the highpoint of the band's long career, Liege & Lief was a huge leap forward in concept and musicality. The album consisted of six traditional tracks and three original compositions in a similar style. The traditional tracks included two sustained epics: "Tam Lin", which was over seven minutes in length, and "Matty Groves", at over eight. There was a medley of four traditional tunes, arranged, and, like many of the tracks, enlivened, by Swarbrick's energetic fiddle playing. The first side was bracketed by original compositions "Come all ye" and "Farewell, Farewell", which, in addition to information on the inside of the gatefold cover on Hutchings' research, explaining English folk traditions, helped give the record the feel of a concept album. "Farewell, Farewell" and the final track "Crazy Man Michael", also saw the full emergence of the distinctive song writing talent of Thompson that was to characterize his contributions to the band and later solo career. The distinctive sound of the album came from the use of electric instruments and Mattacks' disciplined drumming with Swarbrick's fiddle accompaniment in a surprising and powerful combination of rock with the traditional. The entire band had reached new levels of musicality, with the fluid guitar playing of Thompson and the "ethereal" vocal of Denny particularly characteristic of the sound of the album. As the reviewer from AllMusic put it, the album was characterised by the "fusing [of] time-worn folk with electric instruments while honoring both".
A few British bands had earlier experimented with playing traditional English songs on electric instruments, (including Strawbs and Pentangle), but Fairport Convention was the first English band to do this in a concerted and focused way. Fairport Convention's achievement was not to invent folk rock, but to create a distinctly English branch of the genre, which would develop alongside, and interact with, American inspired music, but which can also be seen as a distinctively national reaction in opposition to it. Liege & Lief was launched with a sell-out concert in London's Royal Festival Hall late in 1969. It reached number 17 in the UK album chart, where it spent fifteen weeks.
1970s: A time of change
Disagreements arose about the direction of the band in the wake of this success. Ashley Hutchings wanted to explore more traditional material and left to form two groups that would rival Fairport for significance in English folk rock: Steeleye Span and the Albion Band. Sandy Denny also left to found her own group Fotheringay. Dave Pegg took over on bass guitar and has been the group's one constant ever since, in an unbroken membership of over four decades. The band made no serious attempt to replace Denny, and, although she would briefly return, the sound of the band would now be characterized by male vocals.
Despite these changes the band produced another album, Full House (1970), which was remarkably successful as a project. Like its predecessor, it combined traditional songs, including a powerful rendition of "Sir Patrick Spens", with original compositions. The latter benefited from the writing partnership of Thompson and Swarbrick, most obviously on "Walk Awhile", which would become a concert favourite. Despite the loss of Denny the band still possessed four vocalists, including the emerging voices of Nicol and Swarbrick, whose tones would dominate the sound of this period. It was favourably reviewed in Britain and America, drawing comparisons with the Band from Rolling Stone magazine who declared that "Fairport Convention is better than ever". The album reached number 13 in the UK Chart and stayed in the chart for eleven weeks. The same year the band released a single 'Now Be Thankful' and made its American debut, touring with Traffic and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.
In the recurring pattern, soon after the album's release Thompson left the band to pursue other projects and eventually his solo career. This left Simon Nicol as the only original member and Dave Swarbrick emerged as the leading force in the band. In 1970 the members and their families had moved into The Angel, a former pub in Hertfordshire and this inspired the next album Angel Delight (1971) the band's first to chart in the US, peaking at number 200 on the Billboard 200 and their only top ten album in the UK. The next project was an ambitious folk-rock opera developed by Swarbrick, based on the life of John "Babbacombe" Lee, "the man they couldn't hang" and released with the title Babbacombe Lee (1971). The concept format, originally without clear tracks, excited considerable press interest and it received good air play in the United States where it reached number 195. A version was produced by the BBC for TV in 1975 with narration by Melvyn Bragg. These two albums were also notable as the first time that Fairport had recorded consecutively with the same line-up, but inevitably stability did not last: Simon Nicol left early in late 1971 to join Ashley Hutchings' Albion Band and he was soon followed by Mattacks.
Only Pegg and Swarbrick remained and the following few years have been dubbed 'Fairport confusion' as a bewildering sequence of band members came and went, but by 1973 Mattacks had returned and two former members of Sandy Denny's Fotheringay had joined the band, Denny's Australian husband Trevor Lucas on vocals and guitar and American Jerry Donahue on lead guitar. From these line-ups the band produced two studio albums: Rosie, notable for the Swarbrick penned title track (1973) and Nine (1974), the ninth studio album by the band. The last of these contained writing contributions by Lucas to five of the nine tracks, which together with Donahue's country influences and outstanding guitar pyrotechnics gave the album a very distinctive feel.
Denny rejoined the band in 1974 and there were considerable expectations, both artistic and commercial, placed on this line-up. Denny was featured on the album Rising for the Moon (1975), which became the band's highest US chart album when it reached number 143 on the Billboard 200 and the first album to reach the top one-hundred in the UK since Angel Delight, reaching no 52. During the Rising sessions, Mattacks fell out with producer Glyn Johns and was replaced by former Grease Band drummer Bruce Rowland. Poor UK sales for Rising did not aid morale and, despite the relative success of the line-up, Lucas and Donahue left the band, as did Denny in 1976. She died aged 31, in 1978, of a cerebral haemorrhage after falling down a flight of stairs.
Rowland, Pegg, and Swarbrick fulfilled their remaining contractual obligations to Island Records by turning what had originally been a Swarbrick solo effort into the album Gottle O'Geer (1976) under the name 'Fairport' (as opposed to Fairport Convention) in the UK, and as 'Fairport featuring Dave Swarbrick' in the US, and with various session players and production by Simon Nicol, who subsequently rejoined the band. They then signed with Vertigo, but record sales continued to decline and after producing two of four contracted albums, The Bonny Bunch of Roses (1977) and Tipplers Tales (1978), Vertigo bought them out of their contract. It is claimed by members of the band that this was the only recording money they had seen up to that point.
1979–1985: The Cropredy era
By 1979 the mainstream market for folk rock had largely disappeared, the band had no record deal, and Dave Swarbrick had been diagnosed with tinnitus, which made loud electric gigs increasingly difficult. Fairport decided to disband. They played a farewell tour and a final outdoor concert on 4 August in Cropredy, the Oxfordshire village where Dave and Christine Pegg lived. The finality of this occasion was mitigated by the announcement that the band would meet for a reunion.
In August 1979, the band played at Knebworth Festival in England. The headline act at both their appearances at the festival, over two consecutive Saturdays on 4 and 11 August, were Led Zeppelin.
No record company wanted to release the live recordings of the tour and concert, so the Peggs founded Woodworm Records, which would be the major outlet for the band in the future. Members continued to take part in occasional gigs, particularly in festivals in continental Europe, and after a year they staged a reunion concert in Cropredy which became the annual Cropredy Festival. Over the next few years, it grew rapidly and emerged as the major mechanism for sustaining the band. In August 1981, the band held their annual reunion concert at Broughton Castle, rather than the usual Cropredy location. The concert was recorded, and released on the 1982 album Moat on the Ledge.
The Peggs continued to record and release the Cropredy concerts as 'official bootlegs'. These were supplemented by New Year's gigs in minor locations including the Half Moon at Putney and the Gloucester Leisure Centre. In 1983 the magazine Fairport Fanatics (later Dirty Linen), was created: a testament to the continued existence of a dedicated fan base.
The Angel Delight lineup of Simon Nicol, Dave Swarbrick, Dave Pegg, and Dave Mattacks played a number of gigs in the UK in the early 80s, then toured extensively in the UK and the US in 1984 and 1985. Band alumni like Richard Thompson and Bruce Rowland would occasionally join in.
The remaining members pursued their own lives and careers outside of the band. Nicol, Pegg, and Mattacks had recorded and toured with Richard and Linda Thompson at times in the 1970s, and did so again during this period, culminating in their appearance on the Shoot Out the Lights album and tour in 1982. Bruce Rowlands gave up the music business and moved to Denmark and as a result Dave Mattacks returned as drummer for Fairport's occasional gigs. Dave Pegg was the first of several Fairporters to join Jethro Tull which gave him well-paying steady employment. Simon Nicol had teamed up with Dave Swarbrick in a highly regarded acoustic duo, but this partnership was made difficult by Swarbrick's sudden decision to move to Scotland, where, from 1984 he began to focus on his new project Whippersnapper.
In 1985, Pegg, Nicol and Mattacks found that they all had some free time and an available studio belonging to Pegg. They decided that they needed some new material to add to the catalogue that had been suspended in 1978. As Swarbrick was unavailable, the selection of traditional tunes was more difficult than for past albums and there was a need for a replacement fiddle player and some vocals. Pegg and Nicol took over arranging duties on an instrumental medley and the band turned to sometime Albion Band members: jazz and folk violinist Ric Sanders and singer-songwriter Cathy Lesurf. They also had the help of ex-member Richard Thompson. Thompson and Lesurf contributed songs and took part in the recordings. Also important to the album was Ralph McTell who contributed one song and co-wrote one track each with Nicol and Mattacks; the former of these, "The Hiring Fair", would become a stage fixture of the future Fairport.
The resulting album Gladys' Leap (1985) was generally well received in the music and national press, but caused some tension with Swarbrick who refused to play any of the new material at the 1985 Cropredy Festival. Nevertheless, the decision to reform the band, without Swarbrick, was taken by the other three remaining members. Ric Sanders was invited to join, along with guitarist, composer, arranger and multi-instrumentalist Maartin Allcock. Nicol, with his developing baritone voice, took over the main share of the vocal duties. This line-up was to last eleven years, the longest period of membership stability in the band's history so far.
1986–1997: Stability
The new band began a hectic schedule of performing in Britain and the World and prepared material for a new album. The result was the all-instrumental Expletive Delighted! (1986). This showcased the virtuosity of Sanders and Allcock, but perhaps inevitably was not popular with all fans. This was followed by the recording In Real Time: Live '87 which managed to capture the energy and power of the new Fairport on stage, despite the fact that it was recorded in the studio with audience reactions dubbed on.
In this period the band were playing to larger and larger audiences, both on tour and at Cropredy, and it was very productive in terms of recording. Fairport had the considerable composing and arranging skills of Allcock and, to fill the gap created by a lack of a songwriter in the band, they turned to some of the most talented available in the contemporary folk scene. The results were Red & Gold (1989) The Five Seasons (1990) and Jewel in the Crown (1995), the last of which was judged "their bestselling and undoubtedly finest album in years."
At this point, with Mattacks busy with other projects, the band shifted to an acoustic format for touring and released the unplugged Old New Borrowed Blue as "Fairport Acoustic Convention" in 1996. For a while the four-piece acoustic line-up ran in parallel with the electric format. When Allcock left the band, he was replaced by Chris Leslie on vocals, mandolin and fiddle, who formerly worked with Swarbrick in Whippersnapper, and had a one-off stint with the band replacing Ric Sanders for 1992 Cropredy Festival. This meant that for the first time since reforming, the band had a recognized songwriter who contributed significantly to the band's output on the next album Who Knows Where the Time Goes? (1997), particularly the rousing "John Gaudie". By the time of the 30th anniversary Festival at Cropredy in 1997, the new Fairport had been in existence for over a decade and contributed a significant chapter to the history of the band.
1998–present
Dave Mattacks moved to the US in 1998, and Gerry Conway took over on drums and percussion. Fairport produced two more studio albums for Woodworm Records: The Wood and the Wire (2000) and XXXV (2002). Then, for Over the Next Hill (2004) they established a new label: Matty Grooves Records. In this period the band toured extensively in the UK, Europe, Australasia, Europe, the US and Canada, and staged a major fund raiser for Dave Swarbrick at the Birmingham Symphony Hall. In 1998, members of the band began their association with the Breton musician Alan Simon. Working in collaboration with numerous others, members of Fairport (predominantly Nicol and Leslie) have performed in and participated in the recordings of all Simon's rock operas, including the Excalibur trilogy (1998, 2007, 2010) and Anne de Bretagne (2008).
2007 was their fortieth anniversary year and they celebrated by releasing a new album, Sense of Occasion. They performed the whole of the Liege & Lief album live at Cropredy, since 2004 renamed Fairport's Cropredy Convention, featuring the 1969 line-up of Dave Swarbrick, Ashley Hutchings, Dave Mattacks, Simon Nicol and Richard Thompson, with singer-songwriter Chris While taking the place of Sandy Denny. Footage of the festival, although not the Liege and Lief performance, was released as part of a celebratory DVD.
The band's first official YouTube video appeared in April 2008. Edited from footage shot for the DVD, the nine-minute mini-documentary includes interviews with Lulu, Jools Holland, Seth Lakeman, Mike Harding, Geoff Hughes and Frank Skinner.
In 2011, the band released a new studio album Festival Bell, the first new album in four years. This was followed in 2012 by Babbacombe Lee Live Again recorded live during the 2011 tour revisiting the Babbacombe Lee album first issued in 1971. In 2012, the band also released By Popular Request, a reworking in the studio of a number of the most popular songs in the band's repertoire (as determined by a mysterious consultation and voting process conducted by the band with its fans).
As of 2020 the band still continue to write and record music, regularly producing new studio albums, the most recent releases being 2015's Myths and Heroes, 2017's 50:50@50 and 2020's Shuffle and Go. The Covid-19 Pandemic impacted significantly on their ability to tour, and their 2022 tour was initially cut short after several of the touring team developed Covid.
Public recognition
The mainstream media has increasingly recognized Fairport Convention's historical importance. They received a "Lifetime Achievement Award" at the 2002 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards. In the same year Free Reed Records, an independent label, released Fairport Unconventional, a four-CD boxed set of rare and unreleased recordings from the band's 35-year career. At the 2006 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards they received an award when their seminal album Liege & Lief was voted 'Most Influential Folk Album of All Time' by Radio 2 listeners. At the 2007 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards Fairport Convention received an award recognising the late Sandy Denny and the band for "Favourite Folk Track of All Time" for "Who Knows Where the Time Goes?".
Personnel
Members
Current members
Simon Nicol – guitar, vocal (1967–1971, 1976–1979, 1985–present)
Dave Pegg – bass guitar, mandolin, backing vocal (1969–1979, 1985–present)
Ric Sanders – fiddles, occasional keyboards (1985–present)
Chris Leslie – fiddle, mandolin, bouzouki, vocal (1996–present)
Gerry Conway – drums, percussion (1998–present)
Former members
Richard Thompson – guitar, vocal (1967–1971)
Ashley Hutchings – bass guitar (1967–1969)
Shaun Frater – drums (1967)
Martin Lamble – drums (1967–1969; died 1969)
Judy Dyble – vocal, autoharp, piano, recorder (1967–1968; died 2020)
Iain Matthews – vocal (1967–1969)
Sandy Denny – vocal, guitar, piano (1968–1969, 1974–1975; died 1978)
Dave Swarbrick – fiddle, mandolin, vocal (1969–1979; died 2016)
Dave Mattacks – drums, keyboards, bass guitar (1969–1972, 1973–1975, 1985–1997)
Roger Hill – guitar, vocal (1971–1972; died 2011)
Tom Farnell – drums (1972)
David Rea – guitar (1972; died 2011)
Trevor Lucas – guitar, vocal (1972–1975; died 1989)
Jerry Donahue – guitar (1972–1975)
Paul Warren – drums (1975)
Bruce Rowland – drums (1975–1979; died 2015)
Dan Ar Braz – guitar (1976)
Bob Brady – piano (1976)
Roger Burridge – mandolin, fiddle (1976; died 2020)
Maartin Allcock – guitar, mandolin, keyboard, vocal (1985–1996; died 2018)
Lineups
Timeline
Discography
Filmography
Tony Palmer's Film of Fairport Convention and Matthews Southern Comfort, directed by Tony Palmer, featuring Fairport's appearance at the Maidstone Fiesta in 1970. Originally released as a VHS video by MusicFolk/Weintraub, re-released on DVD by Voiceprint Records in 2007, soundtrack CD issued by Voiceprint as Live in Maidstone 1970 in 2009.
References
Citations
General sources
External links
English folk musical groups
English folk rock groups
Ashley Hutchings
1967 establishments in England
Musical groups established in 1967
A&M Records artists
Island Records artists
Polydor Records artists
Rough Trade Records artists
Transatlantic Records artists
Vertigo Records artists | true | [
"Fairport Convention is Fairport Convention's debut album. The band formed in 1967, with the original line-up consisting of Richard Thompson (guitar); Simon Nicol (guitar); Ashley “Tyger” Hutchings (bass); and Shaun Frater (drums), who was replaced after their first gig by Martin Lamble. They were joined by Judy Dyble (vocals), and Ian MacDonald (later known as Iain Matthews) after they made their major London stage debut in one of Brian Epstein’s Sunday concerts at the Saville Theatre.\n\nWith an approach strongly influenced by Jefferson Airplane's first two albums, as opposed to the electric traditional folk for which the group later became famous, the debut album features songs by Emitt Rhodes, Joni Mitchell and Jim & Jean, adaptations of poems by George Painter and Bob Dylan, and some original material.\n\nThis is the only Fairport Convention studio album on which Judy Dyble sings. She left in 1968 and was replaced by Sandy Denny but during her short time with the band she made an impression. A later article commented on her on-stage habit of knitting dishcloths and scarves when not actually singing.\n\nThe album should not be confused with the A&M Records' Fairport Convention, the USA release/re-titling of their second UK album, What We Did on Our Holidays. The first album, listed as a product of Polydor-England, was finally released in the U.S. on Cotillion Records in 1970.\n\nTrack listing\n\nPersonnel\n\nFairport Convention\n Judy Dyble – lead vocals, electric and acoustic autoharps, recorder, piano\n Ian MacDonald (Iain Matthews) – lead vocals, Jew's harp\n Richard Thompson – vocals, lead electric and acoustic guitars, mandolin\n Simon Nicol – vocals, electric 12- and 6-string and acoustic guitars\n Ashley Hutchings – bass guitar, jug, double bass\n Martin Lamble – percussion, violin\n\nAdditional personnel\nClaire Lowther – cello\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\n1968 debut albums\nFairport Convention albums\nAlbums produced by Joe Boyd\nPolydor Records albums\nCotillion Records albums",
"Woodworm Records was a record label created in 1979 to enable the British folk-rock band Fairport Convention to release their album Farewell, Farewell. The album was a recording of performances taken from the band's 1979 farewell tour. The impending break-up of the band had followed medical advice given to fiddle-player Dave Swarbrick to save his hearing by playing no more amplified music. As there was no record label willing to release the recording, bass guitarist Dave Pegg and his wife Christine formed their own label to release the album.\n\nWoodworm Records soon grew and released albums by Fairport and other artists such as Dave Swarbrick and Steve Ashley. During 2004 the Peggs were divorced, resulting in the sale of studio. The record label was thus put on hold. Members of Fairport Convention decided to form the new label Matty Grooves Records to continue the work of Woodworm Records.\n\nAssociated with the label, and especially with Fairport Convention in recent years, are Woodworm Recording Studios, situated at Barford St. Michael in Oxfordshire, where other artists, including Jethro Tull and Richard Thompson, have also recorded.\n\nSee also \n List of record labels\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n Official website: Fairport Convention\n\nBritish record labels\nRecord labels established in 1979\nRecord labels disestablished in 2004\nVanity record labels\nRock record labels\n1979 establishments in England"
]
|
[
"Fairport Convention",
"1998--present",
"What was Fairport Convention doing during 1998",
"Fairport produced two more studio albums for Woodworm Records:"
]
| C_f6c0f186ff404c2a9abd89ac79601c3d_0 | What was the name of one of the albums | 2 | What was the name of one of Fairport Convention's albums? | Fairport Convention | In 1998, Dave Mattacks moved to the USA and Gerry Conway took over on drums and percussion. Fairport produced two more studio albums for Woodworm Records: The Wood and the Wire (2000) and XXXV (2002). Then for Over the Next Hill (2004) they established a new label: Matty Grooves Records. In this period the band toured extensively in the UK, Europe, Australasia, Europe, the USA and Canada, and staged a major fund raiser for Dave Swarbrick at the Birmingham Symphony Hall. In 1998, members of the band began their association with the Breton musician Alan Simon. Working in collaboration with numerous others, members of Fairport (predominantly Nicol and Leslie) have performed in and participated in the recordings of all Simon's rock operas, including the Excalibur trilogy (1998, 2007, 2010) and Anne de Bretagne (2008). 2007 was their fortieth anniversary year and they celebrated by releasing a new album, Sense of Occasion. They performed the whole of the Liege & Lief album live at Cropredy, since 2004 renamed Fairport's Cropredy Convention, featuring the 1969 line-up of Dave Swarbrick, Ashley Hutchings, Dave Mattacks, Simon Nicol and Richard Thompson, with singer-songwriter Chris While taking the place of Sandy Denny. Footage of the festival, although not the Liege and Lief performance, was released as part of a celebratory DVD. The band's first official YouTube video appeared in April 2008. Edited from footage shot for the DVD, the nine-minute mini-documentary includes interviews with Lulu, Jools Holland, Seth Lakeman, Mike Harding, Geoff Hughes and Frank Skinner. In 2011, the band released a new studio album Festival Bell, the first new album in four years. This was followed in 2012 by Babbacombe Lee Live Again recorded live during the 2011 tour revisiting the Babbacombe Lee album first issued in 1971. In 2012, the band also released By Popular Request, a reworking in the studio of a number of the most popular songs in the band's repertoire (as determined by a mysterious consultation and voting process conducted by the band with its fans). In January 2015, four years after their previous studio album of original material (Festival Bell), Fairport Convention released a new one entitled Myths and Heroes. CANNOTANSWER | The Wood and the Wire (2000) | Fairport Convention are a British folk rock band, formed in 1967 by guitarists Richard Thompson and Simon Nicol, bassist Ashley Hutchings and drummer Shaun Frater (with Frater replaced by Martin Lamble after their first gig.) They started out heavily influenced by American folk rock, with a setlist dominated by Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell songs and a sound that earned them the nickname "the British Jefferson Airplane". Vocalists Judy Dyble and Iain Matthews joined them before the recording of their self-titled debut in 1968; afterwards, Dyble was replaced by Sandy Denny, with Matthews later leaving during the recording of their third album.
Denny began steering the group towards traditional British music for their next two albums, What We Did on Our Holidays and Unhalfbricking (both 1969); the latter featured fiddler Dave "Swarb" Swarbrick, most notably on the song "A Sailor's Life", which laid the groundwork for British folk rock by being the first time a traditional British song was combined with a rock beat. Shortly before the album's release, a crash on the M1 motorway killed Lamble and Jeannie Franklyn, Thompson's then-girlfriend; this resulted in the group retiring most of their prior material and turning entirely towards British folk music for their seminal album Liege & Lief, released the same year. This style became the band's focus ever since. For this album Swarbrick joined full time alongside drummer Dave Mattacks. Both Denny and Hutchings left before the year's end; the latter replaced by Dave Pegg, who has remained the group's sole consistent member to this day; Thompson would leave after the recording of 1970's Full House.
The 1970s saw numerous lineup changes around the core of Swarbrick and Pegg – Nicol being absent for the middle of the decade – and declining fortunes as folk music fell out of mainstream favour. Denny, whose partner Trevor Lucas had been a guitarist in the group since 1972, returned for the pop-oriented Rising for the Moon album in 1975 in a final bid to crack America; this effort failed, and after three more albums minus Denny and Lucas, the group disbanded in 1979. They played a farewell concert in the village of Cropredy, Oxfordshire, where they had held small concerts since 1976, and this marked the beginning of the Cropredy Festival (since 2005 known as Fairport's Cropredy Convention) which has become the largest folk festival in Britain, with annual attendances of 20,000.
The band was reformed by Nicol, Pegg, and Mattacks in 1985, joined by Maartin Allcock (guitar, vocals) and Ric Sanders (fiddle, keyboards), and they have remained active since. Allcock was replaced by Chris Leslie in 1996, and Gerry Conway replaced Mattacks in 1998, with this lineup remaining unchanged since and marking the longest-lasting of the group's history. Their 28th studio album, 50:50@50, released to mark their 50th anniversary, was released in 2017, and they continue to headline Cropredy each year.
Despite little mainstream success – their only top 40 single being "Si Tu Dois Partir", a French-language cover of the Dylan song "If You Gotta Go, Go Now" from Unhalfbricking – Fairport Convention remain highly influential in British folk rock and British folk in general. Liege & Lief was named the "Most Influential Folk Album of All Time" at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards in 2006, and Pegg's playing style, which incorporates jigs and reels into his basslines, has been imitated by many in the folk rock and folk punk genres. Additionally, many former members went on to form or join other notable groups in the genre, including Fotheringay, Steeleye Span, and the Albion Band; along with solo careers, most notably Thompson and Denny. Sandy Denny's career ended with her death in 1978, though she is now regarded as being amongst Britain's finest female singer-songwriters; her song "Who Knows Where the Time Goes?" – recorded by Fairport on Unhalfbricking – has become a signature song for herself and the band.
History
Origins
Bassist Ashley Hutchings met guitarist Simon Nicol in North London in 1966 when they both played in the Ethnic Shuffle Orchestra. They rehearsed on the floor above Nicol's father's medical practice in a house called "Fairport" on Fortis Green in Muswell Hill – the same street on which Ray and Dave Davies of the Kinks grew up. The house name lent its name to the group they formed together as Fairport Convention in 1967 with Richard Thompson on guitar and Shaun Frater on drums. After their initial performance at St Michael's Church Hall in Golders Green on 27 May 1967, they had their first of many line-up changes as one member of the audience, drummer Martin Lamble, convinced the band that he could do a better job than Frater and replaced him. They soon added a female singer, Judy Dyble, which gave them a distinctive sound among the many London bands of the period.
1967–69: The first three albums
Fairport Convention were soon playing regularly at underground venues such as UFO and The Electric Garden, which later became the Middle Earth club. After only a few months, they caught the attention of manager Joe Boyd who secured them a contract with Polydor Records. Boyd suggested they augment the line-up with another male vocalist. Singer Iain Matthews (then known as Ian MacDonald) joined the band, and their first album, Fairport Convention, was recorded in late 1967 and released in June 1968. At this early stage Fairport looked to North American folk and folk rock acts such as Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, and The Byrds for material and inspiration. The name "Fairport Convention" and the use of two lead vocalists led many new listeners to believe that they were an American act, earning them the nickname 'the British Jefferson Airplane' during this period. Fairport Convention played alongside Jefferson Airplane at the First Isle of Wight Festival, 1968.
After disappointing album sales they signed a new contract with Island Records. Before their next recording Judy Dyble left – she described it as being "unceremoniously dumped" – and was replaced by the band with Sandy Denny, a folk singer who had previously recorded as a soloist and with Strawbs. Denny's distinctive voice, described by Clive James as "open space, low-volume, high-intensity", is one of the characteristics of two albums released in 1969: What We Did on Our Holidays and Unhalfbricking. These recordings marked the growth of much greater musicality and song-writing ability among the band. The first of these featured the Thompson-penned "Meet on the Ledge", which became their second single and eventually the band's unofficial anthem.
During the recording of Unhalfbricking, Matthews left after having sung on only one song, eventually to form Matthews Southern Comfort. He was not replaced; the other male members covered his vocal parts. The album featured a guest appearance by Birmingham folk fiddler Dave Swarbrick on a recording of "A Sailor's Life", a traditional song brought to the band by Denny from her folk club days. The recording of this track marked an important turning point for the band, sparking an interest in traditional music in Ashley Hutchings that led him to detailed research in the English Folk Dance and Song Society Library at Cecil Sharp House; this theme would become the basis for their next, much more ambitious, recording project.
These two albums began to gain the band wider recognition. Radio DJ John Peel championed their music, playing their albums on his influential BBC shows. Peel also recorded a number of sessions which were later released as the album Heyday (1987). They enjoyed some mainstream success when they entered the singles charts with "Si Tu Dois Partir", a French-language version of Bob Dylan's "If You Gotta Go, Go Now". The record just missed the top twenty, but secured the band a slot on Top of the Pops, Britain's most popular television pop music programme at the time. In 1969 four members of the band, one uncredited and three with pseudonyms, featured as backing musicians on the album Love Chronicles by Scottish folk artist Al Stewart.
Developing British folk rock
On 12 May 1969, on the way home from a gig at Birmingham venue Mothers, Fairport's van crashed on the M1 motorway. Martin Lamble, aged only nineteen, and Jeannie Franklyn, Richard Thompson's girlfriend, were killed. The rest of the band suffered injuries of varying severity. They nearly decided to disband. However, they reconvened with Dave Mattacks taking over drumming duties and Dave Swarbrick, having made contribution to Unhalfbricking, now joined as a full member. Boyd set the band up in a rented house in Farley Chamberlayne near Winchester in Hampshire, where they recuperated and worked on the integration of British folk music into rock and roll, which would result in the fourth album Liege & Lief.
Usually considered the highpoint of the band's long career, Liege & Lief was a huge leap forward in concept and musicality. The album consisted of six traditional tracks and three original compositions in a similar style. The traditional tracks included two sustained epics: "Tam Lin", which was over seven minutes in length, and "Matty Groves", at over eight. There was a medley of four traditional tunes, arranged, and, like many of the tracks, enlivened, by Swarbrick's energetic fiddle playing. The first side was bracketed by original compositions "Come all ye" and "Farewell, Farewell", which, in addition to information on the inside of the gatefold cover on Hutchings' research, explaining English folk traditions, helped give the record the feel of a concept album. "Farewell, Farewell" and the final track "Crazy Man Michael", also saw the full emergence of the distinctive song writing talent of Thompson that was to characterize his contributions to the band and later solo career. The distinctive sound of the album came from the use of electric instruments and Mattacks' disciplined drumming with Swarbrick's fiddle accompaniment in a surprising and powerful combination of rock with the traditional. The entire band had reached new levels of musicality, with the fluid guitar playing of Thompson and the "ethereal" vocal of Denny particularly characteristic of the sound of the album. As the reviewer from AllMusic put it, the album was characterised by the "fusing [of] time-worn folk with electric instruments while honoring both".
A few British bands had earlier experimented with playing traditional English songs on electric instruments, (including Strawbs and Pentangle), but Fairport Convention was the first English band to do this in a concerted and focused way. Fairport Convention's achievement was not to invent folk rock, but to create a distinctly English branch of the genre, which would develop alongside, and interact with, American inspired music, but which can also be seen as a distinctively national reaction in opposition to it. Liege & Lief was launched with a sell-out concert in London's Royal Festival Hall late in 1969. It reached number 17 in the UK album chart, where it spent fifteen weeks.
1970s: A time of change
Disagreements arose about the direction of the band in the wake of this success. Ashley Hutchings wanted to explore more traditional material and left to form two groups that would rival Fairport for significance in English folk rock: Steeleye Span and the Albion Band. Sandy Denny also left to found her own group Fotheringay. Dave Pegg took over on bass guitar and has been the group's one constant ever since, in an unbroken membership of over four decades. The band made no serious attempt to replace Denny, and, although she would briefly return, the sound of the band would now be characterized by male vocals.
Despite these changes the band produced another album, Full House (1970), which was remarkably successful as a project. Like its predecessor, it combined traditional songs, including a powerful rendition of "Sir Patrick Spens", with original compositions. The latter benefited from the writing partnership of Thompson and Swarbrick, most obviously on "Walk Awhile", which would become a concert favourite. Despite the loss of Denny the band still possessed four vocalists, including the emerging voices of Nicol and Swarbrick, whose tones would dominate the sound of this period. It was favourably reviewed in Britain and America, drawing comparisons with the Band from Rolling Stone magazine who declared that "Fairport Convention is better than ever". The album reached number 13 in the UK Chart and stayed in the chart for eleven weeks. The same year the band released a single 'Now Be Thankful' and made its American debut, touring with Traffic and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.
In the recurring pattern, soon after the album's release Thompson left the band to pursue other projects and eventually his solo career. This left Simon Nicol as the only original member and Dave Swarbrick emerged as the leading force in the band. In 1970 the members and their families had moved into The Angel, a former pub in Hertfordshire and this inspired the next album Angel Delight (1971) the band's first to chart in the US, peaking at number 200 on the Billboard 200 and their only top ten album in the UK. The next project was an ambitious folk-rock opera developed by Swarbrick, based on the life of John "Babbacombe" Lee, "the man they couldn't hang" and released with the title Babbacombe Lee (1971). The concept format, originally without clear tracks, excited considerable press interest and it received good air play in the United States where it reached number 195. A version was produced by the BBC for TV in 1975 with narration by Melvyn Bragg. These two albums were also notable as the first time that Fairport had recorded consecutively with the same line-up, but inevitably stability did not last: Simon Nicol left early in late 1971 to join Ashley Hutchings' Albion Band and he was soon followed by Mattacks.
Only Pegg and Swarbrick remained and the following few years have been dubbed 'Fairport confusion' as a bewildering sequence of band members came and went, but by 1973 Mattacks had returned and two former members of Sandy Denny's Fotheringay had joined the band, Denny's Australian husband Trevor Lucas on vocals and guitar and American Jerry Donahue on lead guitar. From these line-ups the band produced two studio albums: Rosie, notable for the Swarbrick penned title track (1973) and Nine (1974), the ninth studio album by the band. The last of these contained writing contributions by Lucas to five of the nine tracks, which together with Donahue's country influences and outstanding guitar pyrotechnics gave the album a very distinctive feel.
Denny rejoined the band in 1974 and there were considerable expectations, both artistic and commercial, placed on this line-up. Denny was featured on the album Rising for the Moon (1975), which became the band's highest US chart album when it reached number 143 on the Billboard 200 and the first album to reach the top one-hundred in the UK since Angel Delight, reaching no 52. During the Rising sessions, Mattacks fell out with producer Glyn Johns and was replaced by former Grease Band drummer Bruce Rowland. Poor UK sales for Rising did not aid morale and, despite the relative success of the line-up, Lucas and Donahue left the band, as did Denny in 1976. She died aged 31, in 1978, of a cerebral haemorrhage after falling down a flight of stairs.
Rowland, Pegg, and Swarbrick fulfilled their remaining contractual obligations to Island Records by turning what had originally been a Swarbrick solo effort into the album Gottle O'Geer (1976) under the name 'Fairport' (as opposed to Fairport Convention) in the UK, and as 'Fairport featuring Dave Swarbrick' in the US, and with various session players and production by Simon Nicol, who subsequently rejoined the band. They then signed with Vertigo, but record sales continued to decline and after producing two of four contracted albums, The Bonny Bunch of Roses (1977) and Tipplers Tales (1978), Vertigo bought them out of their contract. It is claimed by members of the band that this was the only recording money they had seen up to that point.
1979–1985: The Cropredy era
By 1979 the mainstream market for folk rock had largely disappeared, the band had no record deal, and Dave Swarbrick had been diagnosed with tinnitus, which made loud electric gigs increasingly difficult. Fairport decided to disband. They played a farewell tour and a final outdoor concert on 4 August in Cropredy, the Oxfordshire village where Dave and Christine Pegg lived. The finality of this occasion was mitigated by the announcement that the band would meet for a reunion.
In August 1979, the band played at Knebworth Festival in England. The headline act at both their appearances at the festival, over two consecutive Saturdays on 4 and 11 August, were Led Zeppelin.
No record company wanted to release the live recordings of the tour and concert, so the Peggs founded Woodworm Records, which would be the major outlet for the band in the future. Members continued to take part in occasional gigs, particularly in festivals in continental Europe, and after a year they staged a reunion concert in Cropredy which became the annual Cropredy Festival. Over the next few years, it grew rapidly and emerged as the major mechanism for sustaining the band. In August 1981, the band held their annual reunion concert at Broughton Castle, rather than the usual Cropredy location. The concert was recorded, and released on the 1982 album Moat on the Ledge.
The Peggs continued to record and release the Cropredy concerts as 'official bootlegs'. These were supplemented by New Year's gigs in minor locations including the Half Moon at Putney and the Gloucester Leisure Centre. In 1983 the magazine Fairport Fanatics (later Dirty Linen), was created: a testament to the continued existence of a dedicated fan base.
The Angel Delight lineup of Simon Nicol, Dave Swarbrick, Dave Pegg, and Dave Mattacks played a number of gigs in the UK in the early 80s, then toured extensively in the UK and the US in 1984 and 1985. Band alumni like Richard Thompson and Bruce Rowland would occasionally join in.
The remaining members pursued their own lives and careers outside of the band. Nicol, Pegg, and Mattacks had recorded and toured with Richard and Linda Thompson at times in the 1970s, and did so again during this period, culminating in their appearance on the Shoot Out the Lights album and tour in 1982. Bruce Rowlands gave up the music business and moved to Denmark and as a result Dave Mattacks returned as drummer for Fairport's occasional gigs. Dave Pegg was the first of several Fairporters to join Jethro Tull which gave him well-paying steady employment. Simon Nicol had teamed up with Dave Swarbrick in a highly regarded acoustic duo, but this partnership was made difficult by Swarbrick's sudden decision to move to Scotland, where, from 1984 he began to focus on his new project Whippersnapper.
In 1985, Pegg, Nicol and Mattacks found that they all had some free time and an available studio belonging to Pegg. They decided that they needed some new material to add to the catalogue that had been suspended in 1978. As Swarbrick was unavailable, the selection of traditional tunes was more difficult than for past albums and there was a need for a replacement fiddle player and some vocals. Pegg and Nicol took over arranging duties on an instrumental medley and the band turned to sometime Albion Band members: jazz and folk violinist Ric Sanders and singer-songwriter Cathy Lesurf. They also had the help of ex-member Richard Thompson. Thompson and Lesurf contributed songs and took part in the recordings. Also important to the album was Ralph McTell who contributed one song and co-wrote one track each with Nicol and Mattacks; the former of these, "The Hiring Fair", would become a stage fixture of the future Fairport.
The resulting album Gladys' Leap (1985) was generally well received in the music and national press, but caused some tension with Swarbrick who refused to play any of the new material at the 1985 Cropredy Festival. Nevertheless, the decision to reform the band, without Swarbrick, was taken by the other three remaining members. Ric Sanders was invited to join, along with guitarist, composer, arranger and multi-instrumentalist Maartin Allcock. Nicol, with his developing baritone voice, took over the main share of the vocal duties. This line-up was to last eleven years, the longest period of membership stability in the band's history so far.
1986–1997: Stability
The new band began a hectic schedule of performing in Britain and the World and prepared material for a new album. The result was the all-instrumental Expletive Delighted! (1986). This showcased the virtuosity of Sanders and Allcock, but perhaps inevitably was not popular with all fans. This was followed by the recording In Real Time: Live '87 which managed to capture the energy and power of the new Fairport on stage, despite the fact that it was recorded in the studio with audience reactions dubbed on.
In this period the band were playing to larger and larger audiences, both on tour and at Cropredy, and it was very productive in terms of recording. Fairport had the considerable composing and arranging skills of Allcock and, to fill the gap created by a lack of a songwriter in the band, they turned to some of the most talented available in the contemporary folk scene. The results were Red & Gold (1989) The Five Seasons (1990) and Jewel in the Crown (1995), the last of which was judged "their bestselling and undoubtedly finest album in years."
At this point, with Mattacks busy with other projects, the band shifted to an acoustic format for touring and released the unplugged Old New Borrowed Blue as "Fairport Acoustic Convention" in 1996. For a while the four-piece acoustic line-up ran in parallel with the electric format. When Allcock left the band, he was replaced by Chris Leslie on vocals, mandolin and fiddle, who formerly worked with Swarbrick in Whippersnapper, and had a one-off stint with the band replacing Ric Sanders for 1992 Cropredy Festival. This meant that for the first time since reforming, the band had a recognized songwriter who contributed significantly to the band's output on the next album Who Knows Where the Time Goes? (1997), particularly the rousing "John Gaudie". By the time of the 30th anniversary Festival at Cropredy in 1997, the new Fairport had been in existence for over a decade and contributed a significant chapter to the history of the band.
1998–present
Dave Mattacks moved to the US in 1998, and Gerry Conway took over on drums and percussion. Fairport produced two more studio albums for Woodworm Records: The Wood and the Wire (2000) and XXXV (2002). Then, for Over the Next Hill (2004) they established a new label: Matty Grooves Records. In this period the band toured extensively in the UK, Europe, Australasia, Europe, the US and Canada, and staged a major fund raiser for Dave Swarbrick at the Birmingham Symphony Hall. In 1998, members of the band began their association with the Breton musician Alan Simon. Working in collaboration with numerous others, members of Fairport (predominantly Nicol and Leslie) have performed in and participated in the recordings of all Simon's rock operas, including the Excalibur trilogy (1998, 2007, 2010) and Anne de Bretagne (2008).
2007 was their fortieth anniversary year and they celebrated by releasing a new album, Sense of Occasion. They performed the whole of the Liege & Lief album live at Cropredy, since 2004 renamed Fairport's Cropredy Convention, featuring the 1969 line-up of Dave Swarbrick, Ashley Hutchings, Dave Mattacks, Simon Nicol and Richard Thompson, with singer-songwriter Chris While taking the place of Sandy Denny. Footage of the festival, although not the Liege and Lief performance, was released as part of a celebratory DVD.
The band's first official YouTube video appeared in April 2008. Edited from footage shot for the DVD, the nine-minute mini-documentary includes interviews with Lulu, Jools Holland, Seth Lakeman, Mike Harding, Geoff Hughes and Frank Skinner.
In 2011, the band released a new studio album Festival Bell, the first new album in four years. This was followed in 2012 by Babbacombe Lee Live Again recorded live during the 2011 tour revisiting the Babbacombe Lee album first issued in 1971. In 2012, the band also released By Popular Request, a reworking in the studio of a number of the most popular songs in the band's repertoire (as determined by a mysterious consultation and voting process conducted by the band with its fans).
As of 2020 the band still continue to write and record music, regularly producing new studio albums, the most recent releases being 2015's Myths and Heroes, 2017's 50:50@50 and 2020's Shuffle and Go. The Covid-19 Pandemic impacted significantly on their ability to tour, and their 2022 tour was initially cut short after several of the touring team developed Covid.
Public recognition
The mainstream media has increasingly recognized Fairport Convention's historical importance. They received a "Lifetime Achievement Award" at the 2002 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards. In the same year Free Reed Records, an independent label, released Fairport Unconventional, a four-CD boxed set of rare and unreleased recordings from the band's 35-year career. At the 2006 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards they received an award when their seminal album Liege & Lief was voted 'Most Influential Folk Album of All Time' by Radio 2 listeners. At the 2007 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards Fairport Convention received an award recognising the late Sandy Denny and the band for "Favourite Folk Track of All Time" for "Who Knows Where the Time Goes?".
Personnel
Members
Current members
Simon Nicol – guitar, vocal (1967–1971, 1976–1979, 1985–present)
Dave Pegg – bass guitar, mandolin, backing vocal (1969–1979, 1985–present)
Ric Sanders – fiddles, occasional keyboards (1985–present)
Chris Leslie – fiddle, mandolin, bouzouki, vocal (1996–present)
Gerry Conway – drums, percussion (1998–present)
Former members
Richard Thompson – guitar, vocal (1967–1971)
Ashley Hutchings – bass guitar (1967–1969)
Shaun Frater – drums (1967)
Martin Lamble – drums (1967–1969; died 1969)
Judy Dyble – vocal, autoharp, piano, recorder (1967–1968; died 2020)
Iain Matthews – vocal (1967–1969)
Sandy Denny – vocal, guitar, piano (1968–1969, 1974–1975; died 1978)
Dave Swarbrick – fiddle, mandolin, vocal (1969–1979; died 2016)
Dave Mattacks – drums, keyboards, bass guitar (1969–1972, 1973–1975, 1985–1997)
Roger Hill – guitar, vocal (1971–1972; died 2011)
Tom Farnell – drums (1972)
David Rea – guitar (1972; died 2011)
Trevor Lucas – guitar, vocal (1972–1975; died 1989)
Jerry Donahue – guitar (1972–1975)
Paul Warren – drums (1975)
Bruce Rowland – drums (1975–1979; died 2015)
Dan Ar Braz – guitar (1976)
Bob Brady – piano (1976)
Roger Burridge – mandolin, fiddle (1976; died 2020)
Maartin Allcock – guitar, mandolin, keyboard, vocal (1985–1996; died 2018)
Lineups
Timeline
Discography
Filmography
Tony Palmer's Film of Fairport Convention and Matthews Southern Comfort, directed by Tony Palmer, featuring Fairport's appearance at the Maidstone Fiesta in 1970. Originally released as a VHS video by MusicFolk/Weintraub, re-released on DVD by Voiceprint Records in 2007, soundtrack CD issued by Voiceprint as Live in Maidstone 1970 in 2009.
References
Citations
General sources
External links
English folk musical groups
English folk rock groups
Ashley Hutchings
1967 establishments in England
Musical groups established in 1967
A&M Records artists
Island Records artists
Polydor Records artists
Rough Trade Records artists
Transatlantic Records artists
Vertigo Records artists | true | [
"You're the Man is a posthumous studio album by American singer Marvin Gaye, originally intended to be released in 1972 as the follow-up to What's Going On. It was released on March 29, 2019, through Motown, Universal Music Enterprises, and Universal Music Group to celebrate what would have been Gaye's 80th birthday on April 2, 2019. The album includes the single of the same name, as well as the intended original album in full and other songs Gaye recorded at the time.\n\nSalaam Remi's remix of \"My Last Chance\" was released in promotion of the album on February 8, 2019.\n\nMotown followed this release with What's Going On Live a few months later.\n\nBackground and release\nYou're the Man was intended as another socially conscious record like What's Going On (1971), but following the release of its lead single, the title track \"You're the Man\", Gaye cancelled its release. This was in part due to the reception of the song, as well as the fact that Gaye's political views were different from those of Motown founder Berry Gordy. For these reasons, You're the Man was long considered a \"lost\" album.\n\nFifteen of the songs were not released on vinyl in the 1970s, but most were made available on CD compilations over the years. A longer take of \"I Want to Come Home for Christmas\" was first made available in 1990 after being recorded in 1972. The album includes liner notes written by David Ritz.\n\nReception\n With 11critics, Album of the Year considered the critical consensus a 75 out of 100 and AnyDecentMusic? summed up 12reviews as a 7.5 out of 10.\n\nTrack listing\n\nCharts\n\nReferences\n\n2019 albums\nAlbums published posthumously\nMarvin Gaye albums\nAlbums produced by Marvin Gaye\nAlbums produced by Hal Davis\nAlbums produced by Freddie Perren\nMotown albums\nUniversal Music Enterprises albums\nAlbums produced by Pam Sawyer\nAlbums produced by Willie Hutch",
"Top Country Albums is a chart that ranks the top-performing country music albums in the United States, published by Billboard. In 2020, 16 different albums topped the chart, based on multi-metric consumption, blending traditional album sales, track equivalent albums, and streaming equivalent albums.\n\nIn the issue of Billboard dated January 4, Burl Ives topped the chart with Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, the soundtrack album of the 1964 Rankin/Bass television special of the same name. It was the first number-one country album for Ives, a musician and Academy Award-winning actor who had died in 1995. It was the first of two posthumous chart-toppers in 2020; Kenny Rogers, who died on March 20, entered the chart at number one in the issue dated April 4 with The Best of Kenny Rogers: Through the Years. The compilation album was the first number-one country album for Rogers since 1986. Beginning with the January 11 issue, the number-one position was dominated in 2020 by Luke Combs, who spent 31 weeks in the top spot during the year with his album What You See Is What You Get; no other act spent more than four weeks at number one. Combs's album also topped the all-genre Billboard 200 albums chart in November following the release of a deluxe edition with additional tracks; in the first week after that release the album set a new streaming record for a country music album.\n\nOne act topped the chart for the first time in 2020: Morgan Wallen spent two non-consecutive weeks in the top spot with his debut full-length album If I Know Me. Two acts each reached number one for the first time since 2006: Jimmy Buffett with Life on the Flip Side and the Chicks with Gaslighter. The latter album was the all-female trio's first album of new material for fourteen years and their first since they changed their name from the Dixie Chicks. The year's final chart-topper was the Christmas album My Gift by Carrie Underwood. Having spent a single week at number one in October, it returned to the peak position in the issue of Billboard dated December 12 and stayed there for the remainder of the year. It was one of two holiday albums to top the chart in 2020, along with A Holly Dolly Christmas by veteran country star Dolly Parton.\n\nChart history\n\nSee also\n2020 in music\nList of Billboard number-one country songs of 2020\n\nReferences\n\n2020\nUnited States Country Albums"
]
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[
"Fairport Convention",
"1998--present",
"What was Fairport Convention doing during 1998",
"Fairport produced two more studio albums for Woodworm Records:",
"What was the name of one of the albums",
"The Wood and the Wire (2000)"
]
| C_f6c0f186ff404c2a9abd89ac79601c3d_0 | Was this album popular | 3 | Was the Fairport Convention album The Wood and the Wire popular? | Fairport Convention | In 1998, Dave Mattacks moved to the USA and Gerry Conway took over on drums and percussion. Fairport produced two more studio albums for Woodworm Records: The Wood and the Wire (2000) and XXXV (2002). Then for Over the Next Hill (2004) they established a new label: Matty Grooves Records. In this period the band toured extensively in the UK, Europe, Australasia, Europe, the USA and Canada, and staged a major fund raiser for Dave Swarbrick at the Birmingham Symphony Hall. In 1998, members of the band began their association with the Breton musician Alan Simon. Working in collaboration with numerous others, members of Fairport (predominantly Nicol and Leslie) have performed in and participated in the recordings of all Simon's rock operas, including the Excalibur trilogy (1998, 2007, 2010) and Anne de Bretagne (2008). 2007 was their fortieth anniversary year and they celebrated by releasing a new album, Sense of Occasion. They performed the whole of the Liege & Lief album live at Cropredy, since 2004 renamed Fairport's Cropredy Convention, featuring the 1969 line-up of Dave Swarbrick, Ashley Hutchings, Dave Mattacks, Simon Nicol and Richard Thompson, with singer-songwriter Chris While taking the place of Sandy Denny. Footage of the festival, although not the Liege and Lief performance, was released as part of a celebratory DVD. The band's first official YouTube video appeared in April 2008. Edited from footage shot for the DVD, the nine-minute mini-documentary includes interviews with Lulu, Jools Holland, Seth Lakeman, Mike Harding, Geoff Hughes and Frank Skinner. In 2011, the band released a new studio album Festival Bell, the first new album in four years. This was followed in 2012 by Babbacombe Lee Live Again recorded live during the 2011 tour revisiting the Babbacombe Lee album first issued in 1971. In 2012, the band also released By Popular Request, a reworking in the studio of a number of the most popular songs in the band's repertoire (as determined by a mysterious consultation and voting process conducted by the band with its fans). In January 2015, four years after their previous studio album of original material (Festival Bell), Fairport Convention released a new one entitled Myths and Heroes. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Fairport Convention are a British folk rock band, formed in 1967 by guitarists Richard Thompson and Simon Nicol, bassist Ashley Hutchings and drummer Shaun Frater (with Frater replaced by Martin Lamble after their first gig.) They started out heavily influenced by American folk rock, with a setlist dominated by Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell songs and a sound that earned them the nickname "the British Jefferson Airplane". Vocalists Judy Dyble and Iain Matthews joined them before the recording of their self-titled debut in 1968; afterwards, Dyble was replaced by Sandy Denny, with Matthews later leaving during the recording of their third album.
Denny began steering the group towards traditional British music for their next two albums, What We Did on Our Holidays and Unhalfbricking (both 1969); the latter featured fiddler Dave "Swarb" Swarbrick, most notably on the song "A Sailor's Life", which laid the groundwork for British folk rock by being the first time a traditional British song was combined with a rock beat. Shortly before the album's release, a crash on the M1 motorway killed Lamble and Jeannie Franklyn, Thompson's then-girlfriend; this resulted in the group retiring most of their prior material and turning entirely towards British folk music for their seminal album Liege & Lief, released the same year. This style became the band's focus ever since. For this album Swarbrick joined full time alongside drummer Dave Mattacks. Both Denny and Hutchings left before the year's end; the latter replaced by Dave Pegg, who has remained the group's sole consistent member to this day; Thompson would leave after the recording of 1970's Full House.
The 1970s saw numerous lineup changes around the core of Swarbrick and Pegg – Nicol being absent for the middle of the decade – and declining fortunes as folk music fell out of mainstream favour. Denny, whose partner Trevor Lucas had been a guitarist in the group since 1972, returned for the pop-oriented Rising for the Moon album in 1975 in a final bid to crack America; this effort failed, and after three more albums minus Denny and Lucas, the group disbanded in 1979. They played a farewell concert in the village of Cropredy, Oxfordshire, where they had held small concerts since 1976, and this marked the beginning of the Cropredy Festival (since 2005 known as Fairport's Cropredy Convention) which has become the largest folk festival in Britain, with annual attendances of 20,000.
The band was reformed by Nicol, Pegg, and Mattacks in 1985, joined by Maartin Allcock (guitar, vocals) and Ric Sanders (fiddle, keyboards), and they have remained active since. Allcock was replaced by Chris Leslie in 1996, and Gerry Conway replaced Mattacks in 1998, with this lineup remaining unchanged since and marking the longest-lasting of the group's history. Their 28th studio album, 50:50@50, released to mark their 50th anniversary, was released in 2017, and they continue to headline Cropredy each year.
Despite little mainstream success – their only top 40 single being "Si Tu Dois Partir", a French-language cover of the Dylan song "If You Gotta Go, Go Now" from Unhalfbricking – Fairport Convention remain highly influential in British folk rock and British folk in general. Liege & Lief was named the "Most Influential Folk Album of All Time" at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards in 2006, and Pegg's playing style, which incorporates jigs and reels into his basslines, has been imitated by many in the folk rock and folk punk genres. Additionally, many former members went on to form or join other notable groups in the genre, including Fotheringay, Steeleye Span, and the Albion Band; along with solo careers, most notably Thompson and Denny. Sandy Denny's career ended with her death in 1978, though she is now regarded as being amongst Britain's finest female singer-songwriters; her song "Who Knows Where the Time Goes?" – recorded by Fairport on Unhalfbricking – has become a signature song for herself and the band.
History
Origins
Bassist Ashley Hutchings met guitarist Simon Nicol in North London in 1966 when they both played in the Ethnic Shuffle Orchestra. They rehearsed on the floor above Nicol's father's medical practice in a house called "Fairport" on Fortis Green in Muswell Hill – the same street on which Ray and Dave Davies of the Kinks grew up. The house name lent its name to the group they formed together as Fairport Convention in 1967 with Richard Thompson on guitar and Shaun Frater on drums. After their initial performance at St Michael's Church Hall in Golders Green on 27 May 1967, they had their first of many line-up changes as one member of the audience, drummer Martin Lamble, convinced the band that he could do a better job than Frater and replaced him. They soon added a female singer, Judy Dyble, which gave them a distinctive sound among the many London bands of the period.
1967–69: The first three albums
Fairport Convention were soon playing regularly at underground venues such as UFO and The Electric Garden, which later became the Middle Earth club. After only a few months, they caught the attention of manager Joe Boyd who secured them a contract with Polydor Records. Boyd suggested they augment the line-up with another male vocalist. Singer Iain Matthews (then known as Ian MacDonald) joined the band, and their first album, Fairport Convention, was recorded in late 1967 and released in June 1968. At this early stage Fairport looked to North American folk and folk rock acts such as Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, and The Byrds for material and inspiration. The name "Fairport Convention" and the use of two lead vocalists led many new listeners to believe that they were an American act, earning them the nickname 'the British Jefferson Airplane' during this period. Fairport Convention played alongside Jefferson Airplane at the First Isle of Wight Festival, 1968.
After disappointing album sales they signed a new contract with Island Records. Before their next recording Judy Dyble left – she described it as being "unceremoniously dumped" – and was replaced by the band with Sandy Denny, a folk singer who had previously recorded as a soloist and with Strawbs. Denny's distinctive voice, described by Clive James as "open space, low-volume, high-intensity", is one of the characteristics of two albums released in 1969: What We Did on Our Holidays and Unhalfbricking. These recordings marked the growth of much greater musicality and song-writing ability among the band. The first of these featured the Thompson-penned "Meet on the Ledge", which became their second single and eventually the band's unofficial anthem.
During the recording of Unhalfbricking, Matthews left after having sung on only one song, eventually to form Matthews Southern Comfort. He was not replaced; the other male members covered his vocal parts. The album featured a guest appearance by Birmingham folk fiddler Dave Swarbrick on a recording of "A Sailor's Life", a traditional song brought to the band by Denny from her folk club days. The recording of this track marked an important turning point for the band, sparking an interest in traditional music in Ashley Hutchings that led him to detailed research in the English Folk Dance and Song Society Library at Cecil Sharp House; this theme would become the basis for their next, much more ambitious, recording project.
These two albums began to gain the band wider recognition. Radio DJ John Peel championed their music, playing their albums on his influential BBC shows. Peel also recorded a number of sessions which were later released as the album Heyday (1987). They enjoyed some mainstream success when they entered the singles charts with "Si Tu Dois Partir", a French-language version of Bob Dylan's "If You Gotta Go, Go Now". The record just missed the top twenty, but secured the band a slot on Top of the Pops, Britain's most popular television pop music programme at the time. In 1969 four members of the band, one uncredited and three with pseudonyms, featured as backing musicians on the album Love Chronicles by Scottish folk artist Al Stewart.
Developing British folk rock
On 12 May 1969, on the way home from a gig at Birmingham venue Mothers, Fairport's van crashed on the M1 motorway. Martin Lamble, aged only nineteen, and Jeannie Franklyn, Richard Thompson's girlfriend, were killed. The rest of the band suffered injuries of varying severity. They nearly decided to disband. However, they reconvened with Dave Mattacks taking over drumming duties and Dave Swarbrick, having made contribution to Unhalfbricking, now joined as a full member. Boyd set the band up in a rented house in Farley Chamberlayne near Winchester in Hampshire, where they recuperated and worked on the integration of British folk music into rock and roll, which would result in the fourth album Liege & Lief.
Usually considered the highpoint of the band's long career, Liege & Lief was a huge leap forward in concept and musicality. The album consisted of six traditional tracks and three original compositions in a similar style. The traditional tracks included two sustained epics: "Tam Lin", which was over seven minutes in length, and "Matty Groves", at over eight. There was a medley of four traditional tunes, arranged, and, like many of the tracks, enlivened, by Swarbrick's energetic fiddle playing. The first side was bracketed by original compositions "Come all ye" and "Farewell, Farewell", which, in addition to information on the inside of the gatefold cover on Hutchings' research, explaining English folk traditions, helped give the record the feel of a concept album. "Farewell, Farewell" and the final track "Crazy Man Michael", also saw the full emergence of the distinctive song writing talent of Thompson that was to characterize his contributions to the band and later solo career. The distinctive sound of the album came from the use of electric instruments and Mattacks' disciplined drumming with Swarbrick's fiddle accompaniment in a surprising and powerful combination of rock with the traditional. The entire band had reached new levels of musicality, with the fluid guitar playing of Thompson and the "ethereal" vocal of Denny particularly characteristic of the sound of the album. As the reviewer from AllMusic put it, the album was characterised by the "fusing [of] time-worn folk with electric instruments while honoring both".
A few British bands had earlier experimented with playing traditional English songs on electric instruments, (including Strawbs and Pentangle), but Fairport Convention was the first English band to do this in a concerted and focused way. Fairport Convention's achievement was not to invent folk rock, but to create a distinctly English branch of the genre, which would develop alongside, and interact with, American inspired music, but which can also be seen as a distinctively national reaction in opposition to it. Liege & Lief was launched with a sell-out concert in London's Royal Festival Hall late in 1969. It reached number 17 in the UK album chart, where it spent fifteen weeks.
1970s: A time of change
Disagreements arose about the direction of the band in the wake of this success. Ashley Hutchings wanted to explore more traditional material and left to form two groups that would rival Fairport for significance in English folk rock: Steeleye Span and the Albion Band. Sandy Denny also left to found her own group Fotheringay. Dave Pegg took over on bass guitar and has been the group's one constant ever since, in an unbroken membership of over four decades. The band made no serious attempt to replace Denny, and, although she would briefly return, the sound of the band would now be characterized by male vocals.
Despite these changes the band produced another album, Full House (1970), which was remarkably successful as a project. Like its predecessor, it combined traditional songs, including a powerful rendition of "Sir Patrick Spens", with original compositions. The latter benefited from the writing partnership of Thompson and Swarbrick, most obviously on "Walk Awhile", which would become a concert favourite. Despite the loss of Denny the band still possessed four vocalists, including the emerging voices of Nicol and Swarbrick, whose tones would dominate the sound of this period. It was favourably reviewed in Britain and America, drawing comparisons with the Band from Rolling Stone magazine who declared that "Fairport Convention is better than ever". The album reached number 13 in the UK Chart and stayed in the chart for eleven weeks. The same year the band released a single 'Now Be Thankful' and made its American debut, touring with Traffic and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.
In the recurring pattern, soon after the album's release Thompson left the band to pursue other projects and eventually his solo career. This left Simon Nicol as the only original member and Dave Swarbrick emerged as the leading force in the band. In 1970 the members and their families had moved into The Angel, a former pub in Hertfordshire and this inspired the next album Angel Delight (1971) the band's first to chart in the US, peaking at number 200 on the Billboard 200 and their only top ten album in the UK. The next project was an ambitious folk-rock opera developed by Swarbrick, based on the life of John "Babbacombe" Lee, "the man they couldn't hang" and released with the title Babbacombe Lee (1971). The concept format, originally without clear tracks, excited considerable press interest and it received good air play in the United States where it reached number 195. A version was produced by the BBC for TV in 1975 with narration by Melvyn Bragg. These two albums were also notable as the first time that Fairport had recorded consecutively with the same line-up, but inevitably stability did not last: Simon Nicol left early in late 1971 to join Ashley Hutchings' Albion Band and he was soon followed by Mattacks.
Only Pegg and Swarbrick remained and the following few years have been dubbed 'Fairport confusion' as a bewildering sequence of band members came and went, but by 1973 Mattacks had returned and two former members of Sandy Denny's Fotheringay had joined the band, Denny's Australian husband Trevor Lucas on vocals and guitar and American Jerry Donahue on lead guitar. From these line-ups the band produced two studio albums: Rosie, notable for the Swarbrick penned title track (1973) and Nine (1974), the ninth studio album by the band. The last of these contained writing contributions by Lucas to five of the nine tracks, which together with Donahue's country influences and outstanding guitar pyrotechnics gave the album a very distinctive feel.
Denny rejoined the band in 1974 and there were considerable expectations, both artistic and commercial, placed on this line-up. Denny was featured on the album Rising for the Moon (1975), which became the band's highest US chart album when it reached number 143 on the Billboard 200 and the first album to reach the top one-hundred in the UK since Angel Delight, reaching no 52. During the Rising sessions, Mattacks fell out with producer Glyn Johns and was replaced by former Grease Band drummer Bruce Rowland. Poor UK sales for Rising did not aid morale and, despite the relative success of the line-up, Lucas and Donahue left the band, as did Denny in 1976. She died aged 31, in 1978, of a cerebral haemorrhage after falling down a flight of stairs.
Rowland, Pegg, and Swarbrick fulfilled their remaining contractual obligations to Island Records by turning what had originally been a Swarbrick solo effort into the album Gottle O'Geer (1976) under the name 'Fairport' (as opposed to Fairport Convention) in the UK, and as 'Fairport featuring Dave Swarbrick' in the US, and with various session players and production by Simon Nicol, who subsequently rejoined the band. They then signed with Vertigo, but record sales continued to decline and after producing two of four contracted albums, The Bonny Bunch of Roses (1977) and Tipplers Tales (1978), Vertigo bought them out of their contract. It is claimed by members of the band that this was the only recording money they had seen up to that point.
1979–1985: The Cropredy era
By 1979 the mainstream market for folk rock had largely disappeared, the band had no record deal, and Dave Swarbrick had been diagnosed with tinnitus, which made loud electric gigs increasingly difficult. Fairport decided to disband. They played a farewell tour and a final outdoor concert on 4 August in Cropredy, the Oxfordshire village where Dave and Christine Pegg lived. The finality of this occasion was mitigated by the announcement that the band would meet for a reunion.
In August 1979, the band played at Knebworth Festival in England. The headline act at both their appearances at the festival, over two consecutive Saturdays on 4 and 11 August, were Led Zeppelin.
No record company wanted to release the live recordings of the tour and concert, so the Peggs founded Woodworm Records, which would be the major outlet for the band in the future. Members continued to take part in occasional gigs, particularly in festivals in continental Europe, and after a year they staged a reunion concert in Cropredy which became the annual Cropredy Festival. Over the next few years, it grew rapidly and emerged as the major mechanism for sustaining the band. In August 1981, the band held their annual reunion concert at Broughton Castle, rather than the usual Cropredy location. The concert was recorded, and released on the 1982 album Moat on the Ledge.
The Peggs continued to record and release the Cropredy concerts as 'official bootlegs'. These were supplemented by New Year's gigs in minor locations including the Half Moon at Putney and the Gloucester Leisure Centre. In 1983 the magazine Fairport Fanatics (later Dirty Linen), was created: a testament to the continued existence of a dedicated fan base.
The Angel Delight lineup of Simon Nicol, Dave Swarbrick, Dave Pegg, and Dave Mattacks played a number of gigs in the UK in the early 80s, then toured extensively in the UK and the US in 1984 and 1985. Band alumni like Richard Thompson and Bruce Rowland would occasionally join in.
The remaining members pursued their own lives and careers outside of the band. Nicol, Pegg, and Mattacks had recorded and toured with Richard and Linda Thompson at times in the 1970s, and did so again during this period, culminating in their appearance on the Shoot Out the Lights album and tour in 1982. Bruce Rowlands gave up the music business and moved to Denmark and as a result Dave Mattacks returned as drummer for Fairport's occasional gigs. Dave Pegg was the first of several Fairporters to join Jethro Tull which gave him well-paying steady employment. Simon Nicol had teamed up with Dave Swarbrick in a highly regarded acoustic duo, but this partnership was made difficult by Swarbrick's sudden decision to move to Scotland, where, from 1984 he began to focus on his new project Whippersnapper.
In 1985, Pegg, Nicol and Mattacks found that they all had some free time and an available studio belonging to Pegg. They decided that they needed some new material to add to the catalogue that had been suspended in 1978. As Swarbrick was unavailable, the selection of traditional tunes was more difficult than for past albums and there was a need for a replacement fiddle player and some vocals. Pegg and Nicol took over arranging duties on an instrumental medley and the band turned to sometime Albion Band members: jazz and folk violinist Ric Sanders and singer-songwriter Cathy Lesurf. They also had the help of ex-member Richard Thompson. Thompson and Lesurf contributed songs and took part in the recordings. Also important to the album was Ralph McTell who contributed one song and co-wrote one track each with Nicol and Mattacks; the former of these, "The Hiring Fair", would become a stage fixture of the future Fairport.
The resulting album Gladys' Leap (1985) was generally well received in the music and national press, but caused some tension with Swarbrick who refused to play any of the new material at the 1985 Cropredy Festival. Nevertheless, the decision to reform the band, without Swarbrick, was taken by the other three remaining members. Ric Sanders was invited to join, along with guitarist, composer, arranger and multi-instrumentalist Maartin Allcock. Nicol, with his developing baritone voice, took over the main share of the vocal duties. This line-up was to last eleven years, the longest period of membership stability in the band's history so far.
1986–1997: Stability
The new band began a hectic schedule of performing in Britain and the World and prepared material for a new album. The result was the all-instrumental Expletive Delighted! (1986). This showcased the virtuosity of Sanders and Allcock, but perhaps inevitably was not popular with all fans. This was followed by the recording In Real Time: Live '87 which managed to capture the energy and power of the new Fairport on stage, despite the fact that it was recorded in the studio with audience reactions dubbed on.
In this period the band were playing to larger and larger audiences, both on tour and at Cropredy, and it was very productive in terms of recording. Fairport had the considerable composing and arranging skills of Allcock and, to fill the gap created by a lack of a songwriter in the band, they turned to some of the most talented available in the contemporary folk scene. The results were Red & Gold (1989) The Five Seasons (1990) and Jewel in the Crown (1995), the last of which was judged "their bestselling and undoubtedly finest album in years."
At this point, with Mattacks busy with other projects, the band shifted to an acoustic format for touring and released the unplugged Old New Borrowed Blue as "Fairport Acoustic Convention" in 1996. For a while the four-piece acoustic line-up ran in parallel with the electric format. When Allcock left the band, he was replaced by Chris Leslie on vocals, mandolin and fiddle, who formerly worked with Swarbrick in Whippersnapper, and had a one-off stint with the band replacing Ric Sanders for 1992 Cropredy Festival. This meant that for the first time since reforming, the band had a recognized songwriter who contributed significantly to the band's output on the next album Who Knows Where the Time Goes? (1997), particularly the rousing "John Gaudie". By the time of the 30th anniversary Festival at Cropredy in 1997, the new Fairport had been in existence for over a decade and contributed a significant chapter to the history of the band.
1998–present
Dave Mattacks moved to the US in 1998, and Gerry Conway took over on drums and percussion. Fairport produced two more studio albums for Woodworm Records: The Wood and the Wire (2000) and XXXV (2002). Then, for Over the Next Hill (2004) they established a new label: Matty Grooves Records. In this period the band toured extensively in the UK, Europe, Australasia, Europe, the US and Canada, and staged a major fund raiser for Dave Swarbrick at the Birmingham Symphony Hall. In 1998, members of the band began their association with the Breton musician Alan Simon. Working in collaboration with numerous others, members of Fairport (predominantly Nicol and Leslie) have performed in and participated in the recordings of all Simon's rock operas, including the Excalibur trilogy (1998, 2007, 2010) and Anne de Bretagne (2008).
2007 was their fortieth anniversary year and they celebrated by releasing a new album, Sense of Occasion. They performed the whole of the Liege & Lief album live at Cropredy, since 2004 renamed Fairport's Cropredy Convention, featuring the 1969 line-up of Dave Swarbrick, Ashley Hutchings, Dave Mattacks, Simon Nicol and Richard Thompson, with singer-songwriter Chris While taking the place of Sandy Denny. Footage of the festival, although not the Liege and Lief performance, was released as part of a celebratory DVD.
The band's first official YouTube video appeared in April 2008. Edited from footage shot for the DVD, the nine-minute mini-documentary includes interviews with Lulu, Jools Holland, Seth Lakeman, Mike Harding, Geoff Hughes and Frank Skinner.
In 2011, the band released a new studio album Festival Bell, the first new album in four years. This was followed in 2012 by Babbacombe Lee Live Again recorded live during the 2011 tour revisiting the Babbacombe Lee album first issued in 1971. In 2012, the band also released By Popular Request, a reworking in the studio of a number of the most popular songs in the band's repertoire (as determined by a mysterious consultation and voting process conducted by the band with its fans).
As of 2020 the band still continue to write and record music, regularly producing new studio albums, the most recent releases being 2015's Myths and Heroes, 2017's 50:50@50 and 2020's Shuffle and Go. The Covid-19 Pandemic impacted significantly on their ability to tour, and their 2022 tour was initially cut short after several of the touring team developed Covid.
Public recognition
The mainstream media has increasingly recognized Fairport Convention's historical importance. They received a "Lifetime Achievement Award" at the 2002 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards. In the same year Free Reed Records, an independent label, released Fairport Unconventional, a four-CD boxed set of rare and unreleased recordings from the band's 35-year career. At the 2006 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards they received an award when their seminal album Liege & Lief was voted 'Most Influential Folk Album of All Time' by Radio 2 listeners. At the 2007 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards Fairport Convention received an award recognising the late Sandy Denny and the band for "Favourite Folk Track of All Time" for "Who Knows Where the Time Goes?".
Personnel
Members
Current members
Simon Nicol – guitar, vocal (1967–1971, 1976–1979, 1985–present)
Dave Pegg – bass guitar, mandolin, backing vocal (1969–1979, 1985–present)
Ric Sanders – fiddles, occasional keyboards (1985–present)
Chris Leslie – fiddle, mandolin, bouzouki, vocal (1996–present)
Gerry Conway – drums, percussion (1998–present)
Former members
Richard Thompson – guitar, vocal (1967–1971)
Ashley Hutchings – bass guitar (1967–1969)
Shaun Frater – drums (1967)
Martin Lamble – drums (1967–1969; died 1969)
Judy Dyble – vocal, autoharp, piano, recorder (1967–1968; died 2020)
Iain Matthews – vocal (1967–1969)
Sandy Denny – vocal, guitar, piano (1968–1969, 1974–1975; died 1978)
Dave Swarbrick – fiddle, mandolin, vocal (1969–1979; died 2016)
Dave Mattacks – drums, keyboards, bass guitar (1969–1972, 1973–1975, 1985–1997)
Roger Hill – guitar, vocal (1971–1972; died 2011)
Tom Farnell – drums (1972)
David Rea – guitar (1972; died 2011)
Trevor Lucas – guitar, vocal (1972–1975; died 1989)
Jerry Donahue – guitar (1972–1975)
Paul Warren – drums (1975)
Bruce Rowland – drums (1975–1979; died 2015)
Dan Ar Braz – guitar (1976)
Bob Brady – piano (1976)
Roger Burridge – mandolin, fiddle (1976; died 2020)
Maartin Allcock – guitar, mandolin, keyboard, vocal (1985–1996; died 2018)
Lineups
Timeline
Discography
Filmography
Tony Palmer's Film of Fairport Convention and Matthews Southern Comfort, directed by Tony Palmer, featuring Fairport's appearance at the Maidstone Fiesta in 1970. Originally released as a VHS video by MusicFolk/Weintraub, re-released on DVD by Voiceprint Records in 2007, soundtrack CD issued by Voiceprint as Live in Maidstone 1970 in 2009.
References
Citations
General sources
External links
English folk musical groups
English folk rock groups
Ashley Hutchings
1967 establishments in England
Musical groups established in 1967
A&M Records artists
Island Records artists
Polydor Records artists
Rough Trade Records artists
Transatlantic Records artists
Vertigo Records artists | false | [
"DIVA () was a South Korean hip-hop girl group that debuted in 1997 with members Chae Ri-na, Vicky, and Ji Ni. After the release of the group's first two albums, Funky Diva (1997) and Snappy Diva (1998), Ji Ni left the group and was replaced by new member Lee Min Kyoung. After the release of the group's third album Millennium (1999), Chae Ri-na left the group and Ji Ni re-joined. DIVA went on to release the albums Naughty Diva (2000), Perfect (2001), Luxury Diva (2002), Renaissance (2004), and Only Diva (2005) before disbanding in 2005.\n\nHistory\n\n1997-1999: - Debut with Funky Diva, Snappy Diva, Millenium, Dream and line-up changes \nDIVA debuted with their first album titled Funky Diva in 1997 and their singles there was Yeah and Drama of December. Their single Yeah was popular in Korea peaking at number 5 at music charts. Their album sold about 270,000 copies. \n\nDIVA released their second album titled Snappy Diva in the summer of 1998 with singles titled Why (do you call me)? and Joy. Their single Why (do you call me)? was very popular, peaking at number 1 at music charts and was later remade by the girl group C.I.V.A, in 2016. Their single Joy was also popular. Their second album sold over 240,000 copies.\n\nDIVA released their third album titled Millenium with singles Yo Yo and Feel It in 1999. Their single Yo Yo peaked at number 3 in music charts and was also popular. Their third album sold over 100,000 copies. After the promotions, they released their English Album titled Dream in Taiwan with the single I'll Get Your Love and was popular in Taiwan selling over 30,000 copies. However, after their promotions in Taiwan, leader Chae Rina left and Lee Min Kyoung was added.\n\n2000-2002 - Naughty Diva, Perfect! and Luxury Diva \nDIVA released their fourth album titled Naughty Diva in 2000, with the singles Up & Down and In This Winter. DIVA still remained popular even though popular member and leader Chae Rina left the group. Their album sold 112,788 copies.\n\nDIVA released their fifth album titled Perfect! in 2001 with singles Perfect! and DVD. Perfect! peaked at #6 in music charts. The album sold 69,069+ copies in 2001.\n\nDIVA released their sixth album, a feat achieved by few girl groups in Korea, titled Luxury Diva which saw DIVA change their styles with luxurious and dark concepts. Their singles where Lust in the Wind and Action. Their album was less popular than their last 5 albums with Action peaking only at number 14 in music charts. The album sold about 46,840 copies.\n\n2003-2005 - Best, Renaissance, Only Diva and disbandment \nDIVA released their first compilation album in 2003 titled Best compiling their popular singles during their active times in Korea from 1997 to 2002. The album sold about 20,000 copies.\n\nDIVA released their seventh album titled Renaissance with singles Hey Boy and Amoremio. Their single Hey Boy peaked at number 11 and their seventh album sold about 17,797 copies.\n\nDIVA released their eight and last album before disbandment titled Only Diva with singles Smile and My Style. Their music video for Smile was filmed in China. This album sold 20,000 copies in Korea. After their promotions, DIVA announced their disbandment to focus on solo activities.\n\nArtistry\n\nDIVA's artistry and genre was different from the other girl groups out there at their active time. S.E.S & Fin.K.L have both a poppy genre, Baby V.O.X have a dance genre. But DIVA have a hip-hop genre that loved by many people in South Korea. DIVA was also popular in some Asian Countries like China and Taiwan. DIVA was known for having energetic and groovy music and videos that was peculiar at the height of their career.\n\nDiscography\n\nStudio albums\n\nEnglish albums\nDream (1999)\n\nCompilation albums\nBest World (2003)\n\nAwards and nominations\n\nReferences\n\nSouth Korean girl groups\nSouth Korean dance music groups\nMusical groups established in 1997\nMusical groups disestablished in 2005\nK-pop music groups\n1997 establishments in South Korea",
"Wyne Su Khine Thein (; born 24 December 1986) is a Burmese singer and actress. She is best known for her pleasant voice. Her debut album Mat Lout Sayar was released in 2009 and it was popular among audiences.\n\nEarly life and education\nWyne Su was born on 24 December 1986 in Yangon, Myanmar to parents Thein Htay and May Yee Aung. She attended high school at Basic Education High School No. 1 Dagon. She graduated with a degree B.A English from Dagon University.\n\nCareer\nWyne began her art work career in 2004. She has acted in over 130 films. Her debut album Mat Lout Sayar was released in 2009 and it was popular among audiences. Her second album Myet Hlae was released in 2011 and it also gained popularity. Then she became one of the most popular female singers in Myanmar. Her third album Ar Bwar was released in 2013. Her fourth album Khar Cha Nay Ya Tal was released in 2015. Her fifth album Gar was released in 2016. Her sixth album Mal Thida was released in 2017. Her seventh album Nwar Kyaung Thu was released in 2019.\n\nDiscography\n\nSolo Album\nMat Lout Sayar (မက်လောက်စရာ) (2009)\nMyet Hlae (မျက်လှည့်) (2011)\nAr Bwar (အာဘွား) (2013)\nGar (ဂါ) (2016)\nMal Thida (မယ်သီတာ-EP) (2017)\nNwar Kyaung Thu (နွားကျောင်းသူ) (2019)\n\nDuo Album\nKhar Cha Nay Ya Tal (ခါချနေရတယ်) (2015)\n\nFilmography\n\nKaba Sone Hti (2005)\nYadana (2006)\n\nConcerts\n\nList of awards and nominations received by Wine Su Khaing Thein\n\nCity FM awards \n\n|-\n| 2010\n| rowspan= \"5\"| Wine Su Khaing Thein\n| Best Selling Studio Music Album Female Vocalist of the Year \n| \n|-\n| rowspan= \"2\"| 2013\n| Most Popular Female Vocalist of the Year\n| \n|-\n| The Best Selling Studio Music Album Female Vocalist of the Year\n| \n|-\n| 2014\n| The Best Selling Studio Music Album Female Vocalist of the Year\n| \n|-\n| 2015\n| The Best Selling Studio Music Album Female Vocalist of the Year \n| \n|-\n| 2016\n| H&M Production\n| The Best Selling Studio Music Album Production of the Year\n| \n|-\n| 2020\n| Wine Su Khaing Thein \n| Most Popular Female Vocalist of the Year\n|\n\nShwe FM awards\n\n|-\n| rowspan= \"2\"| 2011\n| rowspan= \"5\"| Wine Su Khaing Thein\n| Best Couple song award\n| \n|-\n| Best Vocalist award\n| \n|-\n| 2013\n| Best Dress award\n| \n|-\n| 2016\n| Best Best Couple Song award \n| \n|-\n| 2020\n| Most Popular Song award\n| \n|-\n\nPadamyar FM awards\n\n|-\n| 2011\n| Herself\n| Artist of the Year\n| \n|-\n\nMyanmar Music awards\n\n|-\n| 2014\n| Herself\n| I Love Artist Award of Monsoon\n| \n|-\n\nJoox Myanmar Music awards\n\n|-\n| 2020\n| Herself\n| Joox Top 10 Artists of the Year \n| \n|-\n\nPersonal life\nWyne was married to Oakar Myint Kyu in 2014 and divorced in 2016.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\nLiving people\n1986 births\n21st-century Burmese actresses\n21st-century Burmese women singers\nBurmese pop singers\nPeople from Yangon"
]
|
[
"Fairport Convention",
"1998--present",
"What was Fairport Convention doing during 1998",
"Fairport produced two more studio albums for Woodworm Records:",
"What was the name of one of the albums",
"The Wood and the Wire (2000)",
"Was this album popular",
"I don't know."
]
| C_f6c0f186ff404c2a9abd89ac79601c3d_0 | What is the name of the other album | 4 | In addition to The Wood and the Wire, what is the name of another Fairport Convention album? | Fairport Convention | In 1998, Dave Mattacks moved to the USA and Gerry Conway took over on drums and percussion. Fairport produced two more studio albums for Woodworm Records: The Wood and the Wire (2000) and XXXV (2002). Then for Over the Next Hill (2004) they established a new label: Matty Grooves Records. In this period the band toured extensively in the UK, Europe, Australasia, Europe, the USA and Canada, and staged a major fund raiser for Dave Swarbrick at the Birmingham Symphony Hall. In 1998, members of the band began their association with the Breton musician Alan Simon. Working in collaboration with numerous others, members of Fairport (predominantly Nicol and Leslie) have performed in and participated in the recordings of all Simon's rock operas, including the Excalibur trilogy (1998, 2007, 2010) and Anne de Bretagne (2008). 2007 was their fortieth anniversary year and they celebrated by releasing a new album, Sense of Occasion. They performed the whole of the Liege & Lief album live at Cropredy, since 2004 renamed Fairport's Cropredy Convention, featuring the 1969 line-up of Dave Swarbrick, Ashley Hutchings, Dave Mattacks, Simon Nicol and Richard Thompson, with singer-songwriter Chris While taking the place of Sandy Denny. Footage of the festival, although not the Liege and Lief performance, was released as part of a celebratory DVD. The band's first official YouTube video appeared in April 2008. Edited from footage shot for the DVD, the nine-minute mini-documentary includes interviews with Lulu, Jools Holland, Seth Lakeman, Mike Harding, Geoff Hughes and Frank Skinner. In 2011, the band released a new studio album Festival Bell, the first new album in four years. This was followed in 2012 by Babbacombe Lee Live Again recorded live during the 2011 tour revisiting the Babbacombe Lee album first issued in 1971. In 2012, the band also released By Popular Request, a reworking in the studio of a number of the most popular songs in the band's repertoire (as determined by a mysterious consultation and voting process conducted by the band with its fans). In January 2015, four years after their previous studio album of original material (Festival Bell), Fairport Convention released a new one entitled Myths and Heroes. CANNOTANSWER | XXXV (2002). | Fairport Convention are a British folk rock band, formed in 1967 by guitarists Richard Thompson and Simon Nicol, bassist Ashley Hutchings and drummer Shaun Frater (with Frater replaced by Martin Lamble after their first gig.) They started out heavily influenced by American folk rock, with a setlist dominated by Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell songs and a sound that earned them the nickname "the British Jefferson Airplane". Vocalists Judy Dyble and Iain Matthews joined them before the recording of their self-titled debut in 1968; afterwards, Dyble was replaced by Sandy Denny, with Matthews later leaving during the recording of their third album.
Denny began steering the group towards traditional British music for their next two albums, What We Did on Our Holidays and Unhalfbricking (both 1969); the latter featured fiddler Dave "Swarb" Swarbrick, most notably on the song "A Sailor's Life", which laid the groundwork for British folk rock by being the first time a traditional British song was combined with a rock beat. Shortly before the album's release, a crash on the M1 motorway killed Lamble and Jeannie Franklyn, Thompson's then-girlfriend; this resulted in the group retiring most of their prior material and turning entirely towards British folk music for their seminal album Liege & Lief, released the same year. This style became the band's focus ever since. For this album Swarbrick joined full time alongside drummer Dave Mattacks. Both Denny and Hutchings left before the year's end; the latter replaced by Dave Pegg, who has remained the group's sole consistent member to this day; Thompson would leave after the recording of 1970's Full House.
The 1970s saw numerous lineup changes around the core of Swarbrick and Pegg – Nicol being absent for the middle of the decade – and declining fortunes as folk music fell out of mainstream favour. Denny, whose partner Trevor Lucas had been a guitarist in the group since 1972, returned for the pop-oriented Rising for the Moon album in 1975 in a final bid to crack America; this effort failed, and after three more albums minus Denny and Lucas, the group disbanded in 1979. They played a farewell concert in the village of Cropredy, Oxfordshire, where they had held small concerts since 1976, and this marked the beginning of the Cropredy Festival (since 2005 known as Fairport's Cropredy Convention) which has become the largest folk festival in Britain, with annual attendances of 20,000.
The band was reformed by Nicol, Pegg, and Mattacks in 1985, joined by Maartin Allcock (guitar, vocals) and Ric Sanders (fiddle, keyboards), and they have remained active since. Allcock was replaced by Chris Leslie in 1996, and Gerry Conway replaced Mattacks in 1998, with this lineup remaining unchanged since and marking the longest-lasting of the group's history. Their 28th studio album, 50:50@50, released to mark their 50th anniversary, was released in 2017, and they continue to headline Cropredy each year.
Despite little mainstream success – their only top 40 single being "Si Tu Dois Partir", a French-language cover of the Dylan song "If You Gotta Go, Go Now" from Unhalfbricking – Fairport Convention remain highly influential in British folk rock and British folk in general. Liege & Lief was named the "Most Influential Folk Album of All Time" at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards in 2006, and Pegg's playing style, which incorporates jigs and reels into his basslines, has been imitated by many in the folk rock and folk punk genres. Additionally, many former members went on to form or join other notable groups in the genre, including Fotheringay, Steeleye Span, and the Albion Band; along with solo careers, most notably Thompson and Denny. Sandy Denny's career ended with her death in 1978, though she is now regarded as being amongst Britain's finest female singer-songwriters; her song "Who Knows Where the Time Goes?" – recorded by Fairport on Unhalfbricking – has become a signature song for herself and the band.
History
Origins
Bassist Ashley Hutchings met guitarist Simon Nicol in North London in 1966 when they both played in the Ethnic Shuffle Orchestra. They rehearsed on the floor above Nicol's father's medical practice in a house called "Fairport" on Fortis Green in Muswell Hill – the same street on which Ray and Dave Davies of the Kinks grew up. The house name lent its name to the group they formed together as Fairport Convention in 1967 with Richard Thompson on guitar and Shaun Frater on drums. After their initial performance at St Michael's Church Hall in Golders Green on 27 May 1967, they had their first of many line-up changes as one member of the audience, drummer Martin Lamble, convinced the band that he could do a better job than Frater and replaced him. They soon added a female singer, Judy Dyble, which gave them a distinctive sound among the many London bands of the period.
1967–69: The first three albums
Fairport Convention were soon playing regularly at underground venues such as UFO and The Electric Garden, which later became the Middle Earth club. After only a few months, they caught the attention of manager Joe Boyd who secured them a contract with Polydor Records. Boyd suggested they augment the line-up with another male vocalist. Singer Iain Matthews (then known as Ian MacDonald) joined the band, and their first album, Fairport Convention, was recorded in late 1967 and released in June 1968. At this early stage Fairport looked to North American folk and folk rock acts such as Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, and The Byrds for material and inspiration. The name "Fairport Convention" and the use of two lead vocalists led many new listeners to believe that they were an American act, earning them the nickname 'the British Jefferson Airplane' during this period. Fairport Convention played alongside Jefferson Airplane at the First Isle of Wight Festival, 1968.
After disappointing album sales they signed a new contract with Island Records. Before their next recording Judy Dyble left – she described it as being "unceremoniously dumped" – and was replaced by the band with Sandy Denny, a folk singer who had previously recorded as a soloist and with Strawbs. Denny's distinctive voice, described by Clive James as "open space, low-volume, high-intensity", is one of the characteristics of two albums released in 1969: What We Did on Our Holidays and Unhalfbricking. These recordings marked the growth of much greater musicality and song-writing ability among the band. The first of these featured the Thompson-penned "Meet on the Ledge", which became their second single and eventually the band's unofficial anthem.
During the recording of Unhalfbricking, Matthews left after having sung on only one song, eventually to form Matthews Southern Comfort. He was not replaced; the other male members covered his vocal parts. The album featured a guest appearance by Birmingham folk fiddler Dave Swarbrick on a recording of "A Sailor's Life", a traditional song brought to the band by Denny from her folk club days. The recording of this track marked an important turning point for the band, sparking an interest in traditional music in Ashley Hutchings that led him to detailed research in the English Folk Dance and Song Society Library at Cecil Sharp House; this theme would become the basis for their next, much more ambitious, recording project.
These two albums began to gain the band wider recognition. Radio DJ John Peel championed their music, playing their albums on his influential BBC shows. Peel also recorded a number of sessions which were later released as the album Heyday (1987). They enjoyed some mainstream success when they entered the singles charts with "Si Tu Dois Partir", a French-language version of Bob Dylan's "If You Gotta Go, Go Now". The record just missed the top twenty, but secured the band a slot on Top of the Pops, Britain's most popular television pop music programme at the time. In 1969 four members of the band, one uncredited and three with pseudonyms, featured as backing musicians on the album Love Chronicles by Scottish folk artist Al Stewart.
Developing British folk rock
On 12 May 1969, on the way home from a gig at Birmingham venue Mothers, Fairport's van crashed on the M1 motorway. Martin Lamble, aged only nineteen, and Jeannie Franklyn, Richard Thompson's girlfriend, were killed. The rest of the band suffered injuries of varying severity. They nearly decided to disband. However, they reconvened with Dave Mattacks taking over drumming duties and Dave Swarbrick, having made contribution to Unhalfbricking, now joined as a full member. Boyd set the band up in a rented house in Farley Chamberlayne near Winchester in Hampshire, where they recuperated and worked on the integration of British folk music into rock and roll, which would result in the fourth album Liege & Lief.
Usually considered the highpoint of the band's long career, Liege & Lief was a huge leap forward in concept and musicality. The album consisted of six traditional tracks and three original compositions in a similar style. The traditional tracks included two sustained epics: "Tam Lin", which was over seven minutes in length, and "Matty Groves", at over eight. There was a medley of four traditional tunes, arranged, and, like many of the tracks, enlivened, by Swarbrick's energetic fiddle playing. The first side was bracketed by original compositions "Come all ye" and "Farewell, Farewell", which, in addition to information on the inside of the gatefold cover on Hutchings' research, explaining English folk traditions, helped give the record the feel of a concept album. "Farewell, Farewell" and the final track "Crazy Man Michael", also saw the full emergence of the distinctive song writing talent of Thompson that was to characterize his contributions to the band and later solo career. The distinctive sound of the album came from the use of electric instruments and Mattacks' disciplined drumming with Swarbrick's fiddle accompaniment in a surprising and powerful combination of rock with the traditional. The entire band had reached new levels of musicality, with the fluid guitar playing of Thompson and the "ethereal" vocal of Denny particularly characteristic of the sound of the album. As the reviewer from AllMusic put it, the album was characterised by the "fusing [of] time-worn folk with electric instruments while honoring both".
A few British bands had earlier experimented with playing traditional English songs on electric instruments, (including Strawbs and Pentangle), but Fairport Convention was the first English band to do this in a concerted and focused way. Fairport Convention's achievement was not to invent folk rock, but to create a distinctly English branch of the genre, which would develop alongside, and interact with, American inspired music, but which can also be seen as a distinctively national reaction in opposition to it. Liege & Lief was launched with a sell-out concert in London's Royal Festival Hall late in 1969. It reached number 17 in the UK album chart, where it spent fifteen weeks.
1970s: A time of change
Disagreements arose about the direction of the band in the wake of this success. Ashley Hutchings wanted to explore more traditional material and left to form two groups that would rival Fairport for significance in English folk rock: Steeleye Span and the Albion Band. Sandy Denny also left to found her own group Fotheringay. Dave Pegg took over on bass guitar and has been the group's one constant ever since, in an unbroken membership of over four decades. The band made no serious attempt to replace Denny, and, although she would briefly return, the sound of the band would now be characterized by male vocals.
Despite these changes the band produced another album, Full House (1970), which was remarkably successful as a project. Like its predecessor, it combined traditional songs, including a powerful rendition of "Sir Patrick Spens", with original compositions. The latter benefited from the writing partnership of Thompson and Swarbrick, most obviously on "Walk Awhile", which would become a concert favourite. Despite the loss of Denny the band still possessed four vocalists, including the emerging voices of Nicol and Swarbrick, whose tones would dominate the sound of this period. It was favourably reviewed in Britain and America, drawing comparisons with the Band from Rolling Stone magazine who declared that "Fairport Convention is better than ever". The album reached number 13 in the UK Chart and stayed in the chart for eleven weeks. The same year the band released a single 'Now Be Thankful' and made its American debut, touring with Traffic and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.
In the recurring pattern, soon after the album's release Thompson left the band to pursue other projects and eventually his solo career. This left Simon Nicol as the only original member and Dave Swarbrick emerged as the leading force in the band. In 1970 the members and their families had moved into The Angel, a former pub in Hertfordshire and this inspired the next album Angel Delight (1971) the band's first to chart in the US, peaking at number 200 on the Billboard 200 and their only top ten album in the UK. The next project was an ambitious folk-rock opera developed by Swarbrick, based on the life of John "Babbacombe" Lee, "the man they couldn't hang" and released with the title Babbacombe Lee (1971). The concept format, originally without clear tracks, excited considerable press interest and it received good air play in the United States where it reached number 195. A version was produced by the BBC for TV in 1975 with narration by Melvyn Bragg. These two albums were also notable as the first time that Fairport had recorded consecutively with the same line-up, but inevitably stability did not last: Simon Nicol left early in late 1971 to join Ashley Hutchings' Albion Band and he was soon followed by Mattacks.
Only Pegg and Swarbrick remained and the following few years have been dubbed 'Fairport confusion' as a bewildering sequence of band members came and went, but by 1973 Mattacks had returned and two former members of Sandy Denny's Fotheringay had joined the band, Denny's Australian husband Trevor Lucas on vocals and guitar and American Jerry Donahue on lead guitar. From these line-ups the band produced two studio albums: Rosie, notable for the Swarbrick penned title track (1973) and Nine (1974), the ninth studio album by the band. The last of these contained writing contributions by Lucas to five of the nine tracks, which together with Donahue's country influences and outstanding guitar pyrotechnics gave the album a very distinctive feel.
Denny rejoined the band in 1974 and there were considerable expectations, both artistic and commercial, placed on this line-up. Denny was featured on the album Rising for the Moon (1975), which became the band's highest US chart album when it reached number 143 on the Billboard 200 and the first album to reach the top one-hundred in the UK since Angel Delight, reaching no 52. During the Rising sessions, Mattacks fell out with producer Glyn Johns and was replaced by former Grease Band drummer Bruce Rowland. Poor UK sales for Rising did not aid morale and, despite the relative success of the line-up, Lucas and Donahue left the band, as did Denny in 1976. She died aged 31, in 1978, of a cerebral haemorrhage after falling down a flight of stairs.
Rowland, Pegg, and Swarbrick fulfilled their remaining contractual obligations to Island Records by turning what had originally been a Swarbrick solo effort into the album Gottle O'Geer (1976) under the name 'Fairport' (as opposed to Fairport Convention) in the UK, and as 'Fairport featuring Dave Swarbrick' in the US, and with various session players and production by Simon Nicol, who subsequently rejoined the band. They then signed with Vertigo, but record sales continued to decline and after producing two of four contracted albums, The Bonny Bunch of Roses (1977) and Tipplers Tales (1978), Vertigo bought them out of their contract. It is claimed by members of the band that this was the only recording money they had seen up to that point.
1979–1985: The Cropredy era
By 1979 the mainstream market for folk rock had largely disappeared, the band had no record deal, and Dave Swarbrick had been diagnosed with tinnitus, which made loud electric gigs increasingly difficult. Fairport decided to disband. They played a farewell tour and a final outdoor concert on 4 August in Cropredy, the Oxfordshire village where Dave and Christine Pegg lived. The finality of this occasion was mitigated by the announcement that the band would meet for a reunion.
In August 1979, the band played at Knebworth Festival in England. The headline act at both their appearances at the festival, over two consecutive Saturdays on 4 and 11 August, were Led Zeppelin.
No record company wanted to release the live recordings of the tour and concert, so the Peggs founded Woodworm Records, which would be the major outlet for the band in the future. Members continued to take part in occasional gigs, particularly in festivals in continental Europe, and after a year they staged a reunion concert in Cropredy which became the annual Cropredy Festival. Over the next few years, it grew rapidly and emerged as the major mechanism for sustaining the band. In August 1981, the band held their annual reunion concert at Broughton Castle, rather than the usual Cropredy location. The concert was recorded, and released on the 1982 album Moat on the Ledge.
The Peggs continued to record and release the Cropredy concerts as 'official bootlegs'. These were supplemented by New Year's gigs in minor locations including the Half Moon at Putney and the Gloucester Leisure Centre. In 1983 the magazine Fairport Fanatics (later Dirty Linen), was created: a testament to the continued existence of a dedicated fan base.
The Angel Delight lineup of Simon Nicol, Dave Swarbrick, Dave Pegg, and Dave Mattacks played a number of gigs in the UK in the early 80s, then toured extensively in the UK and the US in 1984 and 1985. Band alumni like Richard Thompson and Bruce Rowland would occasionally join in.
The remaining members pursued their own lives and careers outside of the band. Nicol, Pegg, and Mattacks had recorded and toured with Richard and Linda Thompson at times in the 1970s, and did so again during this period, culminating in their appearance on the Shoot Out the Lights album and tour in 1982. Bruce Rowlands gave up the music business and moved to Denmark and as a result Dave Mattacks returned as drummer for Fairport's occasional gigs. Dave Pegg was the first of several Fairporters to join Jethro Tull which gave him well-paying steady employment. Simon Nicol had teamed up with Dave Swarbrick in a highly regarded acoustic duo, but this partnership was made difficult by Swarbrick's sudden decision to move to Scotland, where, from 1984 he began to focus on his new project Whippersnapper.
In 1985, Pegg, Nicol and Mattacks found that they all had some free time and an available studio belonging to Pegg. They decided that they needed some new material to add to the catalogue that had been suspended in 1978. As Swarbrick was unavailable, the selection of traditional tunes was more difficult than for past albums and there was a need for a replacement fiddle player and some vocals. Pegg and Nicol took over arranging duties on an instrumental medley and the band turned to sometime Albion Band members: jazz and folk violinist Ric Sanders and singer-songwriter Cathy Lesurf. They also had the help of ex-member Richard Thompson. Thompson and Lesurf contributed songs and took part in the recordings. Also important to the album was Ralph McTell who contributed one song and co-wrote one track each with Nicol and Mattacks; the former of these, "The Hiring Fair", would become a stage fixture of the future Fairport.
The resulting album Gladys' Leap (1985) was generally well received in the music and national press, but caused some tension with Swarbrick who refused to play any of the new material at the 1985 Cropredy Festival. Nevertheless, the decision to reform the band, without Swarbrick, was taken by the other three remaining members. Ric Sanders was invited to join, along with guitarist, composer, arranger and multi-instrumentalist Maartin Allcock. Nicol, with his developing baritone voice, took over the main share of the vocal duties. This line-up was to last eleven years, the longest period of membership stability in the band's history so far.
1986–1997: Stability
The new band began a hectic schedule of performing in Britain and the World and prepared material for a new album. The result was the all-instrumental Expletive Delighted! (1986). This showcased the virtuosity of Sanders and Allcock, but perhaps inevitably was not popular with all fans. This was followed by the recording In Real Time: Live '87 which managed to capture the energy and power of the new Fairport on stage, despite the fact that it was recorded in the studio with audience reactions dubbed on.
In this period the band were playing to larger and larger audiences, both on tour and at Cropredy, and it was very productive in terms of recording. Fairport had the considerable composing and arranging skills of Allcock and, to fill the gap created by a lack of a songwriter in the band, they turned to some of the most talented available in the contemporary folk scene. The results were Red & Gold (1989) The Five Seasons (1990) and Jewel in the Crown (1995), the last of which was judged "their bestselling and undoubtedly finest album in years."
At this point, with Mattacks busy with other projects, the band shifted to an acoustic format for touring and released the unplugged Old New Borrowed Blue as "Fairport Acoustic Convention" in 1996. For a while the four-piece acoustic line-up ran in parallel with the electric format. When Allcock left the band, he was replaced by Chris Leslie on vocals, mandolin and fiddle, who formerly worked with Swarbrick in Whippersnapper, and had a one-off stint with the band replacing Ric Sanders for 1992 Cropredy Festival. This meant that for the first time since reforming, the band had a recognized songwriter who contributed significantly to the band's output on the next album Who Knows Where the Time Goes? (1997), particularly the rousing "John Gaudie". By the time of the 30th anniversary Festival at Cropredy in 1997, the new Fairport had been in existence for over a decade and contributed a significant chapter to the history of the band.
1998–present
Dave Mattacks moved to the US in 1998, and Gerry Conway took over on drums and percussion. Fairport produced two more studio albums for Woodworm Records: The Wood and the Wire (2000) and XXXV (2002). Then, for Over the Next Hill (2004) they established a new label: Matty Grooves Records. In this period the band toured extensively in the UK, Europe, Australasia, Europe, the US and Canada, and staged a major fund raiser for Dave Swarbrick at the Birmingham Symphony Hall. In 1998, members of the band began their association with the Breton musician Alan Simon. Working in collaboration with numerous others, members of Fairport (predominantly Nicol and Leslie) have performed in and participated in the recordings of all Simon's rock operas, including the Excalibur trilogy (1998, 2007, 2010) and Anne de Bretagne (2008).
2007 was their fortieth anniversary year and they celebrated by releasing a new album, Sense of Occasion. They performed the whole of the Liege & Lief album live at Cropredy, since 2004 renamed Fairport's Cropredy Convention, featuring the 1969 line-up of Dave Swarbrick, Ashley Hutchings, Dave Mattacks, Simon Nicol and Richard Thompson, with singer-songwriter Chris While taking the place of Sandy Denny. Footage of the festival, although not the Liege and Lief performance, was released as part of a celebratory DVD.
The band's first official YouTube video appeared in April 2008. Edited from footage shot for the DVD, the nine-minute mini-documentary includes interviews with Lulu, Jools Holland, Seth Lakeman, Mike Harding, Geoff Hughes and Frank Skinner.
In 2011, the band released a new studio album Festival Bell, the first new album in four years. This was followed in 2012 by Babbacombe Lee Live Again recorded live during the 2011 tour revisiting the Babbacombe Lee album first issued in 1971. In 2012, the band also released By Popular Request, a reworking in the studio of a number of the most popular songs in the band's repertoire (as determined by a mysterious consultation and voting process conducted by the band with its fans).
As of 2020 the band still continue to write and record music, regularly producing new studio albums, the most recent releases being 2015's Myths and Heroes, 2017's 50:50@50 and 2020's Shuffle and Go. The Covid-19 Pandemic impacted significantly on their ability to tour, and their 2022 tour was initially cut short after several of the touring team developed Covid.
Public recognition
The mainstream media has increasingly recognized Fairport Convention's historical importance. They received a "Lifetime Achievement Award" at the 2002 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards. In the same year Free Reed Records, an independent label, released Fairport Unconventional, a four-CD boxed set of rare and unreleased recordings from the band's 35-year career. At the 2006 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards they received an award when their seminal album Liege & Lief was voted 'Most Influential Folk Album of All Time' by Radio 2 listeners. At the 2007 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards Fairport Convention received an award recognising the late Sandy Denny and the band for "Favourite Folk Track of All Time" for "Who Knows Where the Time Goes?".
Personnel
Members
Current members
Simon Nicol – guitar, vocal (1967–1971, 1976–1979, 1985–present)
Dave Pegg – bass guitar, mandolin, backing vocal (1969–1979, 1985–present)
Ric Sanders – fiddles, occasional keyboards (1985–present)
Chris Leslie – fiddle, mandolin, bouzouki, vocal (1996–present)
Gerry Conway – drums, percussion (1998–present)
Former members
Richard Thompson – guitar, vocal (1967–1971)
Ashley Hutchings – bass guitar (1967–1969)
Shaun Frater – drums (1967)
Martin Lamble – drums (1967–1969; died 1969)
Judy Dyble – vocal, autoharp, piano, recorder (1967–1968; died 2020)
Iain Matthews – vocal (1967–1969)
Sandy Denny – vocal, guitar, piano (1968–1969, 1974–1975; died 1978)
Dave Swarbrick – fiddle, mandolin, vocal (1969–1979; died 2016)
Dave Mattacks – drums, keyboards, bass guitar (1969–1972, 1973–1975, 1985–1997)
Roger Hill – guitar, vocal (1971–1972; died 2011)
Tom Farnell – drums (1972)
David Rea – guitar (1972; died 2011)
Trevor Lucas – guitar, vocal (1972–1975; died 1989)
Jerry Donahue – guitar (1972–1975)
Paul Warren – drums (1975)
Bruce Rowland – drums (1975–1979; died 2015)
Dan Ar Braz – guitar (1976)
Bob Brady – piano (1976)
Roger Burridge – mandolin, fiddle (1976; died 2020)
Maartin Allcock – guitar, mandolin, keyboard, vocal (1985–1996; died 2018)
Lineups
Timeline
Discography
Filmography
Tony Palmer's Film of Fairport Convention and Matthews Southern Comfort, directed by Tony Palmer, featuring Fairport's appearance at the Maidstone Fiesta in 1970. Originally released as a VHS video by MusicFolk/Weintraub, re-released on DVD by Voiceprint Records in 2007, soundtrack CD issued by Voiceprint as Live in Maidstone 1970 in 2009.
References
Citations
General sources
External links
English folk musical groups
English folk rock groups
Ashley Hutchings
1967 establishments in England
Musical groups established in 1967
A&M Records artists
Island Records artists
Polydor Records artists
Rough Trade Records artists
Transatlantic Records artists
Vertigo Records artists | true | [
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]
|
[
"Fairport Convention",
"1998--present",
"What was Fairport Convention doing during 1998",
"Fairport produced two more studio albums for Woodworm Records:",
"What was the name of one of the albums",
"The Wood and the Wire (2000)",
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"What is the name of the other album",
"XXXV (2002)."
]
| C_f6c0f186ff404c2a9abd89ac79601c3d_0 | What did they do after those 2 albums | 5 | What did Fairport Convention do after the albums The Wood and the Wire and XXXV? | Fairport Convention | In 1998, Dave Mattacks moved to the USA and Gerry Conway took over on drums and percussion. Fairport produced two more studio albums for Woodworm Records: The Wood and the Wire (2000) and XXXV (2002). Then for Over the Next Hill (2004) they established a new label: Matty Grooves Records. In this period the band toured extensively in the UK, Europe, Australasia, Europe, the USA and Canada, and staged a major fund raiser for Dave Swarbrick at the Birmingham Symphony Hall. In 1998, members of the band began their association with the Breton musician Alan Simon. Working in collaboration with numerous others, members of Fairport (predominantly Nicol and Leslie) have performed in and participated in the recordings of all Simon's rock operas, including the Excalibur trilogy (1998, 2007, 2010) and Anne de Bretagne (2008). 2007 was their fortieth anniversary year and they celebrated by releasing a new album, Sense of Occasion. They performed the whole of the Liege & Lief album live at Cropredy, since 2004 renamed Fairport's Cropredy Convention, featuring the 1969 line-up of Dave Swarbrick, Ashley Hutchings, Dave Mattacks, Simon Nicol and Richard Thompson, with singer-songwriter Chris While taking the place of Sandy Denny. Footage of the festival, although not the Liege and Lief performance, was released as part of a celebratory DVD. The band's first official YouTube video appeared in April 2008. Edited from footage shot for the DVD, the nine-minute mini-documentary includes interviews with Lulu, Jools Holland, Seth Lakeman, Mike Harding, Geoff Hughes and Frank Skinner. In 2011, the band released a new studio album Festival Bell, the first new album in four years. This was followed in 2012 by Babbacombe Lee Live Again recorded live during the 2011 tour revisiting the Babbacombe Lee album first issued in 1971. In 2012, the band also released By Popular Request, a reworking in the studio of a number of the most popular songs in the band's repertoire (as determined by a mysterious consultation and voting process conducted by the band with its fans). In January 2015, four years after their previous studio album of original material (Festival Bell), Fairport Convention released a new one entitled Myths and Heroes. CANNOTANSWER | Then for Over the Next Hill (2004) they established a new label: Matty Grooves Records. | Fairport Convention are a British folk rock band, formed in 1967 by guitarists Richard Thompson and Simon Nicol, bassist Ashley Hutchings and drummer Shaun Frater (with Frater replaced by Martin Lamble after their first gig.) They started out heavily influenced by American folk rock, with a setlist dominated by Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell songs and a sound that earned them the nickname "the British Jefferson Airplane". Vocalists Judy Dyble and Iain Matthews joined them before the recording of their self-titled debut in 1968; afterwards, Dyble was replaced by Sandy Denny, with Matthews later leaving during the recording of their third album.
Denny began steering the group towards traditional British music for their next two albums, What We Did on Our Holidays and Unhalfbricking (both 1969); the latter featured fiddler Dave "Swarb" Swarbrick, most notably on the song "A Sailor's Life", which laid the groundwork for British folk rock by being the first time a traditional British song was combined with a rock beat. Shortly before the album's release, a crash on the M1 motorway killed Lamble and Jeannie Franklyn, Thompson's then-girlfriend; this resulted in the group retiring most of their prior material and turning entirely towards British folk music for their seminal album Liege & Lief, released the same year. This style became the band's focus ever since. For this album Swarbrick joined full time alongside drummer Dave Mattacks. Both Denny and Hutchings left before the year's end; the latter replaced by Dave Pegg, who has remained the group's sole consistent member to this day; Thompson would leave after the recording of 1970's Full House.
The 1970s saw numerous lineup changes around the core of Swarbrick and Pegg – Nicol being absent for the middle of the decade – and declining fortunes as folk music fell out of mainstream favour. Denny, whose partner Trevor Lucas had been a guitarist in the group since 1972, returned for the pop-oriented Rising for the Moon album in 1975 in a final bid to crack America; this effort failed, and after three more albums minus Denny and Lucas, the group disbanded in 1979. They played a farewell concert in the village of Cropredy, Oxfordshire, where they had held small concerts since 1976, and this marked the beginning of the Cropredy Festival (since 2005 known as Fairport's Cropredy Convention) which has become the largest folk festival in Britain, with annual attendances of 20,000.
The band was reformed by Nicol, Pegg, and Mattacks in 1985, joined by Maartin Allcock (guitar, vocals) and Ric Sanders (fiddle, keyboards), and they have remained active since. Allcock was replaced by Chris Leslie in 1996, and Gerry Conway replaced Mattacks in 1998, with this lineup remaining unchanged since and marking the longest-lasting of the group's history. Their 28th studio album, 50:50@50, released to mark their 50th anniversary, was released in 2017, and they continue to headline Cropredy each year.
Despite little mainstream success – their only top 40 single being "Si Tu Dois Partir", a French-language cover of the Dylan song "If You Gotta Go, Go Now" from Unhalfbricking – Fairport Convention remain highly influential in British folk rock and British folk in general. Liege & Lief was named the "Most Influential Folk Album of All Time" at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards in 2006, and Pegg's playing style, which incorporates jigs and reels into his basslines, has been imitated by many in the folk rock and folk punk genres. Additionally, many former members went on to form or join other notable groups in the genre, including Fotheringay, Steeleye Span, and the Albion Band; along with solo careers, most notably Thompson and Denny. Sandy Denny's career ended with her death in 1978, though she is now regarded as being amongst Britain's finest female singer-songwriters; her song "Who Knows Where the Time Goes?" – recorded by Fairport on Unhalfbricking – has become a signature song for herself and the band.
History
Origins
Bassist Ashley Hutchings met guitarist Simon Nicol in North London in 1966 when they both played in the Ethnic Shuffle Orchestra. They rehearsed on the floor above Nicol's father's medical practice in a house called "Fairport" on Fortis Green in Muswell Hill – the same street on which Ray and Dave Davies of the Kinks grew up. The house name lent its name to the group they formed together as Fairport Convention in 1967 with Richard Thompson on guitar and Shaun Frater on drums. After their initial performance at St Michael's Church Hall in Golders Green on 27 May 1967, they had their first of many line-up changes as one member of the audience, drummer Martin Lamble, convinced the band that he could do a better job than Frater and replaced him. They soon added a female singer, Judy Dyble, which gave them a distinctive sound among the many London bands of the period.
1967–69: The first three albums
Fairport Convention were soon playing regularly at underground venues such as UFO and The Electric Garden, which later became the Middle Earth club. After only a few months, they caught the attention of manager Joe Boyd who secured them a contract with Polydor Records. Boyd suggested they augment the line-up with another male vocalist. Singer Iain Matthews (then known as Ian MacDonald) joined the band, and their first album, Fairport Convention, was recorded in late 1967 and released in June 1968. At this early stage Fairport looked to North American folk and folk rock acts such as Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, and The Byrds for material and inspiration. The name "Fairport Convention" and the use of two lead vocalists led many new listeners to believe that they were an American act, earning them the nickname 'the British Jefferson Airplane' during this period. Fairport Convention played alongside Jefferson Airplane at the First Isle of Wight Festival, 1968.
After disappointing album sales they signed a new contract with Island Records. Before their next recording Judy Dyble left – she described it as being "unceremoniously dumped" – and was replaced by the band with Sandy Denny, a folk singer who had previously recorded as a soloist and with Strawbs. Denny's distinctive voice, described by Clive James as "open space, low-volume, high-intensity", is one of the characteristics of two albums released in 1969: What We Did on Our Holidays and Unhalfbricking. These recordings marked the growth of much greater musicality and song-writing ability among the band. The first of these featured the Thompson-penned "Meet on the Ledge", which became their second single and eventually the band's unofficial anthem.
During the recording of Unhalfbricking, Matthews left after having sung on only one song, eventually to form Matthews Southern Comfort. He was not replaced; the other male members covered his vocal parts. The album featured a guest appearance by Birmingham folk fiddler Dave Swarbrick on a recording of "A Sailor's Life", a traditional song brought to the band by Denny from her folk club days. The recording of this track marked an important turning point for the band, sparking an interest in traditional music in Ashley Hutchings that led him to detailed research in the English Folk Dance and Song Society Library at Cecil Sharp House; this theme would become the basis for their next, much more ambitious, recording project.
These two albums began to gain the band wider recognition. Radio DJ John Peel championed their music, playing their albums on his influential BBC shows. Peel also recorded a number of sessions which were later released as the album Heyday (1987). They enjoyed some mainstream success when they entered the singles charts with "Si Tu Dois Partir", a French-language version of Bob Dylan's "If You Gotta Go, Go Now". The record just missed the top twenty, but secured the band a slot on Top of the Pops, Britain's most popular television pop music programme at the time. In 1969 four members of the band, one uncredited and three with pseudonyms, featured as backing musicians on the album Love Chronicles by Scottish folk artist Al Stewart.
Developing British folk rock
On 12 May 1969, on the way home from a gig at Birmingham venue Mothers, Fairport's van crashed on the M1 motorway. Martin Lamble, aged only nineteen, and Jeannie Franklyn, Richard Thompson's girlfriend, were killed. The rest of the band suffered injuries of varying severity. They nearly decided to disband. However, they reconvened with Dave Mattacks taking over drumming duties and Dave Swarbrick, having made contribution to Unhalfbricking, now joined as a full member. Boyd set the band up in a rented house in Farley Chamberlayne near Winchester in Hampshire, where they recuperated and worked on the integration of British folk music into rock and roll, which would result in the fourth album Liege & Lief.
Usually considered the highpoint of the band's long career, Liege & Lief was a huge leap forward in concept and musicality. The album consisted of six traditional tracks and three original compositions in a similar style. The traditional tracks included two sustained epics: "Tam Lin", which was over seven minutes in length, and "Matty Groves", at over eight. There was a medley of four traditional tunes, arranged, and, like many of the tracks, enlivened, by Swarbrick's energetic fiddle playing. The first side was bracketed by original compositions "Come all ye" and "Farewell, Farewell", which, in addition to information on the inside of the gatefold cover on Hutchings' research, explaining English folk traditions, helped give the record the feel of a concept album. "Farewell, Farewell" and the final track "Crazy Man Michael", also saw the full emergence of the distinctive song writing talent of Thompson that was to characterize his contributions to the band and later solo career. The distinctive sound of the album came from the use of electric instruments and Mattacks' disciplined drumming with Swarbrick's fiddle accompaniment in a surprising and powerful combination of rock with the traditional. The entire band had reached new levels of musicality, with the fluid guitar playing of Thompson and the "ethereal" vocal of Denny particularly characteristic of the sound of the album. As the reviewer from AllMusic put it, the album was characterised by the "fusing [of] time-worn folk with electric instruments while honoring both".
A few British bands had earlier experimented with playing traditional English songs on electric instruments, (including Strawbs and Pentangle), but Fairport Convention was the first English band to do this in a concerted and focused way. Fairport Convention's achievement was not to invent folk rock, but to create a distinctly English branch of the genre, which would develop alongside, and interact with, American inspired music, but which can also be seen as a distinctively national reaction in opposition to it. Liege & Lief was launched with a sell-out concert in London's Royal Festival Hall late in 1969. It reached number 17 in the UK album chart, where it spent fifteen weeks.
1970s: A time of change
Disagreements arose about the direction of the band in the wake of this success. Ashley Hutchings wanted to explore more traditional material and left to form two groups that would rival Fairport for significance in English folk rock: Steeleye Span and the Albion Band. Sandy Denny also left to found her own group Fotheringay. Dave Pegg took over on bass guitar and has been the group's one constant ever since, in an unbroken membership of over four decades. The band made no serious attempt to replace Denny, and, although she would briefly return, the sound of the band would now be characterized by male vocals.
Despite these changes the band produced another album, Full House (1970), which was remarkably successful as a project. Like its predecessor, it combined traditional songs, including a powerful rendition of "Sir Patrick Spens", with original compositions. The latter benefited from the writing partnership of Thompson and Swarbrick, most obviously on "Walk Awhile", which would become a concert favourite. Despite the loss of Denny the band still possessed four vocalists, including the emerging voices of Nicol and Swarbrick, whose tones would dominate the sound of this period. It was favourably reviewed in Britain and America, drawing comparisons with the Band from Rolling Stone magazine who declared that "Fairport Convention is better than ever". The album reached number 13 in the UK Chart and stayed in the chart for eleven weeks. The same year the band released a single 'Now Be Thankful' and made its American debut, touring with Traffic and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.
In the recurring pattern, soon after the album's release Thompson left the band to pursue other projects and eventually his solo career. This left Simon Nicol as the only original member and Dave Swarbrick emerged as the leading force in the band. In 1970 the members and their families had moved into The Angel, a former pub in Hertfordshire and this inspired the next album Angel Delight (1971) the band's first to chart in the US, peaking at number 200 on the Billboard 200 and their only top ten album in the UK. The next project was an ambitious folk-rock opera developed by Swarbrick, based on the life of John "Babbacombe" Lee, "the man they couldn't hang" and released with the title Babbacombe Lee (1971). The concept format, originally without clear tracks, excited considerable press interest and it received good air play in the United States where it reached number 195. A version was produced by the BBC for TV in 1975 with narration by Melvyn Bragg. These two albums were also notable as the first time that Fairport had recorded consecutively with the same line-up, but inevitably stability did not last: Simon Nicol left early in late 1971 to join Ashley Hutchings' Albion Band and he was soon followed by Mattacks.
Only Pegg and Swarbrick remained and the following few years have been dubbed 'Fairport confusion' as a bewildering sequence of band members came and went, but by 1973 Mattacks had returned and two former members of Sandy Denny's Fotheringay had joined the band, Denny's Australian husband Trevor Lucas on vocals and guitar and American Jerry Donahue on lead guitar. From these line-ups the band produced two studio albums: Rosie, notable for the Swarbrick penned title track (1973) and Nine (1974), the ninth studio album by the band. The last of these contained writing contributions by Lucas to five of the nine tracks, which together with Donahue's country influences and outstanding guitar pyrotechnics gave the album a very distinctive feel.
Denny rejoined the band in 1974 and there were considerable expectations, both artistic and commercial, placed on this line-up. Denny was featured on the album Rising for the Moon (1975), which became the band's highest US chart album when it reached number 143 on the Billboard 200 and the first album to reach the top one-hundred in the UK since Angel Delight, reaching no 52. During the Rising sessions, Mattacks fell out with producer Glyn Johns and was replaced by former Grease Band drummer Bruce Rowland. Poor UK sales for Rising did not aid morale and, despite the relative success of the line-up, Lucas and Donahue left the band, as did Denny in 1976. She died aged 31, in 1978, of a cerebral haemorrhage after falling down a flight of stairs.
Rowland, Pegg, and Swarbrick fulfilled their remaining contractual obligations to Island Records by turning what had originally been a Swarbrick solo effort into the album Gottle O'Geer (1976) under the name 'Fairport' (as opposed to Fairport Convention) in the UK, and as 'Fairport featuring Dave Swarbrick' in the US, and with various session players and production by Simon Nicol, who subsequently rejoined the band. They then signed with Vertigo, but record sales continued to decline and after producing two of four contracted albums, The Bonny Bunch of Roses (1977) and Tipplers Tales (1978), Vertigo bought them out of their contract. It is claimed by members of the band that this was the only recording money they had seen up to that point.
1979–1985: The Cropredy era
By 1979 the mainstream market for folk rock had largely disappeared, the band had no record deal, and Dave Swarbrick had been diagnosed with tinnitus, which made loud electric gigs increasingly difficult. Fairport decided to disband. They played a farewell tour and a final outdoor concert on 4 August in Cropredy, the Oxfordshire village where Dave and Christine Pegg lived. The finality of this occasion was mitigated by the announcement that the band would meet for a reunion.
In August 1979, the band played at Knebworth Festival in England. The headline act at both their appearances at the festival, over two consecutive Saturdays on 4 and 11 August, were Led Zeppelin.
No record company wanted to release the live recordings of the tour and concert, so the Peggs founded Woodworm Records, which would be the major outlet for the band in the future. Members continued to take part in occasional gigs, particularly in festivals in continental Europe, and after a year they staged a reunion concert in Cropredy which became the annual Cropredy Festival. Over the next few years, it grew rapidly and emerged as the major mechanism for sustaining the band. In August 1981, the band held their annual reunion concert at Broughton Castle, rather than the usual Cropredy location. The concert was recorded, and released on the 1982 album Moat on the Ledge.
The Peggs continued to record and release the Cropredy concerts as 'official bootlegs'. These were supplemented by New Year's gigs in minor locations including the Half Moon at Putney and the Gloucester Leisure Centre. In 1983 the magazine Fairport Fanatics (later Dirty Linen), was created: a testament to the continued existence of a dedicated fan base.
The Angel Delight lineup of Simon Nicol, Dave Swarbrick, Dave Pegg, and Dave Mattacks played a number of gigs in the UK in the early 80s, then toured extensively in the UK and the US in 1984 and 1985. Band alumni like Richard Thompson and Bruce Rowland would occasionally join in.
The remaining members pursued their own lives and careers outside of the band. Nicol, Pegg, and Mattacks had recorded and toured with Richard and Linda Thompson at times in the 1970s, and did so again during this period, culminating in their appearance on the Shoot Out the Lights album and tour in 1982. Bruce Rowlands gave up the music business and moved to Denmark and as a result Dave Mattacks returned as drummer for Fairport's occasional gigs. Dave Pegg was the first of several Fairporters to join Jethro Tull which gave him well-paying steady employment. Simon Nicol had teamed up with Dave Swarbrick in a highly regarded acoustic duo, but this partnership was made difficult by Swarbrick's sudden decision to move to Scotland, where, from 1984 he began to focus on his new project Whippersnapper.
In 1985, Pegg, Nicol and Mattacks found that they all had some free time and an available studio belonging to Pegg. They decided that they needed some new material to add to the catalogue that had been suspended in 1978. As Swarbrick was unavailable, the selection of traditional tunes was more difficult than for past albums and there was a need for a replacement fiddle player and some vocals. Pegg and Nicol took over arranging duties on an instrumental medley and the band turned to sometime Albion Band members: jazz and folk violinist Ric Sanders and singer-songwriter Cathy Lesurf. They also had the help of ex-member Richard Thompson. Thompson and Lesurf contributed songs and took part in the recordings. Also important to the album was Ralph McTell who contributed one song and co-wrote one track each with Nicol and Mattacks; the former of these, "The Hiring Fair", would become a stage fixture of the future Fairport.
The resulting album Gladys' Leap (1985) was generally well received in the music and national press, but caused some tension with Swarbrick who refused to play any of the new material at the 1985 Cropredy Festival. Nevertheless, the decision to reform the band, without Swarbrick, was taken by the other three remaining members. Ric Sanders was invited to join, along with guitarist, composer, arranger and multi-instrumentalist Maartin Allcock. Nicol, with his developing baritone voice, took over the main share of the vocal duties. This line-up was to last eleven years, the longest period of membership stability in the band's history so far.
1986–1997: Stability
The new band began a hectic schedule of performing in Britain and the World and prepared material for a new album. The result was the all-instrumental Expletive Delighted! (1986). This showcased the virtuosity of Sanders and Allcock, but perhaps inevitably was not popular with all fans. This was followed by the recording In Real Time: Live '87 which managed to capture the energy and power of the new Fairport on stage, despite the fact that it was recorded in the studio with audience reactions dubbed on.
In this period the band were playing to larger and larger audiences, both on tour and at Cropredy, and it was very productive in terms of recording. Fairport had the considerable composing and arranging skills of Allcock and, to fill the gap created by a lack of a songwriter in the band, they turned to some of the most talented available in the contemporary folk scene. The results were Red & Gold (1989) The Five Seasons (1990) and Jewel in the Crown (1995), the last of which was judged "their bestselling and undoubtedly finest album in years."
At this point, with Mattacks busy with other projects, the band shifted to an acoustic format for touring and released the unplugged Old New Borrowed Blue as "Fairport Acoustic Convention" in 1996. For a while the four-piece acoustic line-up ran in parallel with the electric format. When Allcock left the band, he was replaced by Chris Leslie on vocals, mandolin and fiddle, who formerly worked with Swarbrick in Whippersnapper, and had a one-off stint with the band replacing Ric Sanders for 1992 Cropredy Festival. This meant that for the first time since reforming, the band had a recognized songwriter who contributed significantly to the band's output on the next album Who Knows Where the Time Goes? (1997), particularly the rousing "John Gaudie". By the time of the 30th anniversary Festival at Cropredy in 1997, the new Fairport had been in existence for over a decade and contributed a significant chapter to the history of the band.
1998–present
Dave Mattacks moved to the US in 1998, and Gerry Conway took over on drums and percussion. Fairport produced two more studio albums for Woodworm Records: The Wood and the Wire (2000) and XXXV (2002). Then, for Over the Next Hill (2004) they established a new label: Matty Grooves Records. In this period the band toured extensively in the UK, Europe, Australasia, Europe, the US and Canada, and staged a major fund raiser for Dave Swarbrick at the Birmingham Symphony Hall. In 1998, members of the band began their association with the Breton musician Alan Simon. Working in collaboration with numerous others, members of Fairport (predominantly Nicol and Leslie) have performed in and participated in the recordings of all Simon's rock operas, including the Excalibur trilogy (1998, 2007, 2010) and Anne de Bretagne (2008).
2007 was their fortieth anniversary year and they celebrated by releasing a new album, Sense of Occasion. They performed the whole of the Liege & Lief album live at Cropredy, since 2004 renamed Fairport's Cropredy Convention, featuring the 1969 line-up of Dave Swarbrick, Ashley Hutchings, Dave Mattacks, Simon Nicol and Richard Thompson, with singer-songwriter Chris While taking the place of Sandy Denny. Footage of the festival, although not the Liege and Lief performance, was released as part of a celebratory DVD.
The band's first official YouTube video appeared in April 2008. Edited from footage shot for the DVD, the nine-minute mini-documentary includes interviews with Lulu, Jools Holland, Seth Lakeman, Mike Harding, Geoff Hughes and Frank Skinner.
In 2011, the band released a new studio album Festival Bell, the first new album in four years. This was followed in 2012 by Babbacombe Lee Live Again recorded live during the 2011 tour revisiting the Babbacombe Lee album first issued in 1971. In 2012, the band also released By Popular Request, a reworking in the studio of a number of the most popular songs in the band's repertoire (as determined by a mysterious consultation and voting process conducted by the band with its fans).
As of 2020 the band still continue to write and record music, regularly producing new studio albums, the most recent releases being 2015's Myths and Heroes, 2017's 50:50@50 and 2020's Shuffle and Go. The Covid-19 Pandemic impacted significantly on their ability to tour, and their 2022 tour was initially cut short after several of the touring team developed Covid.
Public recognition
The mainstream media has increasingly recognized Fairport Convention's historical importance. They received a "Lifetime Achievement Award" at the 2002 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards. In the same year Free Reed Records, an independent label, released Fairport Unconventional, a four-CD boxed set of rare and unreleased recordings from the band's 35-year career. At the 2006 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards they received an award when their seminal album Liege & Lief was voted 'Most Influential Folk Album of All Time' by Radio 2 listeners. At the 2007 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards Fairport Convention received an award recognising the late Sandy Denny and the band for "Favourite Folk Track of All Time" for "Who Knows Where the Time Goes?".
Personnel
Members
Current members
Simon Nicol – guitar, vocal (1967–1971, 1976–1979, 1985–present)
Dave Pegg – bass guitar, mandolin, backing vocal (1969–1979, 1985–present)
Ric Sanders – fiddles, occasional keyboards (1985–present)
Chris Leslie – fiddle, mandolin, bouzouki, vocal (1996–present)
Gerry Conway – drums, percussion (1998–present)
Former members
Richard Thompson – guitar, vocal (1967–1971)
Ashley Hutchings – bass guitar (1967–1969)
Shaun Frater – drums (1967)
Martin Lamble – drums (1967–1969; died 1969)
Judy Dyble – vocal, autoharp, piano, recorder (1967–1968; died 2020)
Iain Matthews – vocal (1967–1969)
Sandy Denny – vocal, guitar, piano (1968–1969, 1974–1975; died 1978)
Dave Swarbrick – fiddle, mandolin, vocal (1969–1979; died 2016)
Dave Mattacks – drums, keyboards, bass guitar (1969–1972, 1973–1975, 1985–1997)
Roger Hill – guitar, vocal (1971–1972; died 2011)
Tom Farnell – drums (1972)
David Rea – guitar (1972; died 2011)
Trevor Lucas – guitar, vocal (1972–1975; died 1989)
Jerry Donahue – guitar (1972–1975)
Paul Warren – drums (1975)
Bruce Rowland – drums (1975–1979; died 2015)
Dan Ar Braz – guitar (1976)
Bob Brady – piano (1976)
Roger Burridge – mandolin, fiddle (1976; died 2020)
Maartin Allcock – guitar, mandolin, keyboard, vocal (1985–1996; died 2018)
Lineups
Timeline
Discography
Filmography
Tony Palmer's Film of Fairport Convention and Matthews Southern Comfort, directed by Tony Palmer, featuring Fairport's appearance at the Maidstone Fiesta in 1970. Originally released as a VHS video by MusicFolk/Weintraub, re-released on DVD by Voiceprint Records in 2007, soundtrack CD issued by Voiceprint as Live in Maidstone 1970 in 2009.
References
Citations
General sources
External links
English folk musical groups
English folk rock groups
Ashley Hutchings
1967 establishments in England
Musical groups established in 1967
A&M Records artists
Island Records artists
Polydor Records artists
Rough Trade Records artists
Transatlantic Records artists
Vertigo Records artists | false | [
"Understanding is a compilation album by female R&B act Xscape, released on December 22, 2002.\n\nTrack listing \nLet Me Know – 3:41\nLove on My Mind – 3:51\nUnderstanding – 5:42\nWhat Can I Do – 3:06\nDo Like Lovers Do – 4:36\nWork Me Slow – 4:13\nDo You Want To – 5:43\nI Will – 4:11\nMy Little Secret – 4:29\nOne of Those Love Songs – 4:15\n\nAlbums produced by Jermaine Dupri\nXscape (group) compilations albums\n2002 compilation albums",
"Timeless is the thirty-fifth studio album by Bobby Vinton, released in 1989. Two singles came from this album: \"It's Been One of Those Days\" and \"Please Tell Her That I Said Hello\".\n\nTrack listing\n\nSide 1\n \"Please Tell Her That I Said Hello\" - (Michael Shepstone, Peter Dibbens) - 3:29\n \"The Only Fire That Burns\" - (Bucky Jones, Johnny Russell) - 3:23\n \"Ain't No Pleasin' You\" - (Chas Hodges, Dave Peacock) - 3:57\n \"The Last Rose\" - (C.F. House) - 3:16\n \"What Did You Do With Your Old 45s\" - (Pam A. Hanna, George Pickard) - 3:55\n\nSide 2\n \"(Now and Then There's) A Fool Such as I\" - (Bill Trader) - 2:34\n \"How Old Do You Get\" - (Peter McCann, Chip Young) - 3:09\n \"Getting Used to Being Loved Again\" - (Gene Dobbins, Glenn Ray) - 2:22\n \"It's Been One of Those Days\" - (Chester Lester, Tim DuBois, Mike Seals) - 3:02\n \"I Made Love (With You Tonight)\" - (Terry Skinner, J.L. Wallace, Tommy Rocco) - 3:02\n\nCharts\nSingles - Billboard (United States)\n\nReferences\n\n1989 albums\nBobby Vinton albums\nCurb Records albums"
]
|
[
"Fairport Convention",
"1998--present",
"What was Fairport Convention doing during 1998",
"Fairport produced two more studio albums for Woodworm Records:",
"What was the name of one of the albums",
"The Wood and the Wire (2000)",
"Was this album popular",
"I don't know.",
"What is the name of the other album",
"XXXV (2002).",
"What did they do after those 2 albums",
"Then for Over the Next Hill (2004) they established a new label: Matty Grooves Records."
]
| C_f6c0f186ff404c2a9abd89ac79601c3d_0 | Tell me more about Matty Grooves Records | 6 | Can you tell me more about Matty Grooves Records? | Fairport Convention | In 1998, Dave Mattacks moved to the USA and Gerry Conway took over on drums and percussion. Fairport produced two more studio albums for Woodworm Records: The Wood and the Wire (2000) and XXXV (2002). Then for Over the Next Hill (2004) they established a new label: Matty Grooves Records. In this period the band toured extensively in the UK, Europe, Australasia, Europe, the USA and Canada, and staged a major fund raiser for Dave Swarbrick at the Birmingham Symphony Hall. In 1998, members of the band began their association with the Breton musician Alan Simon. Working in collaboration with numerous others, members of Fairport (predominantly Nicol and Leslie) have performed in and participated in the recordings of all Simon's rock operas, including the Excalibur trilogy (1998, 2007, 2010) and Anne de Bretagne (2008). 2007 was their fortieth anniversary year and they celebrated by releasing a new album, Sense of Occasion. They performed the whole of the Liege & Lief album live at Cropredy, since 2004 renamed Fairport's Cropredy Convention, featuring the 1969 line-up of Dave Swarbrick, Ashley Hutchings, Dave Mattacks, Simon Nicol and Richard Thompson, with singer-songwriter Chris While taking the place of Sandy Denny. Footage of the festival, although not the Liege and Lief performance, was released as part of a celebratory DVD. The band's first official YouTube video appeared in April 2008. Edited from footage shot for the DVD, the nine-minute mini-documentary includes interviews with Lulu, Jools Holland, Seth Lakeman, Mike Harding, Geoff Hughes and Frank Skinner. In 2011, the band released a new studio album Festival Bell, the first new album in four years. This was followed in 2012 by Babbacombe Lee Live Again recorded live during the 2011 tour revisiting the Babbacombe Lee album first issued in 1971. In 2012, the band also released By Popular Request, a reworking in the studio of a number of the most popular songs in the band's repertoire (as determined by a mysterious consultation and voting process conducted by the band with its fans). In January 2015, four years after their previous studio album of original material (Festival Bell), Fairport Convention released a new one entitled Myths and Heroes. CANNOTANSWER | In this period the band toured extensively in the UK, Europe, Australasia, Europe, the USA and Canada, | Fairport Convention are a British folk rock band, formed in 1967 by guitarists Richard Thompson and Simon Nicol, bassist Ashley Hutchings and drummer Shaun Frater (with Frater replaced by Martin Lamble after their first gig.) They started out heavily influenced by American folk rock, with a setlist dominated by Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell songs and a sound that earned them the nickname "the British Jefferson Airplane". Vocalists Judy Dyble and Iain Matthews joined them before the recording of their self-titled debut in 1968; afterwards, Dyble was replaced by Sandy Denny, with Matthews later leaving during the recording of their third album.
Denny began steering the group towards traditional British music for their next two albums, What We Did on Our Holidays and Unhalfbricking (both 1969); the latter featured fiddler Dave "Swarb" Swarbrick, most notably on the song "A Sailor's Life", which laid the groundwork for British folk rock by being the first time a traditional British song was combined with a rock beat. Shortly before the album's release, a crash on the M1 motorway killed Lamble and Jeannie Franklyn, Thompson's then-girlfriend; this resulted in the group retiring most of their prior material and turning entirely towards British folk music for their seminal album Liege & Lief, released the same year. This style became the band's focus ever since. For this album Swarbrick joined full time alongside drummer Dave Mattacks. Both Denny and Hutchings left before the year's end; the latter replaced by Dave Pegg, who has remained the group's sole consistent member to this day; Thompson would leave after the recording of 1970's Full House.
The 1970s saw numerous lineup changes around the core of Swarbrick and Pegg – Nicol being absent for the middle of the decade – and declining fortunes as folk music fell out of mainstream favour. Denny, whose partner Trevor Lucas had been a guitarist in the group since 1972, returned for the pop-oriented Rising for the Moon album in 1975 in a final bid to crack America; this effort failed, and after three more albums minus Denny and Lucas, the group disbanded in 1979. They played a farewell concert in the village of Cropredy, Oxfordshire, where they had held small concerts since 1976, and this marked the beginning of the Cropredy Festival (since 2005 known as Fairport's Cropredy Convention) which has become the largest folk festival in Britain, with annual attendances of 20,000.
The band was reformed by Nicol, Pegg, and Mattacks in 1985, joined by Maartin Allcock (guitar, vocals) and Ric Sanders (fiddle, keyboards), and they have remained active since. Allcock was replaced by Chris Leslie in 1996, and Gerry Conway replaced Mattacks in 1998, with this lineup remaining unchanged since and marking the longest-lasting of the group's history. Their 28th studio album, 50:50@50, released to mark their 50th anniversary, was released in 2017, and they continue to headline Cropredy each year.
Despite little mainstream success – their only top 40 single being "Si Tu Dois Partir", a French-language cover of the Dylan song "If You Gotta Go, Go Now" from Unhalfbricking – Fairport Convention remain highly influential in British folk rock and British folk in general. Liege & Lief was named the "Most Influential Folk Album of All Time" at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards in 2006, and Pegg's playing style, which incorporates jigs and reels into his basslines, has been imitated by many in the folk rock and folk punk genres. Additionally, many former members went on to form or join other notable groups in the genre, including Fotheringay, Steeleye Span, and the Albion Band; along with solo careers, most notably Thompson and Denny. Sandy Denny's career ended with her death in 1978, though she is now regarded as being amongst Britain's finest female singer-songwriters; her song "Who Knows Where the Time Goes?" – recorded by Fairport on Unhalfbricking – has become a signature song for herself and the band.
History
Origins
Bassist Ashley Hutchings met guitarist Simon Nicol in North London in 1966 when they both played in the Ethnic Shuffle Orchestra. They rehearsed on the floor above Nicol's father's medical practice in a house called "Fairport" on Fortis Green in Muswell Hill – the same street on which Ray and Dave Davies of the Kinks grew up. The house name lent its name to the group they formed together as Fairport Convention in 1967 with Richard Thompson on guitar and Shaun Frater on drums. After their initial performance at St Michael's Church Hall in Golders Green on 27 May 1967, they had their first of many line-up changes as one member of the audience, drummer Martin Lamble, convinced the band that he could do a better job than Frater and replaced him. They soon added a female singer, Judy Dyble, which gave them a distinctive sound among the many London bands of the period.
1967–69: The first three albums
Fairport Convention were soon playing regularly at underground venues such as UFO and The Electric Garden, which later became the Middle Earth club. After only a few months, they caught the attention of manager Joe Boyd who secured them a contract with Polydor Records. Boyd suggested they augment the line-up with another male vocalist. Singer Iain Matthews (then known as Ian MacDonald) joined the band, and their first album, Fairport Convention, was recorded in late 1967 and released in June 1968. At this early stage Fairport looked to North American folk and folk rock acts such as Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, and The Byrds for material and inspiration. The name "Fairport Convention" and the use of two lead vocalists led many new listeners to believe that they were an American act, earning them the nickname 'the British Jefferson Airplane' during this period. Fairport Convention played alongside Jefferson Airplane at the First Isle of Wight Festival, 1968.
After disappointing album sales they signed a new contract with Island Records. Before their next recording Judy Dyble left – she described it as being "unceremoniously dumped" – and was replaced by the band with Sandy Denny, a folk singer who had previously recorded as a soloist and with Strawbs. Denny's distinctive voice, described by Clive James as "open space, low-volume, high-intensity", is one of the characteristics of two albums released in 1969: What We Did on Our Holidays and Unhalfbricking. These recordings marked the growth of much greater musicality and song-writing ability among the band. The first of these featured the Thompson-penned "Meet on the Ledge", which became their second single and eventually the band's unofficial anthem.
During the recording of Unhalfbricking, Matthews left after having sung on only one song, eventually to form Matthews Southern Comfort. He was not replaced; the other male members covered his vocal parts. The album featured a guest appearance by Birmingham folk fiddler Dave Swarbrick on a recording of "A Sailor's Life", a traditional song brought to the band by Denny from her folk club days. The recording of this track marked an important turning point for the band, sparking an interest in traditional music in Ashley Hutchings that led him to detailed research in the English Folk Dance and Song Society Library at Cecil Sharp House; this theme would become the basis for their next, much more ambitious, recording project.
These two albums began to gain the band wider recognition. Radio DJ John Peel championed their music, playing their albums on his influential BBC shows. Peel also recorded a number of sessions which were later released as the album Heyday (1987). They enjoyed some mainstream success when they entered the singles charts with "Si Tu Dois Partir", a French-language version of Bob Dylan's "If You Gotta Go, Go Now". The record just missed the top twenty, but secured the band a slot on Top of the Pops, Britain's most popular television pop music programme at the time. In 1969 four members of the band, one uncredited and three with pseudonyms, featured as backing musicians on the album Love Chronicles by Scottish folk artist Al Stewart.
Developing British folk rock
On 12 May 1969, on the way home from a gig at Birmingham venue Mothers, Fairport's van crashed on the M1 motorway. Martin Lamble, aged only nineteen, and Jeannie Franklyn, Richard Thompson's girlfriend, were killed. The rest of the band suffered injuries of varying severity. They nearly decided to disband. However, they reconvened with Dave Mattacks taking over drumming duties and Dave Swarbrick, having made contribution to Unhalfbricking, now joined as a full member. Boyd set the band up in a rented house in Farley Chamberlayne near Winchester in Hampshire, where they recuperated and worked on the integration of British folk music into rock and roll, which would result in the fourth album Liege & Lief.
Usually considered the highpoint of the band's long career, Liege & Lief was a huge leap forward in concept and musicality. The album consisted of six traditional tracks and three original compositions in a similar style. The traditional tracks included two sustained epics: "Tam Lin", which was over seven minutes in length, and "Matty Groves", at over eight. There was a medley of four traditional tunes, arranged, and, like many of the tracks, enlivened, by Swarbrick's energetic fiddle playing. The first side was bracketed by original compositions "Come all ye" and "Farewell, Farewell", which, in addition to information on the inside of the gatefold cover on Hutchings' research, explaining English folk traditions, helped give the record the feel of a concept album. "Farewell, Farewell" and the final track "Crazy Man Michael", also saw the full emergence of the distinctive song writing talent of Thompson that was to characterize his contributions to the band and later solo career. The distinctive sound of the album came from the use of electric instruments and Mattacks' disciplined drumming with Swarbrick's fiddle accompaniment in a surprising and powerful combination of rock with the traditional. The entire band had reached new levels of musicality, with the fluid guitar playing of Thompson and the "ethereal" vocal of Denny particularly characteristic of the sound of the album. As the reviewer from AllMusic put it, the album was characterised by the "fusing [of] time-worn folk with electric instruments while honoring both".
A few British bands had earlier experimented with playing traditional English songs on electric instruments, (including Strawbs and Pentangle), but Fairport Convention was the first English band to do this in a concerted and focused way. Fairport Convention's achievement was not to invent folk rock, but to create a distinctly English branch of the genre, which would develop alongside, and interact with, American inspired music, but which can also be seen as a distinctively national reaction in opposition to it. Liege & Lief was launched with a sell-out concert in London's Royal Festival Hall late in 1969. It reached number 17 in the UK album chart, where it spent fifteen weeks.
1970s: A time of change
Disagreements arose about the direction of the band in the wake of this success. Ashley Hutchings wanted to explore more traditional material and left to form two groups that would rival Fairport for significance in English folk rock: Steeleye Span and the Albion Band. Sandy Denny also left to found her own group Fotheringay. Dave Pegg took over on bass guitar and has been the group's one constant ever since, in an unbroken membership of over four decades. The band made no serious attempt to replace Denny, and, although she would briefly return, the sound of the band would now be characterized by male vocals.
Despite these changes the band produced another album, Full House (1970), which was remarkably successful as a project. Like its predecessor, it combined traditional songs, including a powerful rendition of "Sir Patrick Spens", with original compositions. The latter benefited from the writing partnership of Thompson and Swarbrick, most obviously on "Walk Awhile", which would become a concert favourite. Despite the loss of Denny the band still possessed four vocalists, including the emerging voices of Nicol and Swarbrick, whose tones would dominate the sound of this period. It was favourably reviewed in Britain and America, drawing comparisons with the Band from Rolling Stone magazine who declared that "Fairport Convention is better than ever". The album reached number 13 in the UK Chart and stayed in the chart for eleven weeks. The same year the band released a single 'Now Be Thankful' and made its American debut, touring with Traffic and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.
In the recurring pattern, soon after the album's release Thompson left the band to pursue other projects and eventually his solo career. This left Simon Nicol as the only original member and Dave Swarbrick emerged as the leading force in the band. In 1970 the members and their families had moved into The Angel, a former pub in Hertfordshire and this inspired the next album Angel Delight (1971) the band's first to chart in the US, peaking at number 200 on the Billboard 200 and their only top ten album in the UK. The next project was an ambitious folk-rock opera developed by Swarbrick, based on the life of John "Babbacombe" Lee, "the man they couldn't hang" and released with the title Babbacombe Lee (1971). The concept format, originally without clear tracks, excited considerable press interest and it received good air play in the United States where it reached number 195. A version was produced by the BBC for TV in 1975 with narration by Melvyn Bragg. These two albums were also notable as the first time that Fairport had recorded consecutively with the same line-up, but inevitably stability did not last: Simon Nicol left early in late 1971 to join Ashley Hutchings' Albion Band and he was soon followed by Mattacks.
Only Pegg and Swarbrick remained and the following few years have been dubbed 'Fairport confusion' as a bewildering sequence of band members came and went, but by 1973 Mattacks had returned and two former members of Sandy Denny's Fotheringay had joined the band, Denny's Australian husband Trevor Lucas on vocals and guitar and American Jerry Donahue on lead guitar. From these line-ups the band produced two studio albums: Rosie, notable for the Swarbrick penned title track (1973) and Nine (1974), the ninth studio album by the band. The last of these contained writing contributions by Lucas to five of the nine tracks, which together with Donahue's country influences and outstanding guitar pyrotechnics gave the album a very distinctive feel.
Denny rejoined the band in 1974 and there were considerable expectations, both artistic and commercial, placed on this line-up. Denny was featured on the album Rising for the Moon (1975), which became the band's highest US chart album when it reached number 143 on the Billboard 200 and the first album to reach the top one-hundred in the UK since Angel Delight, reaching no 52. During the Rising sessions, Mattacks fell out with producer Glyn Johns and was replaced by former Grease Band drummer Bruce Rowland. Poor UK sales for Rising did not aid morale and, despite the relative success of the line-up, Lucas and Donahue left the band, as did Denny in 1976. She died aged 31, in 1978, of a cerebral haemorrhage after falling down a flight of stairs.
Rowland, Pegg, and Swarbrick fulfilled their remaining contractual obligations to Island Records by turning what had originally been a Swarbrick solo effort into the album Gottle O'Geer (1976) under the name 'Fairport' (as opposed to Fairport Convention) in the UK, and as 'Fairport featuring Dave Swarbrick' in the US, and with various session players and production by Simon Nicol, who subsequently rejoined the band. They then signed with Vertigo, but record sales continued to decline and after producing two of four contracted albums, The Bonny Bunch of Roses (1977) and Tipplers Tales (1978), Vertigo bought them out of their contract. It is claimed by members of the band that this was the only recording money they had seen up to that point.
1979–1985: The Cropredy era
By 1979 the mainstream market for folk rock had largely disappeared, the band had no record deal, and Dave Swarbrick had been diagnosed with tinnitus, which made loud electric gigs increasingly difficult. Fairport decided to disband. They played a farewell tour and a final outdoor concert on 4 August in Cropredy, the Oxfordshire village where Dave and Christine Pegg lived. The finality of this occasion was mitigated by the announcement that the band would meet for a reunion.
In August 1979, the band played at Knebworth Festival in England. The headline act at both their appearances at the festival, over two consecutive Saturdays on 4 and 11 August, were Led Zeppelin.
No record company wanted to release the live recordings of the tour and concert, so the Peggs founded Woodworm Records, which would be the major outlet for the band in the future. Members continued to take part in occasional gigs, particularly in festivals in continental Europe, and after a year they staged a reunion concert in Cropredy which became the annual Cropredy Festival. Over the next few years, it grew rapidly and emerged as the major mechanism for sustaining the band. In August 1981, the band held their annual reunion concert at Broughton Castle, rather than the usual Cropredy location. The concert was recorded, and released on the 1982 album Moat on the Ledge.
The Peggs continued to record and release the Cropredy concerts as 'official bootlegs'. These were supplemented by New Year's gigs in minor locations including the Half Moon at Putney and the Gloucester Leisure Centre. In 1983 the magazine Fairport Fanatics (later Dirty Linen), was created: a testament to the continued existence of a dedicated fan base.
The Angel Delight lineup of Simon Nicol, Dave Swarbrick, Dave Pegg, and Dave Mattacks played a number of gigs in the UK in the early 80s, then toured extensively in the UK and the US in 1984 and 1985. Band alumni like Richard Thompson and Bruce Rowland would occasionally join in.
The remaining members pursued their own lives and careers outside of the band. Nicol, Pegg, and Mattacks had recorded and toured with Richard and Linda Thompson at times in the 1970s, and did so again during this period, culminating in their appearance on the Shoot Out the Lights album and tour in 1982. Bruce Rowlands gave up the music business and moved to Denmark and as a result Dave Mattacks returned as drummer for Fairport's occasional gigs. Dave Pegg was the first of several Fairporters to join Jethro Tull which gave him well-paying steady employment. Simon Nicol had teamed up with Dave Swarbrick in a highly regarded acoustic duo, but this partnership was made difficult by Swarbrick's sudden decision to move to Scotland, where, from 1984 he began to focus on his new project Whippersnapper.
In 1985, Pegg, Nicol and Mattacks found that they all had some free time and an available studio belonging to Pegg. They decided that they needed some new material to add to the catalogue that had been suspended in 1978. As Swarbrick was unavailable, the selection of traditional tunes was more difficult than for past albums and there was a need for a replacement fiddle player and some vocals. Pegg and Nicol took over arranging duties on an instrumental medley and the band turned to sometime Albion Band members: jazz and folk violinist Ric Sanders and singer-songwriter Cathy Lesurf. They also had the help of ex-member Richard Thompson. Thompson and Lesurf contributed songs and took part in the recordings. Also important to the album was Ralph McTell who contributed one song and co-wrote one track each with Nicol and Mattacks; the former of these, "The Hiring Fair", would become a stage fixture of the future Fairport.
The resulting album Gladys' Leap (1985) was generally well received in the music and national press, but caused some tension with Swarbrick who refused to play any of the new material at the 1985 Cropredy Festival. Nevertheless, the decision to reform the band, without Swarbrick, was taken by the other three remaining members. Ric Sanders was invited to join, along with guitarist, composer, arranger and multi-instrumentalist Maartin Allcock. Nicol, with his developing baritone voice, took over the main share of the vocal duties. This line-up was to last eleven years, the longest period of membership stability in the band's history so far.
1986–1997: Stability
The new band began a hectic schedule of performing in Britain and the World and prepared material for a new album. The result was the all-instrumental Expletive Delighted! (1986). This showcased the virtuosity of Sanders and Allcock, but perhaps inevitably was not popular with all fans. This was followed by the recording In Real Time: Live '87 which managed to capture the energy and power of the new Fairport on stage, despite the fact that it was recorded in the studio with audience reactions dubbed on.
In this period the band were playing to larger and larger audiences, both on tour and at Cropredy, and it was very productive in terms of recording. Fairport had the considerable composing and arranging skills of Allcock and, to fill the gap created by a lack of a songwriter in the band, they turned to some of the most talented available in the contemporary folk scene. The results were Red & Gold (1989) The Five Seasons (1990) and Jewel in the Crown (1995), the last of which was judged "their bestselling and undoubtedly finest album in years."
At this point, with Mattacks busy with other projects, the band shifted to an acoustic format for touring and released the unplugged Old New Borrowed Blue as "Fairport Acoustic Convention" in 1996. For a while the four-piece acoustic line-up ran in parallel with the electric format. When Allcock left the band, he was replaced by Chris Leslie on vocals, mandolin and fiddle, who formerly worked with Swarbrick in Whippersnapper, and had a one-off stint with the band replacing Ric Sanders for 1992 Cropredy Festival. This meant that for the first time since reforming, the band had a recognized songwriter who contributed significantly to the band's output on the next album Who Knows Where the Time Goes? (1997), particularly the rousing "John Gaudie". By the time of the 30th anniversary Festival at Cropredy in 1997, the new Fairport had been in existence for over a decade and contributed a significant chapter to the history of the band.
1998–present
Dave Mattacks moved to the US in 1998, and Gerry Conway took over on drums and percussion. Fairport produced two more studio albums for Woodworm Records: The Wood and the Wire (2000) and XXXV (2002). Then, for Over the Next Hill (2004) they established a new label: Matty Grooves Records. In this period the band toured extensively in the UK, Europe, Australasia, Europe, the US and Canada, and staged a major fund raiser for Dave Swarbrick at the Birmingham Symphony Hall. In 1998, members of the band began their association with the Breton musician Alan Simon. Working in collaboration with numerous others, members of Fairport (predominantly Nicol and Leslie) have performed in and participated in the recordings of all Simon's rock operas, including the Excalibur trilogy (1998, 2007, 2010) and Anne de Bretagne (2008).
2007 was their fortieth anniversary year and they celebrated by releasing a new album, Sense of Occasion. They performed the whole of the Liege & Lief album live at Cropredy, since 2004 renamed Fairport's Cropredy Convention, featuring the 1969 line-up of Dave Swarbrick, Ashley Hutchings, Dave Mattacks, Simon Nicol and Richard Thompson, with singer-songwriter Chris While taking the place of Sandy Denny. Footage of the festival, although not the Liege and Lief performance, was released as part of a celebratory DVD.
The band's first official YouTube video appeared in April 2008. Edited from footage shot for the DVD, the nine-minute mini-documentary includes interviews with Lulu, Jools Holland, Seth Lakeman, Mike Harding, Geoff Hughes and Frank Skinner.
In 2011, the band released a new studio album Festival Bell, the first new album in four years. This was followed in 2012 by Babbacombe Lee Live Again recorded live during the 2011 tour revisiting the Babbacombe Lee album first issued in 1971. In 2012, the band also released By Popular Request, a reworking in the studio of a number of the most popular songs in the band's repertoire (as determined by a mysterious consultation and voting process conducted by the band with its fans).
As of 2020 the band still continue to write and record music, regularly producing new studio albums, the most recent releases being 2015's Myths and Heroes, 2017's 50:50@50 and 2020's Shuffle and Go. The Covid-19 Pandemic impacted significantly on their ability to tour, and their 2022 tour was initially cut short after several of the touring team developed Covid.
Public recognition
The mainstream media has increasingly recognized Fairport Convention's historical importance. They received a "Lifetime Achievement Award" at the 2002 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards. In the same year Free Reed Records, an independent label, released Fairport Unconventional, a four-CD boxed set of rare and unreleased recordings from the band's 35-year career. At the 2006 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards they received an award when their seminal album Liege & Lief was voted 'Most Influential Folk Album of All Time' by Radio 2 listeners. At the 2007 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards Fairport Convention received an award recognising the late Sandy Denny and the band for "Favourite Folk Track of All Time" for "Who Knows Where the Time Goes?".
Personnel
Members
Current members
Simon Nicol – guitar, vocal (1967–1971, 1976–1979, 1985–present)
Dave Pegg – bass guitar, mandolin, backing vocal (1969–1979, 1985–present)
Ric Sanders – fiddles, occasional keyboards (1985–present)
Chris Leslie – fiddle, mandolin, bouzouki, vocal (1996–present)
Gerry Conway – drums, percussion (1998–present)
Former members
Richard Thompson – guitar, vocal (1967–1971)
Ashley Hutchings – bass guitar (1967–1969)
Shaun Frater – drums (1967)
Martin Lamble – drums (1967–1969; died 1969)
Judy Dyble – vocal, autoharp, piano, recorder (1967–1968; died 2020)
Iain Matthews – vocal (1967–1969)
Sandy Denny – vocal, guitar, piano (1968–1969, 1974–1975; died 1978)
Dave Swarbrick – fiddle, mandolin, vocal (1969–1979; died 2016)
Dave Mattacks – drums, keyboards, bass guitar (1969–1972, 1973–1975, 1985–1997)
Roger Hill – guitar, vocal (1971–1972; died 2011)
Tom Farnell – drums (1972)
David Rea – guitar (1972; died 2011)
Trevor Lucas – guitar, vocal (1972–1975; died 1989)
Jerry Donahue – guitar (1972–1975)
Paul Warren – drums (1975)
Bruce Rowland – drums (1975–1979; died 2015)
Dan Ar Braz – guitar (1976)
Bob Brady – piano (1976)
Roger Burridge – mandolin, fiddle (1976; died 2020)
Maartin Allcock – guitar, mandolin, keyboard, vocal (1985–1996; died 2018)
Lineups
Timeline
Discography
Filmography
Tony Palmer's Film of Fairport Convention and Matthews Southern Comfort, directed by Tony Palmer, featuring Fairport's appearance at the Maidstone Fiesta in 1970. Originally released as a VHS video by MusicFolk/Weintraub, re-released on DVD by Voiceprint Records in 2007, soundtrack CD issued by Voiceprint as Live in Maidstone 1970 in 2009.
References
Citations
General sources
External links
English folk musical groups
English folk rock groups
Ashley Hutchings
1967 establishments in England
Musical groups established in 1967
A&M Records artists
Island Records artists
Polydor Records artists
Rough Trade Records artists
Transatlantic Records artists
Vertigo Records artists | false | [
"Matty Grooves Records is a record label which was started by the members of Fairport Convention in 2004, when Woodworm Records was put into hold. The name is derived from the English folk song \"Matty Groves\".\n\nRelease list\n\nDVD release list\n\nSee also\n List of record labels\n\nRecord labels established in 2004\nFolk record labels\nBritish independent record labels",
"Challenger is the third full-length album by American metalcore band Memphis May Fire which was released June 26, 2012 via Rise Records. The band released the first single, \"Prove Me Right,\" on May 24. They also released the 5th track on the album, \"Vices,\" on June 13 as the second single from the album. On June 18, all of the songs were uploaded to YouTube on the Rise Records page.\nThe album debuted at number 16 on the Billboard 200, selling more than 18,000 copies in its first week.\n\nIt is the first album to have rhythm guitarist Anthony Sepe who replaced original member Ryan Bentley following his departure in April 2011.\n\nTrack listing\nAll lyrics written by Matty Mullins, all music composed by Kellen McGregor and Memphis May Fire\n\nPersonnel\n Matty Mullins – lead vocals, keyboards\n Kellen McGregor – lead guitar\n Anthony Sepe - rhythm guitar\n Cory Elder – bass guitar\n Jake Garland – drums\n\nReferences\n\n2012 albums\nMemphis May Fire albums\nRise Records albums"
]
|
[
"Fairport Convention",
"1998--present",
"What was Fairport Convention doing during 1998",
"Fairport produced two more studio albums for Woodworm Records:",
"What was the name of one of the albums",
"The Wood and the Wire (2000)",
"Was this album popular",
"I don't know.",
"What is the name of the other album",
"XXXV (2002).",
"What did they do after those 2 albums",
"Then for Over the Next Hill (2004) they established a new label: Matty Grooves Records.",
"Tell me more about Matty Grooves Records",
"In this period the band toured extensively in the UK, Europe, Australasia, Europe, the USA and Canada,"
]
| C_f6c0f186ff404c2a9abd89ac79601c3d_0 | Did they have success in their tours | 7 | Did Fairport Convention have success in their tours? | Fairport Convention | In 1998, Dave Mattacks moved to the USA and Gerry Conway took over on drums and percussion. Fairport produced two more studio albums for Woodworm Records: The Wood and the Wire (2000) and XXXV (2002). Then for Over the Next Hill (2004) they established a new label: Matty Grooves Records. In this period the band toured extensively in the UK, Europe, Australasia, Europe, the USA and Canada, and staged a major fund raiser for Dave Swarbrick at the Birmingham Symphony Hall. In 1998, members of the band began their association with the Breton musician Alan Simon. Working in collaboration with numerous others, members of Fairport (predominantly Nicol and Leslie) have performed in and participated in the recordings of all Simon's rock operas, including the Excalibur trilogy (1998, 2007, 2010) and Anne de Bretagne (2008). 2007 was their fortieth anniversary year and they celebrated by releasing a new album, Sense of Occasion. They performed the whole of the Liege & Lief album live at Cropredy, since 2004 renamed Fairport's Cropredy Convention, featuring the 1969 line-up of Dave Swarbrick, Ashley Hutchings, Dave Mattacks, Simon Nicol and Richard Thompson, with singer-songwriter Chris While taking the place of Sandy Denny. Footage of the festival, although not the Liege and Lief performance, was released as part of a celebratory DVD. The band's first official YouTube video appeared in April 2008. Edited from footage shot for the DVD, the nine-minute mini-documentary includes interviews with Lulu, Jools Holland, Seth Lakeman, Mike Harding, Geoff Hughes and Frank Skinner. In 2011, the band released a new studio album Festival Bell, the first new album in four years. This was followed in 2012 by Babbacombe Lee Live Again recorded live during the 2011 tour revisiting the Babbacombe Lee album first issued in 1971. In 2012, the band also released By Popular Request, a reworking in the studio of a number of the most popular songs in the band's repertoire (as determined by a mysterious consultation and voting process conducted by the band with its fans). In January 2015, four years after their previous studio album of original material (Festival Bell), Fairport Convention released a new one entitled Myths and Heroes. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Fairport Convention are a British folk rock band, formed in 1967 by guitarists Richard Thompson and Simon Nicol, bassist Ashley Hutchings and drummer Shaun Frater (with Frater replaced by Martin Lamble after their first gig.) They started out heavily influenced by American folk rock, with a setlist dominated by Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell songs and a sound that earned them the nickname "the British Jefferson Airplane". Vocalists Judy Dyble and Iain Matthews joined them before the recording of their self-titled debut in 1968; afterwards, Dyble was replaced by Sandy Denny, with Matthews later leaving during the recording of their third album.
Denny began steering the group towards traditional British music for their next two albums, What We Did on Our Holidays and Unhalfbricking (both 1969); the latter featured fiddler Dave "Swarb" Swarbrick, most notably on the song "A Sailor's Life", which laid the groundwork for British folk rock by being the first time a traditional British song was combined with a rock beat. Shortly before the album's release, a crash on the M1 motorway killed Lamble and Jeannie Franklyn, Thompson's then-girlfriend; this resulted in the group retiring most of their prior material and turning entirely towards British folk music for their seminal album Liege & Lief, released the same year. This style became the band's focus ever since. For this album Swarbrick joined full time alongside drummer Dave Mattacks. Both Denny and Hutchings left before the year's end; the latter replaced by Dave Pegg, who has remained the group's sole consistent member to this day; Thompson would leave after the recording of 1970's Full House.
The 1970s saw numerous lineup changes around the core of Swarbrick and Pegg – Nicol being absent for the middle of the decade – and declining fortunes as folk music fell out of mainstream favour. Denny, whose partner Trevor Lucas had been a guitarist in the group since 1972, returned for the pop-oriented Rising for the Moon album in 1975 in a final bid to crack America; this effort failed, and after three more albums minus Denny and Lucas, the group disbanded in 1979. They played a farewell concert in the village of Cropredy, Oxfordshire, where they had held small concerts since 1976, and this marked the beginning of the Cropredy Festival (since 2005 known as Fairport's Cropredy Convention) which has become the largest folk festival in Britain, with annual attendances of 20,000.
The band was reformed by Nicol, Pegg, and Mattacks in 1985, joined by Maartin Allcock (guitar, vocals) and Ric Sanders (fiddle, keyboards), and they have remained active since. Allcock was replaced by Chris Leslie in 1996, and Gerry Conway replaced Mattacks in 1998, with this lineup remaining unchanged since and marking the longest-lasting of the group's history. Their 28th studio album, 50:50@50, released to mark their 50th anniversary, was released in 2017, and they continue to headline Cropredy each year.
Despite little mainstream success – their only top 40 single being "Si Tu Dois Partir", a French-language cover of the Dylan song "If You Gotta Go, Go Now" from Unhalfbricking – Fairport Convention remain highly influential in British folk rock and British folk in general. Liege & Lief was named the "Most Influential Folk Album of All Time" at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards in 2006, and Pegg's playing style, which incorporates jigs and reels into his basslines, has been imitated by many in the folk rock and folk punk genres. Additionally, many former members went on to form or join other notable groups in the genre, including Fotheringay, Steeleye Span, and the Albion Band; along with solo careers, most notably Thompson and Denny. Sandy Denny's career ended with her death in 1978, though she is now regarded as being amongst Britain's finest female singer-songwriters; her song "Who Knows Where the Time Goes?" – recorded by Fairport on Unhalfbricking – has become a signature song for herself and the band.
History
Origins
Bassist Ashley Hutchings met guitarist Simon Nicol in North London in 1966 when they both played in the Ethnic Shuffle Orchestra. They rehearsed on the floor above Nicol's father's medical practice in a house called "Fairport" on Fortis Green in Muswell Hill – the same street on which Ray and Dave Davies of the Kinks grew up. The house name lent its name to the group they formed together as Fairport Convention in 1967 with Richard Thompson on guitar and Shaun Frater on drums. After their initial performance at St Michael's Church Hall in Golders Green on 27 May 1967, they had their first of many line-up changes as one member of the audience, drummer Martin Lamble, convinced the band that he could do a better job than Frater and replaced him. They soon added a female singer, Judy Dyble, which gave them a distinctive sound among the many London bands of the period.
1967–69: The first three albums
Fairport Convention were soon playing regularly at underground venues such as UFO and The Electric Garden, which later became the Middle Earth club. After only a few months, they caught the attention of manager Joe Boyd who secured them a contract with Polydor Records. Boyd suggested they augment the line-up with another male vocalist. Singer Iain Matthews (then known as Ian MacDonald) joined the band, and their first album, Fairport Convention, was recorded in late 1967 and released in June 1968. At this early stage Fairport looked to North American folk and folk rock acts such as Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, and The Byrds for material and inspiration. The name "Fairport Convention" and the use of two lead vocalists led many new listeners to believe that they were an American act, earning them the nickname 'the British Jefferson Airplane' during this period. Fairport Convention played alongside Jefferson Airplane at the First Isle of Wight Festival, 1968.
After disappointing album sales they signed a new contract with Island Records. Before their next recording Judy Dyble left – she described it as being "unceremoniously dumped" – and was replaced by the band with Sandy Denny, a folk singer who had previously recorded as a soloist and with Strawbs. Denny's distinctive voice, described by Clive James as "open space, low-volume, high-intensity", is one of the characteristics of two albums released in 1969: What We Did on Our Holidays and Unhalfbricking. These recordings marked the growth of much greater musicality and song-writing ability among the band. The first of these featured the Thompson-penned "Meet on the Ledge", which became their second single and eventually the band's unofficial anthem.
During the recording of Unhalfbricking, Matthews left after having sung on only one song, eventually to form Matthews Southern Comfort. He was not replaced; the other male members covered his vocal parts. The album featured a guest appearance by Birmingham folk fiddler Dave Swarbrick on a recording of "A Sailor's Life", a traditional song brought to the band by Denny from her folk club days. The recording of this track marked an important turning point for the band, sparking an interest in traditional music in Ashley Hutchings that led him to detailed research in the English Folk Dance and Song Society Library at Cecil Sharp House; this theme would become the basis for their next, much more ambitious, recording project.
These two albums began to gain the band wider recognition. Radio DJ John Peel championed their music, playing their albums on his influential BBC shows. Peel also recorded a number of sessions which were later released as the album Heyday (1987). They enjoyed some mainstream success when they entered the singles charts with "Si Tu Dois Partir", a French-language version of Bob Dylan's "If You Gotta Go, Go Now". The record just missed the top twenty, but secured the band a slot on Top of the Pops, Britain's most popular television pop music programme at the time. In 1969 four members of the band, one uncredited and three with pseudonyms, featured as backing musicians on the album Love Chronicles by Scottish folk artist Al Stewart.
Developing British folk rock
On 12 May 1969, on the way home from a gig at Birmingham venue Mothers, Fairport's van crashed on the M1 motorway. Martin Lamble, aged only nineteen, and Jeannie Franklyn, Richard Thompson's girlfriend, were killed. The rest of the band suffered injuries of varying severity. They nearly decided to disband. However, they reconvened with Dave Mattacks taking over drumming duties and Dave Swarbrick, having made contribution to Unhalfbricking, now joined as a full member. Boyd set the band up in a rented house in Farley Chamberlayne near Winchester in Hampshire, where they recuperated and worked on the integration of British folk music into rock and roll, which would result in the fourth album Liege & Lief.
Usually considered the highpoint of the band's long career, Liege & Lief was a huge leap forward in concept and musicality. The album consisted of six traditional tracks and three original compositions in a similar style. The traditional tracks included two sustained epics: "Tam Lin", which was over seven minutes in length, and "Matty Groves", at over eight. There was a medley of four traditional tunes, arranged, and, like many of the tracks, enlivened, by Swarbrick's energetic fiddle playing. The first side was bracketed by original compositions "Come all ye" and "Farewell, Farewell", which, in addition to information on the inside of the gatefold cover on Hutchings' research, explaining English folk traditions, helped give the record the feel of a concept album. "Farewell, Farewell" and the final track "Crazy Man Michael", also saw the full emergence of the distinctive song writing talent of Thompson that was to characterize his contributions to the band and later solo career. The distinctive sound of the album came from the use of electric instruments and Mattacks' disciplined drumming with Swarbrick's fiddle accompaniment in a surprising and powerful combination of rock with the traditional. The entire band had reached new levels of musicality, with the fluid guitar playing of Thompson and the "ethereal" vocal of Denny particularly characteristic of the sound of the album. As the reviewer from AllMusic put it, the album was characterised by the "fusing [of] time-worn folk with electric instruments while honoring both".
A few British bands had earlier experimented with playing traditional English songs on electric instruments, (including Strawbs and Pentangle), but Fairport Convention was the first English band to do this in a concerted and focused way. Fairport Convention's achievement was not to invent folk rock, but to create a distinctly English branch of the genre, which would develop alongside, and interact with, American inspired music, but which can also be seen as a distinctively national reaction in opposition to it. Liege & Lief was launched with a sell-out concert in London's Royal Festival Hall late in 1969. It reached number 17 in the UK album chart, where it spent fifteen weeks.
1970s: A time of change
Disagreements arose about the direction of the band in the wake of this success. Ashley Hutchings wanted to explore more traditional material and left to form two groups that would rival Fairport for significance in English folk rock: Steeleye Span and the Albion Band. Sandy Denny also left to found her own group Fotheringay. Dave Pegg took over on bass guitar and has been the group's one constant ever since, in an unbroken membership of over four decades. The band made no serious attempt to replace Denny, and, although she would briefly return, the sound of the band would now be characterized by male vocals.
Despite these changes the band produced another album, Full House (1970), which was remarkably successful as a project. Like its predecessor, it combined traditional songs, including a powerful rendition of "Sir Patrick Spens", with original compositions. The latter benefited from the writing partnership of Thompson and Swarbrick, most obviously on "Walk Awhile", which would become a concert favourite. Despite the loss of Denny the band still possessed four vocalists, including the emerging voices of Nicol and Swarbrick, whose tones would dominate the sound of this period. It was favourably reviewed in Britain and America, drawing comparisons with the Band from Rolling Stone magazine who declared that "Fairport Convention is better than ever". The album reached number 13 in the UK Chart and stayed in the chart for eleven weeks. The same year the band released a single 'Now Be Thankful' and made its American debut, touring with Traffic and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.
In the recurring pattern, soon after the album's release Thompson left the band to pursue other projects and eventually his solo career. This left Simon Nicol as the only original member and Dave Swarbrick emerged as the leading force in the band. In 1970 the members and their families had moved into The Angel, a former pub in Hertfordshire and this inspired the next album Angel Delight (1971) the band's first to chart in the US, peaking at number 200 on the Billboard 200 and their only top ten album in the UK. The next project was an ambitious folk-rock opera developed by Swarbrick, based on the life of John "Babbacombe" Lee, "the man they couldn't hang" and released with the title Babbacombe Lee (1971). The concept format, originally without clear tracks, excited considerable press interest and it received good air play in the United States where it reached number 195. A version was produced by the BBC for TV in 1975 with narration by Melvyn Bragg. These two albums were also notable as the first time that Fairport had recorded consecutively with the same line-up, but inevitably stability did not last: Simon Nicol left early in late 1971 to join Ashley Hutchings' Albion Band and he was soon followed by Mattacks.
Only Pegg and Swarbrick remained and the following few years have been dubbed 'Fairport confusion' as a bewildering sequence of band members came and went, but by 1973 Mattacks had returned and two former members of Sandy Denny's Fotheringay had joined the band, Denny's Australian husband Trevor Lucas on vocals and guitar and American Jerry Donahue on lead guitar. From these line-ups the band produced two studio albums: Rosie, notable for the Swarbrick penned title track (1973) and Nine (1974), the ninth studio album by the band. The last of these contained writing contributions by Lucas to five of the nine tracks, which together with Donahue's country influences and outstanding guitar pyrotechnics gave the album a very distinctive feel.
Denny rejoined the band in 1974 and there were considerable expectations, both artistic and commercial, placed on this line-up. Denny was featured on the album Rising for the Moon (1975), which became the band's highest US chart album when it reached number 143 on the Billboard 200 and the first album to reach the top one-hundred in the UK since Angel Delight, reaching no 52. During the Rising sessions, Mattacks fell out with producer Glyn Johns and was replaced by former Grease Band drummer Bruce Rowland. Poor UK sales for Rising did not aid morale and, despite the relative success of the line-up, Lucas and Donahue left the band, as did Denny in 1976. She died aged 31, in 1978, of a cerebral haemorrhage after falling down a flight of stairs.
Rowland, Pegg, and Swarbrick fulfilled their remaining contractual obligations to Island Records by turning what had originally been a Swarbrick solo effort into the album Gottle O'Geer (1976) under the name 'Fairport' (as opposed to Fairport Convention) in the UK, and as 'Fairport featuring Dave Swarbrick' in the US, and with various session players and production by Simon Nicol, who subsequently rejoined the band. They then signed with Vertigo, but record sales continued to decline and after producing two of four contracted albums, The Bonny Bunch of Roses (1977) and Tipplers Tales (1978), Vertigo bought them out of their contract. It is claimed by members of the band that this was the only recording money they had seen up to that point.
1979–1985: The Cropredy era
By 1979 the mainstream market for folk rock had largely disappeared, the band had no record deal, and Dave Swarbrick had been diagnosed with tinnitus, which made loud electric gigs increasingly difficult. Fairport decided to disband. They played a farewell tour and a final outdoor concert on 4 August in Cropredy, the Oxfordshire village where Dave and Christine Pegg lived. The finality of this occasion was mitigated by the announcement that the band would meet for a reunion.
In August 1979, the band played at Knebworth Festival in England. The headline act at both their appearances at the festival, over two consecutive Saturdays on 4 and 11 August, were Led Zeppelin.
No record company wanted to release the live recordings of the tour and concert, so the Peggs founded Woodworm Records, which would be the major outlet for the band in the future. Members continued to take part in occasional gigs, particularly in festivals in continental Europe, and after a year they staged a reunion concert in Cropredy which became the annual Cropredy Festival. Over the next few years, it grew rapidly and emerged as the major mechanism for sustaining the band. In August 1981, the band held their annual reunion concert at Broughton Castle, rather than the usual Cropredy location. The concert was recorded, and released on the 1982 album Moat on the Ledge.
The Peggs continued to record and release the Cropredy concerts as 'official bootlegs'. These were supplemented by New Year's gigs in minor locations including the Half Moon at Putney and the Gloucester Leisure Centre. In 1983 the magazine Fairport Fanatics (later Dirty Linen), was created: a testament to the continued existence of a dedicated fan base.
The Angel Delight lineup of Simon Nicol, Dave Swarbrick, Dave Pegg, and Dave Mattacks played a number of gigs in the UK in the early 80s, then toured extensively in the UK and the US in 1984 and 1985. Band alumni like Richard Thompson and Bruce Rowland would occasionally join in.
The remaining members pursued their own lives and careers outside of the band. Nicol, Pegg, and Mattacks had recorded and toured with Richard and Linda Thompson at times in the 1970s, and did so again during this period, culminating in their appearance on the Shoot Out the Lights album and tour in 1982. Bruce Rowlands gave up the music business and moved to Denmark and as a result Dave Mattacks returned as drummer for Fairport's occasional gigs. Dave Pegg was the first of several Fairporters to join Jethro Tull which gave him well-paying steady employment. Simon Nicol had teamed up with Dave Swarbrick in a highly regarded acoustic duo, but this partnership was made difficult by Swarbrick's sudden decision to move to Scotland, where, from 1984 he began to focus on his new project Whippersnapper.
In 1985, Pegg, Nicol and Mattacks found that they all had some free time and an available studio belonging to Pegg. They decided that they needed some new material to add to the catalogue that had been suspended in 1978. As Swarbrick was unavailable, the selection of traditional tunes was more difficult than for past albums and there was a need for a replacement fiddle player and some vocals. Pegg and Nicol took over arranging duties on an instrumental medley and the band turned to sometime Albion Band members: jazz and folk violinist Ric Sanders and singer-songwriter Cathy Lesurf. They also had the help of ex-member Richard Thompson. Thompson and Lesurf contributed songs and took part in the recordings. Also important to the album was Ralph McTell who contributed one song and co-wrote one track each with Nicol and Mattacks; the former of these, "The Hiring Fair", would become a stage fixture of the future Fairport.
The resulting album Gladys' Leap (1985) was generally well received in the music and national press, but caused some tension with Swarbrick who refused to play any of the new material at the 1985 Cropredy Festival. Nevertheless, the decision to reform the band, without Swarbrick, was taken by the other three remaining members. Ric Sanders was invited to join, along with guitarist, composer, arranger and multi-instrumentalist Maartin Allcock. Nicol, with his developing baritone voice, took over the main share of the vocal duties. This line-up was to last eleven years, the longest period of membership stability in the band's history so far.
1986–1997: Stability
The new band began a hectic schedule of performing in Britain and the World and prepared material for a new album. The result was the all-instrumental Expletive Delighted! (1986). This showcased the virtuosity of Sanders and Allcock, but perhaps inevitably was not popular with all fans. This was followed by the recording In Real Time: Live '87 which managed to capture the energy and power of the new Fairport on stage, despite the fact that it was recorded in the studio with audience reactions dubbed on.
In this period the band were playing to larger and larger audiences, both on tour and at Cropredy, and it was very productive in terms of recording. Fairport had the considerable composing and arranging skills of Allcock and, to fill the gap created by a lack of a songwriter in the band, they turned to some of the most talented available in the contemporary folk scene. The results were Red & Gold (1989) The Five Seasons (1990) and Jewel in the Crown (1995), the last of which was judged "their bestselling and undoubtedly finest album in years."
At this point, with Mattacks busy with other projects, the band shifted to an acoustic format for touring and released the unplugged Old New Borrowed Blue as "Fairport Acoustic Convention" in 1996. For a while the four-piece acoustic line-up ran in parallel with the electric format. When Allcock left the band, he was replaced by Chris Leslie on vocals, mandolin and fiddle, who formerly worked with Swarbrick in Whippersnapper, and had a one-off stint with the band replacing Ric Sanders for 1992 Cropredy Festival. This meant that for the first time since reforming, the band had a recognized songwriter who contributed significantly to the band's output on the next album Who Knows Where the Time Goes? (1997), particularly the rousing "John Gaudie". By the time of the 30th anniversary Festival at Cropredy in 1997, the new Fairport had been in existence for over a decade and contributed a significant chapter to the history of the band.
1998–present
Dave Mattacks moved to the US in 1998, and Gerry Conway took over on drums and percussion. Fairport produced two more studio albums for Woodworm Records: The Wood and the Wire (2000) and XXXV (2002). Then, for Over the Next Hill (2004) they established a new label: Matty Grooves Records. In this period the band toured extensively in the UK, Europe, Australasia, Europe, the US and Canada, and staged a major fund raiser for Dave Swarbrick at the Birmingham Symphony Hall. In 1998, members of the band began their association with the Breton musician Alan Simon. Working in collaboration with numerous others, members of Fairport (predominantly Nicol and Leslie) have performed in and participated in the recordings of all Simon's rock operas, including the Excalibur trilogy (1998, 2007, 2010) and Anne de Bretagne (2008).
2007 was their fortieth anniversary year and they celebrated by releasing a new album, Sense of Occasion. They performed the whole of the Liege & Lief album live at Cropredy, since 2004 renamed Fairport's Cropredy Convention, featuring the 1969 line-up of Dave Swarbrick, Ashley Hutchings, Dave Mattacks, Simon Nicol and Richard Thompson, with singer-songwriter Chris While taking the place of Sandy Denny. Footage of the festival, although not the Liege and Lief performance, was released as part of a celebratory DVD.
The band's first official YouTube video appeared in April 2008. Edited from footage shot for the DVD, the nine-minute mini-documentary includes interviews with Lulu, Jools Holland, Seth Lakeman, Mike Harding, Geoff Hughes and Frank Skinner.
In 2011, the band released a new studio album Festival Bell, the first new album in four years. This was followed in 2012 by Babbacombe Lee Live Again recorded live during the 2011 tour revisiting the Babbacombe Lee album first issued in 1971. In 2012, the band also released By Popular Request, a reworking in the studio of a number of the most popular songs in the band's repertoire (as determined by a mysterious consultation and voting process conducted by the band with its fans).
As of 2020 the band still continue to write and record music, regularly producing new studio albums, the most recent releases being 2015's Myths and Heroes, 2017's 50:50@50 and 2020's Shuffle and Go. The Covid-19 Pandemic impacted significantly on their ability to tour, and their 2022 tour was initially cut short after several of the touring team developed Covid.
Public recognition
The mainstream media has increasingly recognized Fairport Convention's historical importance. They received a "Lifetime Achievement Award" at the 2002 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards. In the same year Free Reed Records, an independent label, released Fairport Unconventional, a four-CD boxed set of rare and unreleased recordings from the band's 35-year career. At the 2006 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards they received an award when their seminal album Liege & Lief was voted 'Most Influential Folk Album of All Time' by Radio 2 listeners. At the 2007 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards Fairport Convention received an award recognising the late Sandy Denny and the band for "Favourite Folk Track of All Time" for "Who Knows Where the Time Goes?".
Personnel
Members
Current members
Simon Nicol – guitar, vocal (1967–1971, 1976–1979, 1985–present)
Dave Pegg – bass guitar, mandolin, backing vocal (1969–1979, 1985–present)
Ric Sanders – fiddles, occasional keyboards (1985–present)
Chris Leslie – fiddle, mandolin, bouzouki, vocal (1996–present)
Gerry Conway – drums, percussion (1998–present)
Former members
Richard Thompson – guitar, vocal (1967–1971)
Ashley Hutchings – bass guitar (1967–1969)
Shaun Frater – drums (1967)
Martin Lamble – drums (1967–1969; died 1969)
Judy Dyble – vocal, autoharp, piano, recorder (1967–1968; died 2020)
Iain Matthews – vocal (1967–1969)
Sandy Denny – vocal, guitar, piano (1968–1969, 1974–1975; died 1978)
Dave Swarbrick – fiddle, mandolin, vocal (1969–1979; died 2016)
Dave Mattacks – drums, keyboards, bass guitar (1969–1972, 1973–1975, 1985–1997)
Roger Hill – guitar, vocal (1971–1972; died 2011)
Tom Farnell – drums (1972)
David Rea – guitar (1972; died 2011)
Trevor Lucas – guitar, vocal (1972–1975; died 1989)
Jerry Donahue – guitar (1972–1975)
Paul Warren – drums (1975)
Bruce Rowland – drums (1975–1979; died 2015)
Dan Ar Braz – guitar (1976)
Bob Brady – piano (1976)
Roger Burridge – mandolin, fiddle (1976; died 2020)
Maartin Allcock – guitar, mandolin, keyboard, vocal (1985–1996; died 2018)
Lineups
Timeline
Discography
Filmography
Tony Palmer's Film of Fairport Convention and Matthews Southern Comfort, directed by Tony Palmer, featuring Fairport's appearance at the Maidstone Fiesta in 1970. Originally released as a VHS video by MusicFolk/Weintraub, re-released on DVD by Voiceprint Records in 2007, soundtrack CD issued by Voiceprint as Live in Maidstone 1970 in 2009.
References
Citations
General sources
External links
English folk musical groups
English folk rock groups
Ashley Hutchings
1967 establishments in England
Musical groups established in 1967
A&M Records artists
Island Records artists
Polydor Records artists
Rough Trade Records artists
Transatlantic Records artists
Vertigo Records artists | false | [
"Japanese boy band Kanjani Eight have gone on a total of nine concert tours, all domestic, and several shows. In 2006, they went on their first tour F.T.O.N: Funky Tokyo Osaka Nagoya, at the three major cities the concert tour was named after. Upon the success of the initial tour, it was expanded into a national tour in the fall of that same year, performing at a total of 11 cities and 26 performances. Winter of that same year, Kanjani Eight performed a national promo tour for the release of their single \"Kan Fu Fighting\". performing at a total of six cities and performing twenty six times.\n\nIn 2007, Kanjani Eight begun their biggest national tour to date, the \"Eh?! Honma?! Bikkuri!! Tour\". The concert tour began in the spring of 2007 and ended in the fall of that same year, totaling at 113 performances in all 47 prefectures of Japan. The concert tour also marked the first time in which a signed Johnny's talent performed in every prefecture of Japan in a single tour. After the success of that tour in 2008, Kanjani Eight performed two national tours between May and August performing at a total fourteen cities and over fifty performances.\n\nKanjani Eight released Puzzle in 2009 and the national tour Puzzle in the summer of that year. Following up that tour in the winter of 2009, they returned to the Kyocera Dome and performed their first Countdown Live concert series. In the winter of 2010, Kanjani Eight performed their 8 Uppers concert tour, which also contained their second Countdown Live. In 2011, Kanjani Eight performed their winter tour which consisted five cities for a total of ten performances. This tour also contained their third countdown live. In 2012, Kanjani Eight performed their 8EST concert tour, which was a total of 40 performances. This tour is noted for the fact that they performed at their first stadium and for that it did not include a countdown live.\n\nConcert Tours\n\nOther performances\n\nReferences\n\nConcerts\nKanjani Eight",
"Beginning in 1994, Elton John toured extensively with Billy Joel on a series of Face to Face tours, making them the longest running and most successful concert tandem in pop music history. During these shows, the two have played their own songs, each other's songs and performed duets. They grossed over US $46 million in just 24 days in their sold out 2003 tour. John and Joel resumed the Face to Face tour in March 2009 and it ended again, at least for the time being, in March 2010. Joel denied rumors in the trade press that he canceled a summer 2010 leg of the tour, claiming there were never any dates booked and that he intended to take the year off. Joel stated in 2012 that he would no longer tour with John because it restrains his setlists.\n\nThe 1994 tour proved a major success playing to huge audiences in packed stadiums across the U.S. starting in East Coast America and ending in South East America.\n\nTour dates\n\nSetlist\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\n Information Site with Tour Dates\n\n1994 concert tours\nBilly Joel concert tours\nCo-headlining concert tours\nElton John concert tours"
]
|
[
"Blonde on Blonde",
"Recording sessions in Nashville"
]
| C_6ae80bc19e3e4910915f6ca02f15467e_0 | What happened on February 15? | 1 | What happened to Blonde on Blonde on February 15 in in Nashville? | Blonde on Blonde | Most accounts of recording Blonde on Blonde, including those by Dylan scholars Clinton Heylin and Michael Gray, agree that there were two blocks of recording sessions: February 14-17 and March 8-10, 1966. This chronology is based on the logs and files kept by Columbia Records. Dylan and the Hawks performed concerts in Ottawa, Montreal, and Philadelphia in February and March, and then Dylan resumed recording in Nashville on March 8. On that date, Dylan and the musicians recorded the take of "Absolutely Sweet Marie" that Dylan selected for the album. Historian Sean Wilentz observed that "with the sound of 'Sweet Marie', Blonde on Blonde entered fully and sublimely into what is now considered classic rock and roll". The same day saw the successful takes of "Just Like a Woman", and "Pledging My Time", the latter "driven by Robertson's screaming guitar". According to Wilentz the final recording session, on March 9-10, produced six songs in 13 hours of studio time. The first number to be recorded to Dylan's satisfaction was "Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine", when McCoy reinforced on trumpet a musical phrase Dylan played on his harmonica, changing the sound of the song radically. Dylan and his band then quickly recorded "Temporary Like Achilles". The session atmosphere began to "get giddy" around midnight when Dylan roughed out "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35" on the piano. Johnston recalled commenting; "That sounds like the damn Salvation Army band". Dylan replied; "Can you get one?" Johnston then telephoned trombonist Wayne Butler, the only additional musician required, and Dylan and the band, with McCoy again on trumpet, played a high-spirited version of the song. In quick succession Dylan and the musicians then recorded "Obviously 5 Believers" and a final take of "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" powered by Robertson's lead guitar. The session concluded with "I Want You" on which, as Wilentz notes, "Wayne Moss's rapid-fire sixteenth notes on the guitar" are an impressive element of the recording. CANNOTANSWER | two blocks of recording | Blonde on Blonde is the seventh studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released as a double album on June 20, 1966, by Columbia Records. Recording sessions began in New York in October 1965 with numerous backing musicians, including members of Dylan's live backing band, the Hawks. Though sessions continued until January 1966, they yielded only one track that made it onto the final album—"One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)". At producer Bob Johnston's suggestion, Dylan, keyboardist Al Kooper, and guitarist Robbie Robertson moved to the CBS studios in Nashville, Tennessee. These sessions, augmented by some of Nashville's top session musicians, were more fruitful, and in February and March all the remaining songs for the album were recorded.
Blonde on Blonde completed the trilogy of rock albums that Dylan recorded in 1965 and 1966, starting with Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited. Critics often rank Blonde on Blonde as one of the greatest albums of all time. Combining the expertise of Nashville session musicians with a modernist literary sensibility, the album's songs have been described as operating on a grand scale musically, while featuring lyrics one critic called "a unique mixture of the visionary and the colloquial". It was one of the first double albums in rock music.
The album peaked at number nine on the Billboard 200 chart in the US, where it eventually was certified double platinum, and it reached number three in the UK. Blonde on Blonde spawned two singles that were top-twenty hits in the US: "Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35" and "I Want You". Two additional songs—"Just Like a Woman" and "Visions of Johanna"—have been named as among Dylan's greatest compositions and were featured in Rolling Stones 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list.
In 1999, the album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, and was ranked number 38 in Rolling Stones 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list in 2020.
Recording sessions
Background
After the release of Highway 61 Revisited in August 1965, Dylan set about hiring a touring band. Guitarist Mike Bloomfield and keyboard player Al Kooper had backed Dylan on the album and at Dylan's controversial electric debut at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. However, Bloomfield chose not to tour with Dylan, preferring to remain with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. After backing him at concerts in late August and early September, Kooper informed Dylan he did not wish to continue touring with him. Dylan's manager, Albert Grossman, was in the process of setting up a grueling concert schedule that would keep Dylan on the road for the next nine months, touring the U.S., Australia, and Europe. Dylan contacted a group who were performing as Levon and the Hawks, consisting of Levon Helm from Arkansas and four Canadian musicians: Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko, Richard Manuel and Garth Hudson. They had come together as a band in Canada, backing American rocker Ronnie Hawkins. Two people had strongly recommended the Hawks to Dylan: Mary Martin, the executive secretary of Grossman, and blues singer John Hammond, Jr., son of record producer John Hammond, who had signed Dylan to Columbia Records in 1961; the Hawks had backed the younger Hammond on his 1965 album So Many Roads.
Dylan rehearsed with the Hawks in Toronto on September 15, where they were playing a hometown residency at Friar's Club, and on September 24, they made their debut in Austin, Texas. Two weeks later, encouraged by the success of their Texas performance, Dylan took the Hawks into Studio A of Columbia Records in New York City. Their immediate task was to record a hit single as the follow-up to "Positively 4th Street", but Dylan was already shaping his next album, the third one that year backed by rock musicians.
New York sessions
Producer Bob Johnston, who had overseen the recording of Highway 61 Revisited, started work with Dylan and the Hawks at Columbia Studio A, 799 Seventh Avenue, New York, on October 5. They concentrated on a new arrangement of "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?", a song recorded during the Highway 61 Revisited sessions but not included on that album. Three further numbers were attempted, but none progressed into completed songs. Both the fragmentary "Jet Pilot" and "I Wanna Be Your Lover", a quasi-parody of the Beatles' "I Wanna Be Your Man", finally appeared on the 1985 box set retrospective, Biograph. Also attempted were two takes of "Medicine Sunday", a song that later evolved into "Temporary Like Achilles".
On November 30, the Hawks joined Dylan again at Studio A, but drummer Bobby Gregg replaced Levon Helm, who had tired of playing in a backing band and quit. They began work on a new composition, "Freeze Out", which was later retitled "Visions of Johanna", but Dylan wasn't satisfied with the results. One of the November 30 recordings was eventually released on The Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home: The Soundtrack in 2005. At this session, they completed "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?" The song was released as a single in December, but only reached number 58 on the American charts.
Dylan spent most of December in California, performing a dozen concerts with his band, and then took a break through the third week in January following the birth of his son Jesse. On January 21, 1966, he returned to Columbia's Studio A to record another long composition, "She's Your Lover Now", accompanied by the Hawks (this time with Sandy Konikoff on drums). Despite nineteen takes, the session failed to yield any complete recordings. Dylan did not attempt the song again, but one of the outtakes from the January 21 session finally appeared 25 years later on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961–1991. (Although the song breaks down at the start of the last verse, Columbia released it as the most complete take from the session.)
Around this time, Dylan became disillusioned about using the Hawks in the studio. He recorded more material at Studio A on January 25, backed by drummer Bobby Gregg, bassist Rick Danko (or Bill Lee), guitarist Robbie Robertson, pianist Paul Griffin, and organist Al Kooper. Two more new compositions were attempted: "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" and "One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)". Dylan was satisfied with "One of Us Must Know"; the January 25 take was released as a single a few weeks later and was subsequently selected for the album.
Another session took place on January 27, this time with Robertson, Danko, Kooper and Gregg. Dylan and his band recorded "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" and "One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)" again, but Dylan was not satisfied with the recorded performance of either song. Also at this session Dylan attempted a rough performance of "I'll Keep It with Mine", a song which he had already recorded twice as a demo. The musicians added some tentative backing in a rendering biographer Clinton Heylin described as "cursory". The recording was ultimately released on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 in 1991.
A shortage of new material and the slow progress of the sessions contributed to Dylan's decision to cancel three additional recording dates. Six weeks later Dylan confided to critic Robert Shelton, "Oh, I was really down. I mean, in ten recording sessions, man, we didn't get one song ... It was the band. But you see, I didn't know that. I didn't want to think that".
Move to Nashville
Recognizing Dylan's dissatisfaction with the progress of the recordings, producer Bob Johnston suggested that they move the sessions to Nashville. Johnston lived there and had extensive experience working with Nashville session musicians. He recalled how Dylan's manager, Albert Grossman, was hostile to the idea: "Grossman came up to me and said 'If you ever mention Nashville to Dylan again, you're gone.' I said, 'What do you mean?' He said, 'You heard me. We got a thing going here'". Despite Grossman's opposition, Dylan agreed to Johnston's suggestion, and preparations were made to record the album at Columbia's A Studio on Nashville's Music Row in February 1966.
In addition to Kooper and Robertson, who accompanied Dylan from New York, Johnston recruited harmonica player, guitarist and bassist Charlie McCoy, guitarist Wayne Moss, guitarist and bassist Joe South, and drummer Kenny Buttrey. At Dylan's request, Johnston removed the baffles—partitions separating the musicians so that there was "an ambience fit for an ensemble". Buttrey credited the distinctive sound of the album to Johnston's re-arrangement of the studio, "as if we were on a tight stage, as opposed to playing in a big hall where you're ninety miles apart". Dylan had a piano installed in his Nashville hotel room which Kooper would play to help Dylan write lyrics. Kooper would then teach the tunes to the musicians before Dylan arrived for the sessions.
On the first Nashville session, on February 14, Dylan successfully recorded "Visions of Johanna", which he had attempted several times in New York. Also recorded was a take of "4th Time Around" which made it onto the album and a take of "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" which did not.
On February 15 the session began at 6 p.m. but Dylan simply sat in the studio working on his lyrics while the musicians played cards, napped and chatted. Finally, at 4 am, Dylan called the musicians in and outlined the structure of the song. Dylan counted off and the musicians fell in, as he attempted his epic composition "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands". Kenny Buttrey recalled, "If you notice that record, that thing after like the second chorus starts building and building like crazy, and everybody's just peaking it up 'cause we thought, Man, this is it ... This is gonna be the last chorus and we've gotta put everything into it we can. And he played another harmonica solo and went back down to another verse and the dynamics had to drop back down to a verse kind of feel ... After about ten minutes of this thing we're cracking up at each other, at what we were doing. I mean, we peaked five minutes ago. Where do we go from here?" The finished song clocked in at 11 minutes, 23 seconds, and would occupy the entire fourth side of the album.
The next session began similarly—Dylan spent the afternoon writing lyrics, and the session continued into the early hours of February 17, when the musicians began to record "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again". After several musical revisions and false starts, the fourteenth take was the version selected for the album.
Recording sessions in Nashville
Most accounts of recording Blonde on Blonde, including those by Dylan scholars Clinton Heylin and Michael Gray, agree that there were two blocks of recording sessions: February 14–17 and March 8–10, 1966. This chronology is based on the logs and files kept by Columbia Records.
Dylan and the Hawks performed concerts in Ottawa, Montreal, and Philadelphia in February and March, and then Dylan resumed recording in Nashville on March 8. On that date, Dylan and the musicians recorded the take of "Absolutely Sweet Marie" that Dylan selected for the album. Historian Sean Wilentz observed that "with the sound of 'Sweet Marie', Blonde on Blonde entered fully and sublimely into what is now considered classic rock and roll". The same day saw the successful takes of "Just Like a Woman", and "Pledging My Time", the latter "driven by Robertson's screaming guitar".
According to Wilentz the final recording session, on March 9–10, produced six songs in 13 hours of studio time. The first number to be recorded to Dylan's satisfaction was "Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine", when McCoy reinforced on trumpet a musical phrase Dylan played on his harmonica, changing the sound of the song radically. Dylan and his band then quickly recorded "Temporary Like Achilles". The session atmosphere began to "get giddy" around midnight when Dylan roughed out "Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35" on the piano. Johnston recalled commenting; "That sounds like the damn Salvation Army band". Dylan replied; "Can you get one?" Johnston then telephoned trombonist Wayne Butler, the only additional musician required, and Dylan and the band, with McCoy again on trumpet, played a high-spirited version of the song.
In quick succession Dylan and the musicians then recorded "Obviously 5 Believers" and a final take of "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" powered by Robertson's lead guitar. The session concluded with "I Want You" on which, as Wilentz notes, "Wayne Moss's rapid-fire sixteenth notes on the guitar" are an impressive element of the recording.
Disagreement over Nashville recording dates
Al Kooper, who played keyboards on every track of Blonde on Blonde, has contested the conventional account that there were two blocks of recording sessions in Nashville. In comments on Michael Gray's website, Kooper wrote: "There was only ONE trip to Nashville for Robbie and I, and ALL THE TRACKS were cut in that one visit", stating that Dylan merely broke for an outstanding concert. Charlie McCoy agreed with Kooper's version. Wilentz analyzed the recording of Blonde on Blonde in his book Bob Dylan in America, concluding that the "official" documented version fits Dylan's known touring schedule, and notes that five of the eight songs first recorded after "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again", but none of those recorded earlier, include a middle-eight section—Dylan's first extensive foray as a writer into that conventional structure".
Mixing
Dylan mixed the album in Los Angeles in early April, before he departed on the Australian leg of his 1966 world tour. Wilentz writes that it was at this point it became "obvious that the riches of the Nashville sessions could not fit onto a single LP", and they had "produced enough solid material to demand an oddly configured double album, the first of its kind in contemporary popular music". According to producer Steve Berkowitz, who supervised the reissue of Dylan's LPs in mono as The Original Mono Recordings in 2010, Johnston told him that they carefully worked on the mono mix for about three or four days whereas the stereo mix was finished in about four hours.
Origin of album title
Al Kooper recalled that both the album title, Blonde on Blonde, and song titles arrived during the mixing sessions. "When they were mixing it, we were sitting around and Bob Johnston came in and said, 'What do you want to call this?' And [Bob] just like said them out one at a time ... Free association and silliness, I'm sure, played a big role." Another Dylan chronicler, Oliver Trager, notes that besides spelling out the initials of Dylan's first name, the album title is also a riff on Brecht on Brecht, a stage production based on works by German playwright Bertolt Brecht that had influenced his early songwriting. Dylan himself has said of the title: "Well, I don't even recall exactly how it came up, but I know it was all in good faith ... I don't know who thought of that. I certainly didn't."
Songs
Side one
"Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35"
According to author Andy Gill, by starting his new album with what sounded like "a demented marching-band ... staffed by crazy people out of their mind on loco-weed", Dylan delivered his biggest shock yet for his former folkie fans. The elaborate puns on getting stoned combine a sense of paranoiac persecution with "nudge-nudge wink-wink bohemian hedonism". Heylin points out that the Old Testament connotations of getting stoned made the Salvation Army-style musical backing seem like a good joke. The enigmatic title came about, Heylin suggests, because Dylan knew a song called "Everybody Must Get Stoned" would be kept off the airwaves. Heylin links the title to the Book of Proverbs, chapter 27, verse 15: "A continual dropping in a very rainy day and a contentious woman are alike." Released as a single on March 22, 1966, "Rainy Day Women" reached number two on the Billboard singles chart and number seven in the UK.
"Pledging My Time"
Following the good-time fun of "Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35", the Chicago blues-influenced "Pledging My Time" sets the album's somber tone. It draws on several traditional blues songs, including Elmore James's recording of "It Hurts Me Too". For critic Michael Gray, the lines "Somebody got lucky but it was an accident" echo the lines "Some joker got lucky, stole her back again" from Robert Johnson's "Come On in My Kitchen", which is itself an echo of Skip James's 1931 recording "Devil Got My Woman". Gray suggests that "the gulping movements of the melodic phrases" derive from the melody of "Sitting on Top of the World", recorded by the Mississippi Sheiks in 1930. The couplet at the end of each verse expresses the theme: a pledge made to a prospective lover in hopes she "will come through, too". Besides Dylan's vocals and improvised harmonica breaks, the song's sound is defined by Robbie Robertson's guitar, Hargus "Pig" Robbins' blues piano and Ken Buttrey's snare drum rolls. The song was released in edited form as the B-side of "Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35" in March.
"Visions of Johanna"
Considered by many critics one of Dylan's masterpieces, "Visions of Johanna" proved difficult to capture on tape. Heylin places the writing in the fall of 1965, when Dylan was living in the Hotel Chelsea with his wife Sara. In the New York recording studio, on November 30, Dylan announced his epic composition: "This is called 'Freeze Out'." Gill notes that this working title captures the "air of nocturnal suspension in which the verse tableaux are sketched ... full of whispering and muttering." Wilentz relates how Dylan guided his backing musicians through 14 takes, trying to sketch out how he wanted it played, saying at one point, "it's not hard rock, The only thing in it that's hard is Robbie." Wilentz notes that, as Dylan quiets things down, he inches closer to what will appear on the album.
Ten weeks later, "Visions of Johanna" fell into place quickly in the Nashville studio. Kooper recalled that he and Robertson had become adept at responding to Dylan's vocal and also singled out Joe South's contribution of "this throbbing ... rhythmically amazing bass part". Gill comments that the song begins by contrasting two lovers, the carnal Louise and "the more spiritual but unattainable" Johanna. Ultimately, for Gill, the song seeks to convey how the artist is compelled to keep striving to pursue some elusive vision of perfection. For Heylin, the triumph of the song is in "the way Dylan manages to write about the most inchoate feelings in such a vivid, immediate way."
"One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)"
When Dylan arrived at the studio on January 25, 1966, he had yet to work out the lyrics and title for what was to become the closing track on Blonde on Blondes first side. With Dylan piecing together the song's sections, and the chorus that gives the song its title only emerging on take five, the session stretched through the night and into the next morning. Only on the 15th take was a full version recorded. Dylan and the band persisted until they recorded take 24, which closed the session and made it onto the album four months later. Critic Jonathan Singer credits Griffin's piano for binding the song together: "At the chorus, Griffin unleashes a symphony; hammering his way up and down the keyboard, half Gershwin, half gospel, all heart. The follow-up, a killer left hand figure that links the chorus to the verse, releases none of the song's tension."
"One of Us Must Know" is a straightforward account of a burned-out relationship. Dissecting what went wrong, the narrator takes a defensive attitude in a one-sided conversation with his former lover. As he presents his case in the opening verse, it appears he is incapable of acknowledging his part or limiting the abuse: "I didn't mean to treat you so bad. You don't have to take it so personal. I didn't mean to make you so sad. You just happened to be there, that's all." "One of Us Must Know" was the first recording completed for Blonde on Blonde and the only one selected from the New York sessions. The song was released as the first single from the album on February 14, the same day Dylan began to record in Nashville. It failed to appear on the American charts, but reached number 33 in the UK.
Side two
"I Want You"
Andy Gill notes that the song displays a tension between the very direct tone of the chorus, the repeated phrase "I want you", and a weird and complex cast of characters, "too numerous to inhabit the song's three minutes comfortably", including a guilty undertaker, a lonesome organ grinder, weeping fathers, mothers, sleeping saviors, the Queen of Spades, and the "dancing child with his Chinese suit". Analyzing the lyrics' evolution through successive drafts, Wilentz writes that there are numerous failures, "about deputies asking him his name ... lines about fathers going down hugging one another and about their daughters putting him down because he isn't their brother". Finally Dylan arrives at the right formula.
Heylin points out that the "gorgeous" tune illustrates what Dylan explained to a reporter in 1966: "It's not just pretty words to a tune or putting tunes to words ... [It's] the words and the music [together]—I can hear the sound of what I want to say." Al Kooper has said that of all the songs that Dylan outlined to him in his hotel, this was his favorite, so Dylan delayed recording it to the very end of the Nashville sessions, "just to bug him". Released as a single in June 1966, shortly before the album, "I Want You" reached number 20 in the US and number 16 in the UK.
"Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again"
Recorded at the third Nashville session, this song was the culmination of another epic of simultaneous writing and recording in the studio. Wilentz describes how the lyrics evolved through a surviving part-typed, part-handwritten manuscript page, "which begins 'honey but it's just too hard' (a line that had survived from the very first New York session with the Hawks). Then the words meander through random combinations and disconnected fragments and images ('people just get uglier'; 'banjo eyes'; 'he was carrying a 22 but it was only a single shot'), before, in Dylan's own hand, amid many crossings-out, there appears 'Oh MAMA you're here IN MOBILE ALABAMA with the Memphis blues again'."
Inside the studio, the song evolved through several musical revisions. Heylin writes, "It is the song's arrangement, and not its lyrics, that occupies the musicians through the wee small hours." On the fifth take, released in 2005 on the No Direction Home Soundtrack, midtake Dylan stumbles on the formula "Stuck inside of Mobile" on the fourth verse, and never goes back. The song contains two oft-quoted pieces of Dylan's philosophy: "Your debutante just knows what you need/ But I know what you want" and "here I sit so patiently/ Waiting to find out what price/ You have to pay to get out of/ Going through all these things twice".
"Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat"
"Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" is a satire of materialism, fashion and faddism. Done in Chicago-blues style, the song derives its melody and part of its lyrics from Lightnin' Hopkins's "Automobile (Blues)". Paul Williams writes that its caustic attitude is "moderated slightly when one realizes that jealous pique is the underlying emotion". The narrator observes his former lover in various situations wearing her "brand new leopard-skin pill-box hat", at one point finding his doctor with her and later spying her making love with a new boyfriend because she "forgot to close the garage door". In the closing lines, the narrator says he knows what her boyfriend really loves her for—her hat.
The song evolved over the course of six takes in New York, 13 in the first Nashville session, and then one on March 10, the take used for the album. Dylan, who gets credit on the liner notes as lead guitarist, opens the song playing lead (on the center-right stereo channel), but Robertson handles the solos with a "searing" performance (on the left stereo channel). A year after the recording, "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" became the fifth single released from Blonde on Blonde, making it to number 81 on the Billboard Hot 100.
"Just Like a Woman"
According to Wilentz's analysis of the session's tapes, Dylan felt his way into the lyrics of one of his most popular songs, singing "disconnected lines and semi-gibberish" during the earlier takes. He was unsure what the person described in the song does that is just like a woman, rejecting "shakes", "wakes", and "makes mistakes". This exploration of female wiles and feminine vulnerability was widely rumored—"not least by her acquaintances among Andy Warhol's Factory retinue"—to be about Edie Sedgwick. The reference to Baby's penchant for "fog ... amphetamine and ... pearls" suggests Sedgwick or a similar debutante, according to Heylin.
Discussing the lyrics, literary critic Christopher Ricks detects a "note of social exclusion" in the line "I was hungry and it was your world". In response to the accusation that Dylan's depiction of female strategies is misogynistic, Ricks asks, "Could there ever be any challenging art about men and women where the accusation just didn't arise?" The song reached number 33 in the US.
Side three
"Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine"
A bright blues "stomper" about lovers parting, "Most Likely You Go Your Way And I'll Go Mine" is one of the more literal songs Dylan recorded in 1965–66. The narrator has tired of carrying his lover and is going to let her "pass". As in "Just Like a Woman" and "Absolutely Sweet Marie", he waits until the end of each verse to deliver the punch line, which in this case comes from the title. "Most Likely You Go Your Way" was issued as a single a year later, in March 1967, on the B-side of "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat".
"Temporary Like Achilles"
This slow-moving blues number is highlighted by Hargus "Pig" Robbins's "dusky barrelhouse piano" and Dylan's "brief wheeze of harmonica". The narrator has been spurned by his lover, who has already taken up with her latest boyfriend. Calling his rival "Achilles", the narrator senses the new suitor may be discarded as quickly as he was. The refrain that ends each of the main verses—"Honey, why are you so hard?"—is a double entendre Dylan had been wanting to work into a song.
"Absolutely Sweet Marie"
This song, described as "up-tempo blues shuffle, pure Memphis" and an example of "obvious pop sensibility and compulsive melody", was recorded in four takes on March 7, 1966. Gill sees the lyrics as a series of sexual metaphors, including "beating on my trumpet" and keys to locked gates, many deriving from traditional blues. Nonetheless, the song contains what has been termed "one of the most oft-repeated of Dylan's life lessons", that "to live outside the law you must be honest", which was later invoked in many bohemian and countercultural contexts.
"4th Time Around"
When the Beatles released their sixth studio album, Rubber Soul, in December 1965, John Lennon's song "Norwegian Wood" attracted attention for the way Lennon disguised his account of an illicit affair in cryptic, Dylanesque language. Dylan sketched out a response to the song, also in 3/4 time, copying the tune and circular structure, but taking Lennon's tale in a darker direction. Wilentz describes the result as sounding "like Bob Dylan impersonating John Lennon impersonating Bob Dylan".
"Obviously 5 Believers"
"Obviously 5 Believers", Blonde on Blondes second-to-last track, is a roadhouse blues love song similar in melody and structure to Memphis Minnie's "Chauffeur Blues", and was described by Robert Shelton as "the best R&B song on the album". Recorded in the early morning hours of the March 9–10 Nashville session under the working title "Black Dog Blues", the song is driven by Robertson's guitar, Charlie McCoy's harmonica and Ken Buttrey's drumming. After an initial breakdown, Dylan complained to the band that the song was "very easy, man" and that he didn't want to spend much time on it. Within four takes, the recording was done.
Side four
"Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands"
Written in the CBS recording studio in Nashville over the space of eight hours on the night of February 15–16, "Sad Eyed Lady" eventually occupied all of side four of Blonde On Blonde. Critics have observed that "Lowlands" hints at "Lownds", and Dylan biographer Robert Shelton wrote that this was a "wedding song" for Sara Lownds, whom Dylan had married just three months earlier. In his paean to his wife, "Sara", written in 1975, Dylan amends history slightly to claim that he stayed "up for days in the Chelsea Hotel/ Writin' 'Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands' for you".
When Dylan played Shelton the song, shortly after recording it, he claimed, "This is the best song I've ever written." Around the same time, Dylan enthused to journalist Jules Siegel, "Just listen to that! That's old-time religious carnival music!" But in 1969, Dylan told Rolling Stone editor Jann Wenner, "I just sat down at a table and started writing ... And I just got carried away with the whole thing ... I just started writing and I couldn't stop. After a period of time, I forgot what it was all about, and I started trying to get back to the beginning [laughs]."
Heard by some listeners as a hymn to an otherworldly woman, for Shelton "her travails seem beyond endurance, yet she radiates an inner strength, an ability to be reborn. This is Dylan at his most romantic." Wilentz comments that Dylan's writing had shifted from the days when he asked questions and supplied answers. Like the verses of William Blake's "The Tyger", Dylan asks a series of questions about the "Sad Eyed Lady" but never supplies any answers.
Outtakes and The Cutting Edge
The following outtakes were recorded during the Blonde on Blonde sessions.
In 2015, Dylan released Volume 12 of his Bootleg Series, The Cutting Edge, in three different formats. The 18-disc Collector's Edition was described as including "every note recorded during the 1965–1966 sessions, every alternate take and alternate lyric." The 18 CDs contain every take of every song recorded in the studio during the Blonde on Blonde sessions, from October 5, 1965, to March 10, 1966.
The New York sessions comprise: two takes of "Medicine Sunday", one take of "Jet Pilot", twelve takes of "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?", seven takes of "I Wanna Be Your Lover", fourteen takes of "Visions of Johanna", sixteen takes of "She's Your Lover Now", four takes of "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat", twenty-four takes of "One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)", one take of "I'll Keep It with Mine", and one take of "Lunatic Princess".
The Nashville sessions comprise 20 takes of "Fourth Time Around", four of "Visions of Johanna", 14 of "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat", four of "Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands", 15 of "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again", three of "Absolutely Sweet Marie", 18 of "Just Like a Woman", three of "Pledging My Time", six of "Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I'll Go Mine)", four of "Temporary Like Achilles", four of "Obviously Five Believers", five of "I Want You", and one of "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35". The 18 CDs also contain brief recordings of guitar and keyboard inserts.
Describing the process of listening to all these alternative versions, Neil McCormick wrote: "The Cutting Edge allows fans to bear witness to perhaps the most astonishing explosion of language and sound in rock history, a new approach to song being forged before our very ears."
Cover photo
The cover photo of Blonde on Blonde shows a 12-by-12-inch close-up portrait of Dylan. The double album gatefold sleeve opens to form a 12-by-26-inch photo of the artist, at three quarter length. The artist's name and the album's title only appear on the spine. A sticker was applied to the shrink wrap to promote the release's two hit singles, "I Want You" and "Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35".
The cover shows Dylan in front of a brick building, wearing a suede jacket and a black and white checkered scarf. The jacket is the same one he wore on his next two albums, John Wesley Harding and Nashville Skyline. The photographer, Jerry Schatzberg, described how the photo was taken:
Research by rock historian Bob Egan suggests the location of the cover photo was at 375 West Street, at the extreme west of Greenwich Village. The original inside gatefold featured nine black-and-white photos, all taken by Schatzberg and selected for the sleeve by Dylan himself. A shot of actress Claudia Cardinale from Schatzberg's portfolio was included but later withdrawn because it had been used without her authorization and Cardinale's representatives threatened to sue, making the original record sleeve a collector's item. Dylan included a self-portrait by Schatzberg as a credit to the photographer. The photos, for Gill, added up to "a shadowy glimpse of [Dylan's] life, including an enigmatic posed shot of Dylan holding a small portrait of a woman in one hand and a pair of pliers in the other: they all contributed to the album's air of reclusive yet sybaritic genius."
Release and reception
Blonde on Blonde reached the Top 10 in both the US and UK album charts, and also spawned a number of hits that restored Dylan to the upper echelons of the singles charts. In August 1967, the album was certified as a gold disc.
A high-definition 5.1 surround sound edition of the album was released on SACD by Columbia in 2003.
The album received generally favorable reviews. Pete Johnson in the Los Angeles Times wrote, "Dylan is a superbly eloquent writer of pop and folk songs with an unmatched ability to press complex ideas and iconoclastic philosophy into brief poetic lines and startling images." The editor of Crawdaddy!, Paul Williams, reviewed Blonde on Blonde in July 1966: "It is a cache of emotion, a well handled package of excellent music and better poetry, blended and meshed and ready to become part of your reality. Here is a man who will speak to you, a 1960s bard with electric lyre and color slides, but a truthful man with x-ray eyes you can look through if you want. All you have to do is listen."
To accompany the songbook of Blonde on Blonde, Paul Nelson wrote an introduction stating, "The very title suggests the singularity and the duality we expect from Dylan. For Dylan's music of illusion and delusion—with the tramp as explorer and the clown as happy victim, where the greatest crimes are lifelessness and the inability to see oneself as a circus performer in the show of life—has always carried within it its own inherent tensions ... Dylan in the end truly UNDERSTANDS situations, and once one truly understands anything, there can no longer be anger, no longer be moralizing, but only humor and compassion, only pity." In May 1968 for Esquire, Robert Christgau said Dylan had "presented his work at its most involuted, neurotic, and pop—and exhilarating—in Blonde on Blonde."
Date discrepancy
May 16, 1966 was commonly noted as the album's official release date. Michael Gray, author of The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, contended that the release date was actually around late June or early July. This coincides with the album's promotion in Billboard, which carried a full-page Columbia advertisement on June 25, selected the album as a "New Action LP" on July 9, and ran a review and article on July 16. In 2017, after viewing a Sony database of album releases, Heylin found that the release date was in fact June 20, 1966. This is supported by the fact that an overdub on "Fourth Time Around" was recorded in June.
The album debuted on Billboards Top LP's chart on July 23 at number 101—just six days before Dylan's motorcycle accident in Woodstock removed him from public view. By contrast, another contemporary LP which has an official 1966 release date of May 16, Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys, entered the Billboard LP chart less than two weeks after release on May 28 at number 105.
Blonde on Blonde has been described as rock's first studio double LP by a major artist, released just one week before Freak Out!, the double album by the Mothers of Invention.
Reappraisal and legacy
Twelve years after its release, Dylan said: "The closest I ever got to the sound I hear in my mind was on individual bands in the Blonde on Blonde album. It's that thin, that wild mercury sound. It's metallic and bright gold, with whatever that conjures up." For critics, the double album was seen as the last installment in Dylan's trilogy of mid-1960s rock albums. As Janet Maslin wrote, "The three albums of this period—Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited both released in 1965, and Blonde on Blonde from 1966—used their electric instrumentation and rock arrangements to achieve a crashing exuberance Dylan hadn't approached before." Mike Marqusee has described Dylan's output between late 1964 and the summer of 1966, when he recorded these three albums, as "a body of work that remains unique in popular music." For Patrick Humphries, "Dylan's body of work during the 14-months period ... stands unequalled in rock's 30-year history. In substance, style, ambition and achievement, no one has even come close to matching Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde." Music journalist Gary Graff points to Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde, along with the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds (1966), as possible starting points to the album era, as they each constituted "a cohesive and conceptual body of work rather than just some hit singles ... with filler tracks."
Dylan scholar Michael Gray wrote: "To have followed up one masterpiece with another was Dylan's history making achievement here ... Where Highway 61 Revisited has Dylan exposing and confronting like a laser beam in surgery, descending from outside the sickness, Blonde on Blonde offers a persona awash inside the chaos ... We're tossed from song to song ... The feel and the music are on a grand scale, and the language and delivery are a unique mixture of the visionary and the colloquial." Critic Tim Riley wrote: "A sprawling abstraction of eccentric blues revisionism, Blonde on Blonde confirms Dylan's stature as the greatest American rock presence since Elvis Presley." Biographer Robert Shelton saw the album as "a hallmark collection that completes his first major rock cycle, which began with Bringing It All Back Home". Summing up the album's achievement, Shelton wrote that Blonde on Blonde "begins with a joke and ends with a hymn; in between wit alternates with a dominant theme of entrapment by circumstances, love, society, and unrealized hope ... There's a remarkable marriage of funky, bluesy rock expressionism, and Rimbaud-like visions of discontinuity, chaos, emptiness, loss, being 'stuck'."
That sense of crossing cultural boundaries was, for Al Kooper, at the heart of Blonde on Blonde: "[Bob Dylan] was the quintessential New York hipster—what was he doing in Nashville? It didn't make any sense whatsoever. But you take those two elements, pour them into a test tube, and it just exploded." For Mike Marqusee, Dylan had succeeded in combining traditional blues material with modernist literary techniques: "[Dylan] took inherited idioms and boosted them into a modernist stratosphere. 'Pledging My Time' and 'Obviously 5 Believers' adhered to blues patterns that were venerable when Dylan first encountered them in the mid-fifties (both begin with the ritual Delta invocation of "early in the mornin"). Yet like 'Visions of Johanna' or 'Memphis Blues Again', these songs are beyond category. They are allusive, repetitive, jaggedly abstract compositions that defy reduction."
Blonde on Blonde has been consistently ranked high in critics' polls of the greatest albums of all time. According to Acclaimed Music, it is the 9th most ranked album on all-time lists. In 1974, the writers of NME voted Blonde on Blonde the number-two album of all time. It was ranked second in the 1978 book Critic's Choice: Top 200 Albums and third in the 1987 edition. In 1997 the album was placed at number 16 in a "Music of the Millennium" poll conducted by HMV, Channel 4, The Guardian and Classic FM. In 2006, Time magazine included the record on their 100 All-Time Albums list. In 2003, the album was ranked number nine on Rolling Stone magazine's list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time", maintaining the rating in a 2012 revised list, while dropping to number 38 in 2020. In 2004, two songs from the album also appeared on the magazine's list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time": "Just Like a Woman" ranked number 230 and "Visions of Johanna" number 404. (When Rolling Stone updated this list in 2010, "Just Like a Woman" dropped to number 232 and "Visions of Johanna" to number 413. Then in 2021, "Visions of Johanna" was re-ranked at number 317.) The album was additionally included in Robert Christgau's "Basic Record Library" of 1950s and 1960s recordings—published in Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981)—and in critic Robert Dimery's book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.
It was voted number 33 in the third edition of Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums (2000). It was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999.
When Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016, Swedish Academy Secretary Sara Danius, when asked how to evaluate Dylan's literary merit, suggested listening first to "Blonde on Blonde."
Track listing
All songs are written by Bob Dylan.
Side one
"Rainy Day Women #12 & 35" – 4:36
"Pledging My Time" – 3:50
"Visions of Johanna" – 7:33
"One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)" – 4:54
Side two
"I Want You" – 3:07
"Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again" – 7:05
"Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" – 3:58
"Just Like a Woman" – 4:52
Side three
"Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine" – 3:30
"Temporary Like Achilles" – 5:02
"Absolutely Sweet Marie" – 4:57
"4th Time Around" – 4:35
"Obviously 5 Believers" – 3:35
Side four
"Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" – 11:23
Personnel
The personnel involved in making Blonde on Blonde is subject to some discrepancy:
Bob Dylan – vocals, guitar, harmonica, piano
Additional musicians
Bill Aikins – keyboards
Wayne Butler – trombone
Kenneth Buttrey – drums
Rick Danko – bass guitar (New York)
Bobby Gregg – drums (New York)
Paul Griffin – piano (New York)
Jerry Kennedy – guitar
Al Kooper – organ, guitar
Charlie McCoy – bass guitar, guitar, harmonica, trumpet
Wayne Moss – guitar, vocals
Hargus "Pig" Robbins – piano, keyboards
Robbie Robertson – guitar, vocals
Henry Strzelecki – bass guitar
Joe South – bass guitar, guitar
Technical
Bob Johnston – record producer
Jerry Schatzberg – cover photographer
Charts
Weekly charts
Singles
Certifications
See also
50 Years of Blonde on Blonde, a 2017 live album by Old Crow Medicine Show covering these songs
Notes
Footnotes
References
External links
Mystic Nights: The Making of Blonde on Blonde in Nashville by Sean Wilentz
Still on the Road: 1966 Blonde on Blonde recording sessions and world tour
1966 albums
Albums produced by Bob Johnston
Bob Dylan albums
Columbia Records albums
Grammy Hall of Fame Award recipients | true | [
"\"What Happened to Us\" is a song by Australian recording artist Jessica Mauboy, featuring English recording artist Jay Sean. It was written by Sean, Josh Alexander, Billy Steinberg, Jeremy Skaller, Rob Larow, Khaled Rohaim and Israel Cruz. \"What Happened to Us\" was leaked online in October 2010, and was released on 10 March 2011, as the third single from Mauboy's second studio album, Get 'Em Girls (2010). The song received positive reviews from critics.\n\nA remix of \"What Happened to Us\" made by production team OFM, was released on 11 April 2011. A different version of the song which features Stan Walker, was released on 29 May 2011. \"What Happened to Us\" charted on the ARIA Singles Chart at number 14 and was certified platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA). An accompanying music video was directed by Mark Alston, and reminisces on a former relationship between Mauboy and Sean.\n\nProduction and release\n\n\"What Happened to Us\" was written by Josh Alexander, Billy Steinberg, Jeremy Skaller, Rob Larow, Khaled Rohaim, Israel Cruz and Jay Sean. It was produced by Skaller, Cruz, Rohaim and Bobby Bass. The song uses C, D, and B minor chords in the chorus. \"What Happened to Us\" was sent to contemporary hit radio in Australia on 14 February 2011. The cover art for the song was revealed on 22 February on Mauboy's official Facebook page. A CD release was available for purchase via her official website on 10 March, for one week only. It was released digitally the following day.\n\nReception\nMajhid Heath from ABC Online Indigenous called the song a \"Jordin Sparks-esque duet\", and wrote that it \"has a nice innocence to it that rings true to the experience of losing a first love.\" Chris Urankar from Nine to Five wrote that it as a \"mid-tempo duet ballad\" which signifies Mauboy's strength as a global player. On 21 March 2011, \"What Happened to Us\" debuted at number 30 on the ARIA Singles Chart, and peaked at number 14 the following week. The song was certified platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA), for selling 70,000 copies. \"What Happened to Us\" spent a total of ten weeks in the ARIA top fifty.\n\nMusic video\n\nBackground\nThe music video for the song was shot in the Elizabeth Bay House in Sydney on 26 November 2010. The video was shot during Sean's visit to Australia for the Summerbeatz tour. During an interview with The Daily Telegraph while on the set of the video, Sean said \"the song is sick! ... Jessica's voice is amazing and we're shooting [the video] in this ridiculously beautiful mansion overlooking the harbour.\" The video was directed by Mark Alston, who had previously directed the video for Mauboy's single \"Let Me Be Me\" (2009). It premiered on YouTube on 10 February 2011.\n\nSynopsis and reception\nThe video begins showing Mauboy who appears to be sitting on a yellow antique couch in a mansion, wearing a purple dress. As the video progresses, scenes of memories are displayed of Mauboy and her love interest, played by Sean, spending time there previously. It then cuts to the scenes where Sean appears in the main entrance room of the mansion. The final scene shows Mauboy outdoors in a gold dress, surrounded by green grass and trees. She is later joined by Sean who appears in a black suit and a white shirt, and together they sing the chorus of the song to each other. David Lim of Feed Limmy wrote that the video is \"easily the best thing our R&B princess has committed to film – ever\" and praised the \"mansion and wondrous interior décor\". He also commended Mauboy for choosing Australian talent to direct the video instead of American directors, which she had used for her previous two music videos. Since its release, the video has received over two million views on Vevo.\n\nLive performances\nMauboy performed \"What Happened to Us\" live for the first time during her YouTube Live Sessions program on 4 December 2010. She also appeared on Adam Hills in Gordon Street Tonight on 23 February 2011 for an interview and later performed the song. On 15 March 2011, Mauboy performed \"What Happened to Us\" on Sunrise. She also performed the song with Stan Walker during the Australian leg of Chris Brown's F.A.M.E. Tour in April 2011. Mauboy and Walker later performed \"What Happened to Us\" on Dancing with the Stars Australia on 29 May 2011. From November 2013 to February 2014, \"What Happened to Us\" was part of the set list of the To the End of the Earth Tour, Mauboy's second headlining tour of Australia, with Nathaniel Willemse singing Sean's part.\n\nTrack listing\n\nDigital download\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean – 3:19\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean (Sgt Slick Remix) – 6:33\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean (Just Witness Remix) – 3:45\n\nCD single\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean (Album Version) – 3:19\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean (Sgt Slick Remix) – 6:33\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean (OFM Remix) – 3:39\n\nDigital download – Remix\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean (OFM Remix) – 3:38\n\nDigital download\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Stan Walker – 3:20\n\nPersonnel\nSongwriting – Josh Alexander, Billy Steinberg, Jeremy Skaller, Rob Larow, Khaled Rohaim, Israel Cruz, Jay Sean\nProduction – Jeremy Skaller, Bobby Bass\nAdditional production – Israel Cruz, Khaled Rohaim\nLead vocals – Jessica Mauboy, Jay Sean\nMixing – Phil Tan\nAdditional mixing – Damien Lewis\nMastering – Tom Coyne \nSource:\n\nCharts\n\nWeekly chart\n\nYear-end chart\n\nCertification\n\nRadio dates and release history\n\nReferences\n\n2010 songs\n2011 singles\nJessica Mauboy songs\nJay Sean songs\nSongs written by Billy Steinberg\nSongs written by Jay Sean\nSongs written by Josh Alexander\nSongs written by Israel Cruz\nVocal duets\nSony Music Australia singles\nSongs written by Khaled Rohaim",
"What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? may refer to:\n\nWhat Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (novel), a 1960 suspense novel by Henry Farrell\n What Ever Happened to Baby Jane (film), a 1962 American psychological thriller, based on the novel.\n What Ever Happened to..., a 1991 ABC television film, based on the novel"
]
|
[
"Blonde on Blonde",
"Recording sessions in Nashville",
"What happened on February 15?",
"two blocks of recording"
]
| C_6ae80bc19e3e4910915f6ca02f15467e_0 | When was Nashville's first session? | 2 | When was Blonde on Blonde Nashville's first session? | Blonde on Blonde | Most accounts of recording Blonde on Blonde, including those by Dylan scholars Clinton Heylin and Michael Gray, agree that there were two blocks of recording sessions: February 14-17 and March 8-10, 1966. This chronology is based on the logs and files kept by Columbia Records. Dylan and the Hawks performed concerts in Ottawa, Montreal, and Philadelphia in February and March, and then Dylan resumed recording in Nashville on March 8. On that date, Dylan and the musicians recorded the take of "Absolutely Sweet Marie" that Dylan selected for the album. Historian Sean Wilentz observed that "with the sound of 'Sweet Marie', Blonde on Blonde entered fully and sublimely into what is now considered classic rock and roll". The same day saw the successful takes of "Just Like a Woman", and "Pledging My Time", the latter "driven by Robertson's screaming guitar". According to Wilentz the final recording session, on March 9-10, produced six songs in 13 hours of studio time. The first number to be recorded to Dylan's satisfaction was "Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine", when McCoy reinforced on trumpet a musical phrase Dylan played on his harmonica, changing the sound of the song radically. Dylan and his band then quickly recorded "Temporary Like Achilles". The session atmosphere began to "get giddy" around midnight when Dylan roughed out "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35" on the piano. Johnston recalled commenting; "That sounds like the damn Salvation Army band". Dylan replied; "Can you get one?" Johnston then telephoned trombonist Wayne Butler, the only additional musician required, and Dylan and the band, with McCoy again on trumpet, played a high-spirited version of the song. In quick succession Dylan and the musicians then recorded "Obviously 5 Believers" and a final take of "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" powered by Robertson's lead guitar. The session concluded with "I Want You" on which, as Wilentz notes, "Wayne Moss's rapid-fire sixteenth notes on the guitar" are an impressive element of the recording. CANNOTANSWER | February 14-17 | Blonde on Blonde is the seventh studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released as a double album on June 20, 1966, by Columbia Records. Recording sessions began in New York in October 1965 with numerous backing musicians, including members of Dylan's live backing band, the Hawks. Though sessions continued until January 1966, they yielded only one track that made it onto the final album—"One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)". At producer Bob Johnston's suggestion, Dylan, keyboardist Al Kooper, and guitarist Robbie Robertson moved to the CBS studios in Nashville, Tennessee. These sessions, augmented by some of Nashville's top session musicians, were more fruitful, and in February and March all the remaining songs for the album were recorded.
Blonde on Blonde completed the trilogy of rock albums that Dylan recorded in 1965 and 1966, starting with Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited. Critics often rank Blonde on Blonde as one of the greatest albums of all time. Combining the expertise of Nashville session musicians with a modernist literary sensibility, the album's songs have been described as operating on a grand scale musically, while featuring lyrics one critic called "a unique mixture of the visionary and the colloquial". It was one of the first double albums in rock music.
The album peaked at number nine on the Billboard 200 chart in the US, where it eventually was certified double platinum, and it reached number three in the UK. Blonde on Blonde spawned two singles that were top-twenty hits in the US: "Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35" and "I Want You". Two additional songs—"Just Like a Woman" and "Visions of Johanna"—have been named as among Dylan's greatest compositions and were featured in Rolling Stones 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list.
In 1999, the album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, and was ranked number 38 in Rolling Stones 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list in 2020.
Recording sessions
Background
After the release of Highway 61 Revisited in August 1965, Dylan set about hiring a touring band. Guitarist Mike Bloomfield and keyboard player Al Kooper had backed Dylan on the album and at Dylan's controversial electric debut at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. However, Bloomfield chose not to tour with Dylan, preferring to remain with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. After backing him at concerts in late August and early September, Kooper informed Dylan he did not wish to continue touring with him. Dylan's manager, Albert Grossman, was in the process of setting up a grueling concert schedule that would keep Dylan on the road for the next nine months, touring the U.S., Australia, and Europe. Dylan contacted a group who were performing as Levon and the Hawks, consisting of Levon Helm from Arkansas and four Canadian musicians: Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko, Richard Manuel and Garth Hudson. They had come together as a band in Canada, backing American rocker Ronnie Hawkins. Two people had strongly recommended the Hawks to Dylan: Mary Martin, the executive secretary of Grossman, and blues singer John Hammond, Jr., son of record producer John Hammond, who had signed Dylan to Columbia Records in 1961; the Hawks had backed the younger Hammond on his 1965 album So Many Roads.
Dylan rehearsed with the Hawks in Toronto on September 15, where they were playing a hometown residency at Friar's Club, and on September 24, they made their debut in Austin, Texas. Two weeks later, encouraged by the success of their Texas performance, Dylan took the Hawks into Studio A of Columbia Records in New York City. Their immediate task was to record a hit single as the follow-up to "Positively 4th Street", but Dylan was already shaping his next album, the third one that year backed by rock musicians.
New York sessions
Producer Bob Johnston, who had overseen the recording of Highway 61 Revisited, started work with Dylan and the Hawks at Columbia Studio A, 799 Seventh Avenue, New York, on October 5. They concentrated on a new arrangement of "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?", a song recorded during the Highway 61 Revisited sessions but not included on that album. Three further numbers were attempted, but none progressed into completed songs. Both the fragmentary "Jet Pilot" and "I Wanna Be Your Lover", a quasi-parody of the Beatles' "I Wanna Be Your Man", finally appeared on the 1985 box set retrospective, Biograph. Also attempted were two takes of "Medicine Sunday", a song that later evolved into "Temporary Like Achilles".
On November 30, the Hawks joined Dylan again at Studio A, but drummer Bobby Gregg replaced Levon Helm, who had tired of playing in a backing band and quit. They began work on a new composition, "Freeze Out", which was later retitled "Visions of Johanna", but Dylan wasn't satisfied with the results. One of the November 30 recordings was eventually released on The Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home: The Soundtrack in 2005. At this session, they completed "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?" The song was released as a single in December, but only reached number 58 on the American charts.
Dylan spent most of December in California, performing a dozen concerts with his band, and then took a break through the third week in January following the birth of his son Jesse. On January 21, 1966, he returned to Columbia's Studio A to record another long composition, "She's Your Lover Now", accompanied by the Hawks (this time with Sandy Konikoff on drums). Despite nineteen takes, the session failed to yield any complete recordings. Dylan did not attempt the song again, but one of the outtakes from the January 21 session finally appeared 25 years later on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961–1991. (Although the song breaks down at the start of the last verse, Columbia released it as the most complete take from the session.)
Around this time, Dylan became disillusioned about using the Hawks in the studio. He recorded more material at Studio A on January 25, backed by drummer Bobby Gregg, bassist Rick Danko (or Bill Lee), guitarist Robbie Robertson, pianist Paul Griffin, and organist Al Kooper. Two more new compositions were attempted: "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" and "One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)". Dylan was satisfied with "One of Us Must Know"; the January 25 take was released as a single a few weeks later and was subsequently selected for the album.
Another session took place on January 27, this time with Robertson, Danko, Kooper and Gregg. Dylan and his band recorded "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" and "One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)" again, but Dylan was not satisfied with the recorded performance of either song. Also at this session Dylan attempted a rough performance of "I'll Keep It with Mine", a song which he had already recorded twice as a demo. The musicians added some tentative backing in a rendering biographer Clinton Heylin described as "cursory". The recording was ultimately released on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 in 1991.
A shortage of new material and the slow progress of the sessions contributed to Dylan's decision to cancel three additional recording dates. Six weeks later Dylan confided to critic Robert Shelton, "Oh, I was really down. I mean, in ten recording sessions, man, we didn't get one song ... It was the band. But you see, I didn't know that. I didn't want to think that".
Move to Nashville
Recognizing Dylan's dissatisfaction with the progress of the recordings, producer Bob Johnston suggested that they move the sessions to Nashville. Johnston lived there and had extensive experience working with Nashville session musicians. He recalled how Dylan's manager, Albert Grossman, was hostile to the idea: "Grossman came up to me and said 'If you ever mention Nashville to Dylan again, you're gone.' I said, 'What do you mean?' He said, 'You heard me. We got a thing going here'". Despite Grossman's opposition, Dylan agreed to Johnston's suggestion, and preparations were made to record the album at Columbia's A Studio on Nashville's Music Row in February 1966.
In addition to Kooper and Robertson, who accompanied Dylan from New York, Johnston recruited harmonica player, guitarist and bassist Charlie McCoy, guitarist Wayne Moss, guitarist and bassist Joe South, and drummer Kenny Buttrey. At Dylan's request, Johnston removed the baffles—partitions separating the musicians so that there was "an ambience fit for an ensemble". Buttrey credited the distinctive sound of the album to Johnston's re-arrangement of the studio, "as if we were on a tight stage, as opposed to playing in a big hall where you're ninety miles apart". Dylan had a piano installed in his Nashville hotel room which Kooper would play to help Dylan write lyrics. Kooper would then teach the tunes to the musicians before Dylan arrived for the sessions.
On the first Nashville session, on February 14, Dylan successfully recorded "Visions of Johanna", which he had attempted several times in New York. Also recorded was a take of "4th Time Around" which made it onto the album and a take of "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" which did not.
On February 15 the session began at 6 p.m. but Dylan simply sat in the studio working on his lyrics while the musicians played cards, napped and chatted. Finally, at 4 am, Dylan called the musicians in and outlined the structure of the song. Dylan counted off and the musicians fell in, as he attempted his epic composition "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands". Kenny Buttrey recalled, "If you notice that record, that thing after like the second chorus starts building and building like crazy, and everybody's just peaking it up 'cause we thought, Man, this is it ... This is gonna be the last chorus and we've gotta put everything into it we can. And he played another harmonica solo and went back down to another verse and the dynamics had to drop back down to a verse kind of feel ... After about ten minutes of this thing we're cracking up at each other, at what we were doing. I mean, we peaked five minutes ago. Where do we go from here?" The finished song clocked in at 11 minutes, 23 seconds, and would occupy the entire fourth side of the album.
The next session began similarly—Dylan spent the afternoon writing lyrics, and the session continued into the early hours of February 17, when the musicians began to record "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again". After several musical revisions and false starts, the fourteenth take was the version selected for the album.
Recording sessions in Nashville
Most accounts of recording Blonde on Blonde, including those by Dylan scholars Clinton Heylin and Michael Gray, agree that there were two blocks of recording sessions: February 14–17 and March 8–10, 1966. This chronology is based on the logs and files kept by Columbia Records.
Dylan and the Hawks performed concerts in Ottawa, Montreal, and Philadelphia in February and March, and then Dylan resumed recording in Nashville on March 8. On that date, Dylan and the musicians recorded the take of "Absolutely Sweet Marie" that Dylan selected for the album. Historian Sean Wilentz observed that "with the sound of 'Sweet Marie', Blonde on Blonde entered fully and sublimely into what is now considered classic rock and roll". The same day saw the successful takes of "Just Like a Woman", and "Pledging My Time", the latter "driven by Robertson's screaming guitar".
According to Wilentz the final recording session, on March 9–10, produced six songs in 13 hours of studio time. The first number to be recorded to Dylan's satisfaction was "Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine", when McCoy reinforced on trumpet a musical phrase Dylan played on his harmonica, changing the sound of the song radically. Dylan and his band then quickly recorded "Temporary Like Achilles". The session atmosphere began to "get giddy" around midnight when Dylan roughed out "Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35" on the piano. Johnston recalled commenting; "That sounds like the damn Salvation Army band". Dylan replied; "Can you get one?" Johnston then telephoned trombonist Wayne Butler, the only additional musician required, and Dylan and the band, with McCoy again on trumpet, played a high-spirited version of the song.
In quick succession Dylan and the musicians then recorded "Obviously 5 Believers" and a final take of "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" powered by Robertson's lead guitar. The session concluded with "I Want You" on which, as Wilentz notes, "Wayne Moss's rapid-fire sixteenth notes on the guitar" are an impressive element of the recording.
Disagreement over Nashville recording dates
Al Kooper, who played keyboards on every track of Blonde on Blonde, has contested the conventional account that there were two blocks of recording sessions in Nashville. In comments on Michael Gray's website, Kooper wrote: "There was only ONE trip to Nashville for Robbie and I, and ALL THE TRACKS were cut in that one visit", stating that Dylan merely broke for an outstanding concert. Charlie McCoy agreed with Kooper's version. Wilentz analyzed the recording of Blonde on Blonde in his book Bob Dylan in America, concluding that the "official" documented version fits Dylan's known touring schedule, and notes that five of the eight songs first recorded after "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again", but none of those recorded earlier, include a middle-eight section—Dylan's first extensive foray as a writer into that conventional structure".
Mixing
Dylan mixed the album in Los Angeles in early April, before he departed on the Australian leg of his 1966 world tour. Wilentz writes that it was at this point it became "obvious that the riches of the Nashville sessions could not fit onto a single LP", and they had "produced enough solid material to demand an oddly configured double album, the first of its kind in contemporary popular music". According to producer Steve Berkowitz, who supervised the reissue of Dylan's LPs in mono as The Original Mono Recordings in 2010, Johnston told him that they carefully worked on the mono mix for about three or four days whereas the stereo mix was finished in about four hours.
Origin of album title
Al Kooper recalled that both the album title, Blonde on Blonde, and song titles arrived during the mixing sessions. "When they were mixing it, we were sitting around and Bob Johnston came in and said, 'What do you want to call this?' And [Bob] just like said them out one at a time ... Free association and silliness, I'm sure, played a big role." Another Dylan chronicler, Oliver Trager, notes that besides spelling out the initials of Dylan's first name, the album title is also a riff on Brecht on Brecht, a stage production based on works by German playwright Bertolt Brecht that had influenced his early songwriting. Dylan himself has said of the title: "Well, I don't even recall exactly how it came up, but I know it was all in good faith ... I don't know who thought of that. I certainly didn't."
Songs
Side one
"Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35"
According to author Andy Gill, by starting his new album with what sounded like "a demented marching-band ... staffed by crazy people out of their mind on loco-weed", Dylan delivered his biggest shock yet for his former folkie fans. The elaborate puns on getting stoned combine a sense of paranoiac persecution with "nudge-nudge wink-wink bohemian hedonism". Heylin points out that the Old Testament connotations of getting stoned made the Salvation Army-style musical backing seem like a good joke. The enigmatic title came about, Heylin suggests, because Dylan knew a song called "Everybody Must Get Stoned" would be kept off the airwaves. Heylin links the title to the Book of Proverbs, chapter 27, verse 15: "A continual dropping in a very rainy day and a contentious woman are alike." Released as a single on March 22, 1966, "Rainy Day Women" reached number two on the Billboard singles chart and number seven in the UK.
"Pledging My Time"
Following the good-time fun of "Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35", the Chicago blues-influenced "Pledging My Time" sets the album's somber tone. It draws on several traditional blues songs, including Elmore James's recording of "It Hurts Me Too". For critic Michael Gray, the lines "Somebody got lucky but it was an accident" echo the lines "Some joker got lucky, stole her back again" from Robert Johnson's "Come On in My Kitchen", which is itself an echo of Skip James's 1931 recording "Devil Got My Woman". Gray suggests that "the gulping movements of the melodic phrases" derive from the melody of "Sitting on Top of the World", recorded by the Mississippi Sheiks in 1930. The couplet at the end of each verse expresses the theme: a pledge made to a prospective lover in hopes she "will come through, too". Besides Dylan's vocals and improvised harmonica breaks, the song's sound is defined by Robbie Robertson's guitar, Hargus "Pig" Robbins' blues piano and Ken Buttrey's snare drum rolls. The song was released in edited form as the B-side of "Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35" in March.
"Visions of Johanna"
Considered by many critics one of Dylan's masterpieces, "Visions of Johanna" proved difficult to capture on tape. Heylin places the writing in the fall of 1965, when Dylan was living in the Hotel Chelsea with his wife Sara. In the New York recording studio, on November 30, Dylan announced his epic composition: "This is called 'Freeze Out'." Gill notes that this working title captures the "air of nocturnal suspension in which the verse tableaux are sketched ... full of whispering and muttering." Wilentz relates how Dylan guided his backing musicians through 14 takes, trying to sketch out how he wanted it played, saying at one point, "it's not hard rock, The only thing in it that's hard is Robbie." Wilentz notes that, as Dylan quiets things down, he inches closer to what will appear on the album.
Ten weeks later, "Visions of Johanna" fell into place quickly in the Nashville studio. Kooper recalled that he and Robertson had become adept at responding to Dylan's vocal and also singled out Joe South's contribution of "this throbbing ... rhythmically amazing bass part". Gill comments that the song begins by contrasting two lovers, the carnal Louise and "the more spiritual but unattainable" Johanna. Ultimately, for Gill, the song seeks to convey how the artist is compelled to keep striving to pursue some elusive vision of perfection. For Heylin, the triumph of the song is in "the way Dylan manages to write about the most inchoate feelings in such a vivid, immediate way."
"One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)"
When Dylan arrived at the studio on January 25, 1966, he had yet to work out the lyrics and title for what was to become the closing track on Blonde on Blondes first side. With Dylan piecing together the song's sections, and the chorus that gives the song its title only emerging on take five, the session stretched through the night and into the next morning. Only on the 15th take was a full version recorded. Dylan and the band persisted until they recorded take 24, which closed the session and made it onto the album four months later. Critic Jonathan Singer credits Griffin's piano for binding the song together: "At the chorus, Griffin unleashes a symphony; hammering his way up and down the keyboard, half Gershwin, half gospel, all heart. The follow-up, a killer left hand figure that links the chorus to the verse, releases none of the song's tension."
"One of Us Must Know" is a straightforward account of a burned-out relationship. Dissecting what went wrong, the narrator takes a defensive attitude in a one-sided conversation with his former lover. As he presents his case in the opening verse, it appears he is incapable of acknowledging his part or limiting the abuse: "I didn't mean to treat you so bad. You don't have to take it so personal. I didn't mean to make you so sad. You just happened to be there, that's all." "One of Us Must Know" was the first recording completed for Blonde on Blonde and the only one selected from the New York sessions. The song was released as the first single from the album on February 14, the same day Dylan began to record in Nashville. It failed to appear on the American charts, but reached number 33 in the UK.
Side two
"I Want You"
Andy Gill notes that the song displays a tension between the very direct tone of the chorus, the repeated phrase "I want you", and a weird and complex cast of characters, "too numerous to inhabit the song's three minutes comfortably", including a guilty undertaker, a lonesome organ grinder, weeping fathers, mothers, sleeping saviors, the Queen of Spades, and the "dancing child with his Chinese suit". Analyzing the lyrics' evolution through successive drafts, Wilentz writes that there are numerous failures, "about deputies asking him his name ... lines about fathers going down hugging one another and about their daughters putting him down because he isn't their brother". Finally Dylan arrives at the right formula.
Heylin points out that the "gorgeous" tune illustrates what Dylan explained to a reporter in 1966: "It's not just pretty words to a tune or putting tunes to words ... [It's] the words and the music [together]—I can hear the sound of what I want to say." Al Kooper has said that of all the songs that Dylan outlined to him in his hotel, this was his favorite, so Dylan delayed recording it to the very end of the Nashville sessions, "just to bug him". Released as a single in June 1966, shortly before the album, "I Want You" reached number 20 in the US and number 16 in the UK.
"Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again"
Recorded at the third Nashville session, this song was the culmination of another epic of simultaneous writing and recording in the studio. Wilentz describes how the lyrics evolved through a surviving part-typed, part-handwritten manuscript page, "which begins 'honey but it's just too hard' (a line that had survived from the very first New York session with the Hawks). Then the words meander through random combinations and disconnected fragments and images ('people just get uglier'; 'banjo eyes'; 'he was carrying a 22 but it was only a single shot'), before, in Dylan's own hand, amid many crossings-out, there appears 'Oh MAMA you're here IN MOBILE ALABAMA with the Memphis blues again'."
Inside the studio, the song evolved through several musical revisions. Heylin writes, "It is the song's arrangement, and not its lyrics, that occupies the musicians through the wee small hours." On the fifth take, released in 2005 on the No Direction Home Soundtrack, midtake Dylan stumbles on the formula "Stuck inside of Mobile" on the fourth verse, and never goes back. The song contains two oft-quoted pieces of Dylan's philosophy: "Your debutante just knows what you need/ But I know what you want" and "here I sit so patiently/ Waiting to find out what price/ You have to pay to get out of/ Going through all these things twice".
"Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat"
"Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" is a satire of materialism, fashion and faddism. Done in Chicago-blues style, the song derives its melody and part of its lyrics from Lightnin' Hopkins's "Automobile (Blues)". Paul Williams writes that its caustic attitude is "moderated slightly when one realizes that jealous pique is the underlying emotion". The narrator observes his former lover in various situations wearing her "brand new leopard-skin pill-box hat", at one point finding his doctor with her and later spying her making love with a new boyfriend because she "forgot to close the garage door". In the closing lines, the narrator says he knows what her boyfriend really loves her for—her hat.
The song evolved over the course of six takes in New York, 13 in the first Nashville session, and then one on March 10, the take used for the album. Dylan, who gets credit on the liner notes as lead guitarist, opens the song playing lead (on the center-right stereo channel), but Robertson handles the solos with a "searing" performance (on the left stereo channel). A year after the recording, "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" became the fifth single released from Blonde on Blonde, making it to number 81 on the Billboard Hot 100.
"Just Like a Woman"
According to Wilentz's analysis of the session's tapes, Dylan felt his way into the lyrics of one of his most popular songs, singing "disconnected lines and semi-gibberish" during the earlier takes. He was unsure what the person described in the song does that is just like a woman, rejecting "shakes", "wakes", and "makes mistakes". This exploration of female wiles and feminine vulnerability was widely rumored—"not least by her acquaintances among Andy Warhol's Factory retinue"—to be about Edie Sedgwick. The reference to Baby's penchant for "fog ... amphetamine and ... pearls" suggests Sedgwick or a similar debutante, according to Heylin.
Discussing the lyrics, literary critic Christopher Ricks detects a "note of social exclusion" in the line "I was hungry and it was your world". In response to the accusation that Dylan's depiction of female strategies is misogynistic, Ricks asks, "Could there ever be any challenging art about men and women where the accusation just didn't arise?" The song reached number 33 in the US.
Side three
"Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine"
A bright blues "stomper" about lovers parting, "Most Likely You Go Your Way And I'll Go Mine" is one of the more literal songs Dylan recorded in 1965–66. The narrator has tired of carrying his lover and is going to let her "pass". As in "Just Like a Woman" and "Absolutely Sweet Marie", he waits until the end of each verse to deliver the punch line, which in this case comes from the title. "Most Likely You Go Your Way" was issued as a single a year later, in March 1967, on the B-side of "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat".
"Temporary Like Achilles"
This slow-moving blues number is highlighted by Hargus "Pig" Robbins's "dusky barrelhouse piano" and Dylan's "brief wheeze of harmonica". The narrator has been spurned by his lover, who has already taken up with her latest boyfriend. Calling his rival "Achilles", the narrator senses the new suitor may be discarded as quickly as he was. The refrain that ends each of the main verses—"Honey, why are you so hard?"—is a double entendre Dylan had been wanting to work into a song.
"Absolutely Sweet Marie"
This song, described as "up-tempo blues shuffle, pure Memphis" and an example of "obvious pop sensibility and compulsive melody", was recorded in four takes on March 7, 1966. Gill sees the lyrics as a series of sexual metaphors, including "beating on my trumpet" and keys to locked gates, many deriving from traditional blues. Nonetheless, the song contains what has been termed "one of the most oft-repeated of Dylan's life lessons", that "to live outside the law you must be honest", which was later invoked in many bohemian and countercultural contexts.
"4th Time Around"
When the Beatles released their sixth studio album, Rubber Soul, in December 1965, John Lennon's song "Norwegian Wood" attracted attention for the way Lennon disguised his account of an illicit affair in cryptic, Dylanesque language. Dylan sketched out a response to the song, also in 3/4 time, copying the tune and circular structure, but taking Lennon's tale in a darker direction. Wilentz describes the result as sounding "like Bob Dylan impersonating John Lennon impersonating Bob Dylan".
"Obviously 5 Believers"
"Obviously 5 Believers", Blonde on Blondes second-to-last track, is a roadhouse blues love song similar in melody and structure to Memphis Minnie's "Chauffeur Blues", and was described by Robert Shelton as "the best R&B song on the album". Recorded in the early morning hours of the March 9–10 Nashville session under the working title "Black Dog Blues", the song is driven by Robertson's guitar, Charlie McCoy's harmonica and Ken Buttrey's drumming. After an initial breakdown, Dylan complained to the band that the song was "very easy, man" and that he didn't want to spend much time on it. Within four takes, the recording was done.
Side four
"Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands"
Written in the CBS recording studio in Nashville over the space of eight hours on the night of February 15–16, "Sad Eyed Lady" eventually occupied all of side four of Blonde On Blonde. Critics have observed that "Lowlands" hints at "Lownds", and Dylan biographer Robert Shelton wrote that this was a "wedding song" for Sara Lownds, whom Dylan had married just three months earlier. In his paean to his wife, "Sara", written in 1975, Dylan amends history slightly to claim that he stayed "up for days in the Chelsea Hotel/ Writin' 'Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands' for you".
When Dylan played Shelton the song, shortly after recording it, he claimed, "This is the best song I've ever written." Around the same time, Dylan enthused to journalist Jules Siegel, "Just listen to that! That's old-time religious carnival music!" But in 1969, Dylan told Rolling Stone editor Jann Wenner, "I just sat down at a table and started writing ... And I just got carried away with the whole thing ... I just started writing and I couldn't stop. After a period of time, I forgot what it was all about, and I started trying to get back to the beginning [laughs]."
Heard by some listeners as a hymn to an otherworldly woman, for Shelton "her travails seem beyond endurance, yet she radiates an inner strength, an ability to be reborn. This is Dylan at his most romantic." Wilentz comments that Dylan's writing had shifted from the days when he asked questions and supplied answers. Like the verses of William Blake's "The Tyger", Dylan asks a series of questions about the "Sad Eyed Lady" but never supplies any answers.
Outtakes and The Cutting Edge
The following outtakes were recorded during the Blonde on Blonde sessions.
In 2015, Dylan released Volume 12 of his Bootleg Series, The Cutting Edge, in three different formats. The 18-disc Collector's Edition was described as including "every note recorded during the 1965–1966 sessions, every alternate take and alternate lyric." The 18 CDs contain every take of every song recorded in the studio during the Blonde on Blonde sessions, from October 5, 1965, to March 10, 1966.
The New York sessions comprise: two takes of "Medicine Sunday", one take of "Jet Pilot", twelve takes of "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?", seven takes of "I Wanna Be Your Lover", fourteen takes of "Visions of Johanna", sixteen takes of "She's Your Lover Now", four takes of "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat", twenty-four takes of "One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)", one take of "I'll Keep It with Mine", and one take of "Lunatic Princess".
The Nashville sessions comprise 20 takes of "Fourth Time Around", four of "Visions of Johanna", 14 of "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat", four of "Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands", 15 of "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again", three of "Absolutely Sweet Marie", 18 of "Just Like a Woman", three of "Pledging My Time", six of "Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I'll Go Mine)", four of "Temporary Like Achilles", four of "Obviously Five Believers", five of "I Want You", and one of "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35". The 18 CDs also contain brief recordings of guitar and keyboard inserts.
Describing the process of listening to all these alternative versions, Neil McCormick wrote: "The Cutting Edge allows fans to bear witness to perhaps the most astonishing explosion of language and sound in rock history, a new approach to song being forged before our very ears."
Cover photo
The cover photo of Blonde on Blonde shows a 12-by-12-inch close-up portrait of Dylan. The double album gatefold sleeve opens to form a 12-by-26-inch photo of the artist, at three quarter length. The artist's name and the album's title only appear on the spine. A sticker was applied to the shrink wrap to promote the release's two hit singles, "I Want You" and "Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35".
The cover shows Dylan in front of a brick building, wearing a suede jacket and a black and white checkered scarf. The jacket is the same one he wore on his next two albums, John Wesley Harding and Nashville Skyline. The photographer, Jerry Schatzberg, described how the photo was taken:
Research by rock historian Bob Egan suggests the location of the cover photo was at 375 West Street, at the extreme west of Greenwich Village. The original inside gatefold featured nine black-and-white photos, all taken by Schatzberg and selected for the sleeve by Dylan himself. A shot of actress Claudia Cardinale from Schatzberg's portfolio was included but later withdrawn because it had been used without her authorization and Cardinale's representatives threatened to sue, making the original record sleeve a collector's item. Dylan included a self-portrait by Schatzberg as a credit to the photographer. The photos, for Gill, added up to "a shadowy glimpse of [Dylan's] life, including an enigmatic posed shot of Dylan holding a small portrait of a woman in one hand and a pair of pliers in the other: they all contributed to the album's air of reclusive yet sybaritic genius."
Release and reception
Blonde on Blonde reached the Top 10 in both the US and UK album charts, and also spawned a number of hits that restored Dylan to the upper echelons of the singles charts. In August 1967, the album was certified as a gold disc.
A high-definition 5.1 surround sound edition of the album was released on SACD by Columbia in 2003.
The album received generally favorable reviews. Pete Johnson in the Los Angeles Times wrote, "Dylan is a superbly eloquent writer of pop and folk songs with an unmatched ability to press complex ideas and iconoclastic philosophy into brief poetic lines and startling images." The editor of Crawdaddy!, Paul Williams, reviewed Blonde on Blonde in July 1966: "It is a cache of emotion, a well handled package of excellent music and better poetry, blended and meshed and ready to become part of your reality. Here is a man who will speak to you, a 1960s bard with electric lyre and color slides, but a truthful man with x-ray eyes you can look through if you want. All you have to do is listen."
To accompany the songbook of Blonde on Blonde, Paul Nelson wrote an introduction stating, "The very title suggests the singularity and the duality we expect from Dylan. For Dylan's music of illusion and delusion—with the tramp as explorer and the clown as happy victim, where the greatest crimes are lifelessness and the inability to see oneself as a circus performer in the show of life—has always carried within it its own inherent tensions ... Dylan in the end truly UNDERSTANDS situations, and once one truly understands anything, there can no longer be anger, no longer be moralizing, but only humor and compassion, only pity." In May 1968 for Esquire, Robert Christgau said Dylan had "presented his work at its most involuted, neurotic, and pop—and exhilarating—in Blonde on Blonde."
Date discrepancy
May 16, 1966 was commonly noted as the album's official release date. Michael Gray, author of The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, contended that the release date was actually around late June or early July. This coincides with the album's promotion in Billboard, which carried a full-page Columbia advertisement on June 25, selected the album as a "New Action LP" on July 9, and ran a review and article on July 16. In 2017, after viewing a Sony database of album releases, Heylin found that the release date was in fact June 20, 1966. This is supported by the fact that an overdub on "Fourth Time Around" was recorded in June.
The album debuted on Billboards Top LP's chart on July 23 at number 101—just six days before Dylan's motorcycle accident in Woodstock removed him from public view. By contrast, another contemporary LP which has an official 1966 release date of May 16, Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys, entered the Billboard LP chart less than two weeks after release on May 28 at number 105.
Blonde on Blonde has been described as rock's first studio double LP by a major artist, released just one week before Freak Out!, the double album by the Mothers of Invention.
Reappraisal and legacy
Twelve years after its release, Dylan said: "The closest I ever got to the sound I hear in my mind was on individual bands in the Blonde on Blonde album. It's that thin, that wild mercury sound. It's metallic and bright gold, with whatever that conjures up." For critics, the double album was seen as the last installment in Dylan's trilogy of mid-1960s rock albums. As Janet Maslin wrote, "The three albums of this period—Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited both released in 1965, and Blonde on Blonde from 1966—used their electric instrumentation and rock arrangements to achieve a crashing exuberance Dylan hadn't approached before." Mike Marqusee has described Dylan's output between late 1964 and the summer of 1966, when he recorded these three albums, as "a body of work that remains unique in popular music." For Patrick Humphries, "Dylan's body of work during the 14-months period ... stands unequalled in rock's 30-year history. In substance, style, ambition and achievement, no one has even come close to matching Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde." Music journalist Gary Graff points to Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde, along with the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds (1966), as possible starting points to the album era, as they each constituted "a cohesive and conceptual body of work rather than just some hit singles ... with filler tracks."
Dylan scholar Michael Gray wrote: "To have followed up one masterpiece with another was Dylan's history making achievement here ... Where Highway 61 Revisited has Dylan exposing and confronting like a laser beam in surgery, descending from outside the sickness, Blonde on Blonde offers a persona awash inside the chaos ... We're tossed from song to song ... The feel and the music are on a grand scale, and the language and delivery are a unique mixture of the visionary and the colloquial." Critic Tim Riley wrote: "A sprawling abstraction of eccentric blues revisionism, Blonde on Blonde confirms Dylan's stature as the greatest American rock presence since Elvis Presley." Biographer Robert Shelton saw the album as "a hallmark collection that completes his first major rock cycle, which began with Bringing It All Back Home". Summing up the album's achievement, Shelton wrote that Blonde on Blonde "begins with a joke and ends with a hymn; in between wit alternates with a dominant theme of entrapment by circumstances, love, society, and unrealized hope ... There's a remarkable marriage of funky, bluesy rock expressionism, and Rimbaud-like visions of discontinuity, chaos, emptiness, loss, being 'stuck'."
That sense of crossing cultural boundaries was, for Al Kooper, at the heart of Blonde on Blonde: "[Bob Dylan] was the quintessential New York hipster—what was he doing in Nashville? It didn't make any sense whatsoever. But you take those two elements, pour them into a test tube, and it just exploded." For Mike Marqusee, Dylan had succeeded in combining traditional blues material with modernist literary techniques: "[Dylan] took inherited idioms and boosted them into a modernist stratosphere. 'Pledging My Time' and 'Obviously 5 Believers' adhered to blues patterns that were venerable when Dylan first encountered them in the mid-fifties (both begin with the ritual Delta invocation of "early in the mornin"). Yet like 'Visions of Johanna' or 'Memphis Blues Again', these songs are beyond category. They are allusive, repetitive, jaggedly abstract compositions that defy reduction."
Blonde on Blonde has been consistently ranked high in critics' polls of the greatest albums of all time. According to Acclaimed Music, it is the 9th most ranked album on all-time lists. In 1974, the writers of NME voted Blonde on Blonde the number-two album of all time. It was ranked second in the 1978 book Critic's Choice: Top 200 Albums and third in the 1987 edition. In 1997 the album was placed at number 16 in a "Music of the Millennium" poll conducted by HMV, Channel 4, The Guardian and Classic FM. In 2006, Time magazine included the record on their 100 All-Time Albums list. In 2003, the album was ranked number nine on Rolling Stone magazine's list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time", maintaining the rating in a 2012 revised list, while dropping to number 38 in 2020. In 2004, two songs from the album also appeared on the magazine's list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time": "Just Like a Woman" ranked number 230 and "Visions of Johanna" number 404. (When Rolling Stone updated this list in 2010, "Just Like a Woman" dropped to number 232 and "Visions of Johanna" to number 413. Then in 2021, "Visions of Johanna" was re-ranked at number 317.) The album was additionally included in Robert Christgau's "Basic Record Library" of 1950s and 1960s recordings—published in Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981)—and in critic Robert Dimery's book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.
It was voted number 33 in the third edition of Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums (2000). It was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999.
When Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016, Swedish Academy Secretary Sara Danius, when asked how to evaluate Dylan's literary merit, suggested listening first to "Blonde on Blonde."
Track listing
All songs are written by Bob Dylan.
Side one
"Rainy Day Women #12 & 35" – 4:36
"Pledging My Time" – 3:50
"Visions of Johanna" – 7:33
"One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)" – 4:54
Side two
"I Want You" – 3:07
"Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again" – 7:05
"Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" – 3:58
"Just Like a Woman" – 4:52
Side three
"Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine" – 3:30
"Temporary Like Achilles" – 5:02
"Absolutely Sweet Marie" – 4:57
"4th Time Around" – 4:35
"Obviously 5 Believers" – 3:35
Side four
"Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" – 11:23
Personnel
The personnel involved in making Blonde on Blonde is subject to some discrepancy:
Bob Dylan – vocals, guitar, harmonica, piano
Additional musicians
Bill Aikins – keyboards
Wayne Butler – trombone
Kenneth Buttrey – drums
Rick Danko – bass guitar (New York)
Bobby Gregg – drums (New York)
Paul Griffin – piano (New York)
Jerry Kennedy – guitar
Al Kooper – organ, guitar
Charlie McCoy – bass guitar, guitar, harmonica, trumpet
Wayne Moss – guitar, vocals
Hargus "Pig" Robbins – piano, keyboards
Robbie Robertson – guitar, vocals
Henry Strzelecki – bass guitar
Joe South – bass guitar, guitar
Technical
Bob Johnston – record producer
Jerry Schatzberg – cover photographer
Charts
Weekly charts
Singles
Certifications
See also
50 Years of Blonde on Blonde, a 2017 live album by Old Crow Medicine Show covering these songs
Notes
Footnotes
References
External links
Mystic Nights: The Making of Blonde on Blonde in Nashville by Sean Wilentz
Still on the Road: 1966 Blonde on Blonde recording sessions and world tour
1966 albums
Albums produced by Bob Johnston
Bob Dylan albums
Columbia Records albums
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"\"He Was There (When I Needed You)\" is a song written by Sue Richards, and recorded by American country music artist Tammy Wynette. It was released in March 1980 as the first single from the album Only Lonely Sometimes.\n\nBackground and reception\n\"He Was There (When I Needed You)\" was recorded in January 1980 at the Columbia Recording Studio in Nashville, Tennessee. The session featured tracks that would later appear on Wynette's 1980 album. The recording session was produced by Billy Sherrill and included renowned Nashville session musicians such as Johnny Gimble, Pete Drake and George Richey (Wynette's husband).\n\nThe song reached number 17 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart. It released on her 1980 studio album Only Lonely Sometimes.\n\nTrack listing\n7\" vinyl single\n \"He Was There (When I Needed You)\" – 3:15\n \"Only the Names Have Been Changed\" – 3:11\n\nCharts\n\nReferences \n\n1980 songs\n1980 singles\nTammy Wynette songs\nSong recordings produced by Billy Sherrill\nEpic Records singles",
"Gene Summers In Nashville is a 10\" vinyl album by Gene Summers. It was recorded at the Young 'Un Sound Studio Nashville, Tennessee in 1980 and contains rockabilly and country tracks performed by Summers. It was issued on the French Big Beat label in 1981.\n\nBacking Summers were some of the Nashville A-Team session musicians including Dale Sellers, Jerry Stembridge, Stu Basore, Charlie McCoy, Mike Leech, Hayward Bishop and The Jordanaires. The session engineers were Stan Dacus and Chip Young. It was produced by Chip Young and was a Michael Cattin production.\n\nTrack listing\n\nExternal links\n Album back cover image with credits\n\n1981 albums\nGene Summers albums"
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| C_6ae80bc19e3e4910915f6ca02f15467e_0 | Did they remove the baffles? | 3 | Did Blonde on Blonde remove the baffles? | Blonde on Blonde | Most accounts of recording Blonde on Blonde, including those by Dylan scholars Clinton Heylin and Michael Gray, agree that there were two blocks of recording sessions: February 14-17 and March 8-10, 1966. This chronology is based on the logs and files kept by Columbia Records. Dylan and the Hawks performed concerts in Ottawa, Montreal, and Philadelphia in February and March, and then Dylan resumed recording in Nashville on March 8. On that date, Dylan and the musicians recorded the take of "Absolutely Sweet Marie" that Dylan selected for the album. Historian Sean Wilentz observed that "with the sound of 'Sweet Marie', Blonde on Blonde entered fully and sublimely into what is now considered classic rock and roll". The same day saw the successful takes of "Just Like a Woman", and "Pledging My Time", the latter "driven by Robertson's screaming guitar". According to Wilentz the final recording session, on March 9-10, produced six songs in 13 hours of studio time. The first number to be recorded to Dylan's satisfaction was "Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine", when McCoy reinforced on trumpet a musical phrase Dylan played on his harmonica, changing the sound of the song radically. Dylan and his band then quickly recorded "Temporary Like Achilles". The session atmosphere began to "get giddy" around midnight when Dylan roughed out "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35" on the piano. Johnston recalled commenting; "That sounds like the damn Salvation Army band". Dylan replied; "Can you get one?" Johnston then telephoned trombonist Wayne Butler, the only additional musician required, and Dylan and the band, with McCoy again on trumpet, played a high-spirited version of the song. In quick succession Dylan and the musicians then recorded "Obviously 5 Believers" and a final take of "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" powered by Robertson's lead guitar. The session concluded with "I Want You" on which, as Wilentz notes, "Wayne Moss's rapid-fire sixteenth notes on the guitar" are an impressive element of the recording. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Blonde on Blonde is the seventh studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released as a double album on June 20, 1966, by Columbia Records. Recording sessions began in New York in October 1965 with numerous backing musicians, including members of Dylan's live backing band, the Hawks. Though sessions continued until January 1966, they yielded only one track that made it onto the final album—"One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)". At producer Bob Johnston's suggestion, Dylan, keyboardist Al Kooper, and guitarist Robbie Robertson moved to the CBS studios in Nashville, Tennessee. These sessions, augmented by some of Nashville's top session musicians, were more fruitful, and in February and March all the remaining songs for the album were recorded.
Blonde on Blonde completed the trilogy of rock albums that Dylan recorded in 1965 and 1966, starting with Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited. Critics often rank Blonde on Blonde as one of the greatest albums of all time. Combining the expertise of Nashville session musicians with a modernist literary sensibility, the album's songs have been described as operating on a grand scale musically, while featuring lyrics one critic called "a unique mixture of the visionary and the colloquial". It was one of the first double albums in rock music.
The album peaked at number nine on the Billboard 200 chart in the US, where it eventually was certified double platinum, and it reached number three in the UK. Blonde on Blonde spawned two singles that were top-twenty hits in the US: "Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35" and "I Want You". Two additional songs—"Just Like a Woman" and "Visions of Johanna"—have been named as among Dylan's greatest compositions and were featured in Rolling Stones 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list.
In 1999, the album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, and was ranked number 38 in Rolling Stones 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list in 2020.
Recording sessions
Background
After the release of Highway 61 Revisited in August 1965, Dylan set about hiring a touring band. Guitarist Mike Bloomfield and keyboard player Al Kooper had backed Dylan on the album and at Dylan's controversial electric debut at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. However, Bloomfield chose not to tour with Dylan, preferring to remain with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. After backing him at concerts in late August and early September, Kooper informed Dylan he did not wish to continue touring with him. Dylan's manager, Albert Grossman, was in the process of setting up a grueling concert schedule that would keep Dylan on the road for the next nine months, touring the U.S., Australia, and Europe. Dylan contacted a group who were performing as Levon and the Hawks, consisting of Levon Helm from Arkansas and four Canadian musicians: Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko, Richard Manuel and Garth Hudson. They had come together as a band in Canada, backing American rocker Ronnie Hawkins. Two people had strongly recommended the Hawks to Dylan: Mary Martin, the executive secretary of Grossman, and blues singer John Hammond, Jr., son of record producer John Hammond, who had signed Dylan to Columbia Records in 1961; the Hawks had backed the younger Hammond on his 1965 album So Many Roads.
Dylan rehearsed with the Hawks in Toronto on September 15, where they were playing a hometown residency at Friar's Club, and on September 24, they made their debut in Austin, Texas. Two weeks later, encouraged by the success of their Texas performance, Dylan took the Hawks into Studio A of Columbia Records in New York City. Their immediate task was to record a hit single as the follow-up to "Positively 4th Street", but Dylan was already shaping his next album, the third one that year backed by rock musicians.
New York sessions
Producer Bob Johnston, who had overseen the recording of Highway 61 Revisited, started work with Dylan and the Hawks at Columbia Studio A, 799 Seventh Avenue, New York, on October 5. They concentrated on a new arrangement of "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?", a song recorded during the Highway 61 Revisited sessions but not included on that album. Three further numbers were attempted, but none progressed into completed songs. Both the fragmentary "Jet Pilot" and "I Wanna Be Your Lover", a quasi-parody of the Beatles' "I Wanna Be Your Man", finally appeared on the 1985 box set retrospective, Biograph. Also attempted were two takes of "Medicine Sunday", a song that later evolved into "Temporary Like Achilles".
On November 30, the Hawks joined Dylan again at Studio A, but drummer Bobby Gregg replaced Levon Helm, who had tired of playing in a backing band and quit. They began work on a new composition, "Freeze Out", which was later retitled "Visions of Johanna", but Dylan wasn't satisfied with the results. One of the November 30 recordings was eventually released on The Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home: The Soundtrack in 2005. At this session, they completed "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?" The song was released as a single in December, but only reached number 58 on the American charts.
Dylan spent most of December in California, performing a dozen concerts with his band, and then took a break through the third week in January following the birth of his son Jesse. On January 21, 1966, he returned to Columbia's Studio A to record another long composition, "She's Your Lover Now", accompanied by the Hawks (this time with Sandy Konikoff on drums). Despite nineteen takes, the session failed to yield any complete recordings. Dylan did not attempt the song again, but one of the outtakes from the January 21 session finally appeared 25 years later on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961–1991. (Although the song breaks down at the start of the last verse, Columbia released it as the most complete take from the session.)
Around this time, Dylan became disillusioned about using the Hawks in the studio. He recorded more material at Studio A on January 25, backed by drummer Bobby Gregg, bassist Rick Danko (or Bill Lee), guitarist Robbie Robertson, pianist Paul Griffin, and organist Al Kooper. Two more new compositions were attempted: "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" and "One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)". Dylan was satisfied with "One of Us Must Know"; the January 25 take was released as a single a few weeks later and was subsequently selected for the album.
Another session took place on January 27, this time with Robertson, Danko, Kooper and Gregg. Dylan and his band recorded "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" and "One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)" again, but Dylan was not satisfied with the recorded performance of either song. Also at this session Dylan attempted a rough performance of "I'll Keep It with Mine", a song which he had already recorded twice as a demo. The musicians added some tentative backing in a rendering biographer Clinton Heylin described as "cursory". The recording was ultimately released on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 in 1991.
A shortage of new material and the slow progress of the sessions contributed to Dylan's decision to cancel three additional recording dates. Six weeks later Dylan confided to critic Robert Shelton, "Oh, I was really down. I mean, in ten recording sessions, man, we didn't get one song ... It was the band. But you see, I didn't know that. I didn't want to think that".
Move to Nashville
Recognizing Dylan's dissatisfaction with the progress of the recordings, producer Bob Johnston suggested that they move the sessions to Nashville. Johnston lived there and had extensive experience working with Nashville session musicians. He recalled how Dylan's manager, Albert Grossman, was hostile to the idea: "Grossman came up to me and said 'If you ever mention Nashville to Dylan again, you're gone.' I said, 'What do you mean?' He said, 'You heard me. We got a thing going here'". Despite Grossman's opposition, Dylan agreed to Johnston's suggestion, and preparations were made to record the album at Columbia's A Studio on Nashville's Music Row in February 1966.
In addition to Kooper and Robertson, who accompanied Dylan from New York, Johnston recruited harmonica player, guitarist and bassist Charlie McCoy, guitarist Wayne Moss, guitarist and bassist Joe South, and drummer Kenny Buttrey. At Dylan's request, Johnston removed the baffles—partitions separating the musicians so that there was "an ambience fit for an ensemble". Buttrey credited the distinctive sound of the album to Johnston's re-arrangement of the studio, "as if we were on a tight stage, as opposed to playing in a big hall where you're ninety miles apart". Dylan had a piano installed in his Nashville hotel room which Kooper would play to help Dylan write lyrics. Kooper would then teach the tunes to the musicians before Dylan arrived for the sessions.
On the first Nashville session, on February 14, Dylan successfully recorded "Visions of Johanna", which he had attempted several times in New York. Also recorded was a take of "4th Time Around" which made it onto the album and a take of "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" which did not.
On February 15 the session began at 6 p.m. but Dylan simply sat in the studio working on his lyrics while the musicians played cards, napped and chatted. Finally, at 4 am, Dylan called the musicians in and outlined the structure of the song. Dylan counted off and the musicians fell in, as he attempted his epic composition "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands". Kenny Buttrey recalled, "If you notice that record, that thing after like the second chorus starts building and building like crazy, and everybody's just peaking it up 'cause we thought, Man, this is it ... This is gonna be the last chorus and we've gotta put everything into it we can. And he played another harmonica solo and went back down to another verse and the dynamics had to drop back down to a verse kind of feel ... After about ten minutes of this thing we're cracking up at each other, at what we were doing. I mean, we peaked five minutes ago. Where do we go from here?" The finished song clocked in at 11 minutes, 23 seconds, and would occupy the entire fourth side of the album.
The next session began similarly—Dylan spent the afternoon writing lyrics, and the session continued into the early hours of February 17, when the musicians began to record "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again". After several musical revisions and false starts, the fourteenth take was the version selected for the album.
Recording sessions in Nashville
Most accounts of recording Blonde on Blonde, including those by Dylan scholars Clinton Heylin and Michael Gray, agree that there were two blocks of recording sessions: February 14–17 and March 8–10, 1966. This chronology is based on the logs and files kept by Columbia Records.
Dylan and the Hawks performed concerts in Ottawa, Montreal, and Philadelphia in February and March, and then Dylan resumed recording in Nashville on March 8. On that date, Dylan and the musicians recorded the take of "Absolutely Sweet Marie" that Dylan selected for the album. Historian Sean Wilentz observed that "with the sound of 'Sweet Marie', Blonde on Blonde entered fully and sublimely into what is now considered classic rock and roll". The same day saw the successful takes of "Just Like a Woman", and "Pledging My Time", the latter "driven by Robertson's screaming guitar".
According to Wilentz the final recording session, on March 9–10, produced six songs in 13 hours of studio time. The first number to be recorded to Dylan's satisfaction was "Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine", when McCoy reinforced on trumpet a musical phrase Dylan played on his harmonica, changing the sound of the song radically. Dylan and his band then quickly recorded "Temporary Like Achilles". The session atmosphere began to "get giddy" around midnight when Dylan roughed out "Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35" on the piano. Johnston recalled commenting; "That sounds like the damn Salvation Army band". Dylan replied; "Can you get one?" Johnston then telephoned trombonist Wayne Butler, the only additional musician required, and Dylan and the band, with McCoy again on trumpet, played a high-spirited version of the song.
In quick succession Dylan and the musicians then recorded "Obviously 5 Believers" and a final take of "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" powered by Robertson's lead guitar. The session concluded with "I Want You" on which, as Wilentz notes, "Wayne Moss's rapid-fire sixteenth notes on the guitar" are an impressive element of the recording.
Disagreement over Nashville recording dates
Al Kooper, who played keyboards on every track of Blonde on Blonde, has contested the conventional account that there were two blocks of recording sessions in Nashville. In comments on Michael Gray's website, Kooper wrote: "There was only ONE trip to Nashville for Robbie and I, and ALL THE TRACKS were cut in that one visit", stating that Dylan merely broke for an outstanding concert. Charlie McCoy agreed with Kooper's version. Wilentz analyzed the recording of Blonde on Blonde in his book Bob Dylan in America, concluding that the "official" documented version fits Dylan's known touring schedule, and notes that five of the eight songs first recorded after "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again", but none of those recorded earlier, include a middle-eight section—Dylan's first extensive foray as a writer into that conventional structure".
Mixing
Dylan mixed the album in Los Angeles in early April, before he departed on the Australian leg of his 1966 world tour. Wilentz writes that it was at this point it became "obvious that the riches of the Nashville sessions could not fit onto a single LP", and they had "produced enough solid material to demand an oddly configured double album, the first of its kind in contemporary popular music". According to producer Steve Berkowitz, who supervised the reissue of Dylan's LPs in mono as The Original Mono Recordings in 2010, Johnston told him that they carefully worked on the mono mix for about three or four days whereas the stereo mix was finished in about four hours.
Origin of album title
Al Kooper recalled that both the album title, Blonde on Blonde, and song titles arrived during the mixing sessions. "When they were mixing it, we were sitting around and Bob Johnston came in and said, 'What do you want to call this?' And [Bob] just like said them out one at a time ... Free association and silliness, I'm sure, played a big role." Another Dylan chronicler, Oliver Trager, notes that besides spelling out the initials of Dylan's first name, the album title is also a riff on Brecht on Brecht, a stage production based on works by German playwright Bertolt Brecht that had influenced his early songwriting. Dylan himself has said of the title: "Well, I don't even recall exactly how it came up, but I know it was all in good faith ... I don't know who thought of that. I certainly didn't."
Songs
Side one
"Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35"
According to author Andy Gill, by starting his new album with what sounded like "a demented marching-band ... staffed by crazy people out of their mind on loco-weed", Dylan delivered his biggest shock yet for his former folkie fans. The elaborate puns on getting stoned combine a sense of paranoiac persecution with "nudge-nudge wink-wink bohemian hedonism". Heylin points out that the Old Testament connotations of getting stoned made the Salvation Army-style musical backing seem like a good joke. The enigmatic title came about, Heylin suggests, because Dylan knew a song called "Everybody Must Get Stoned" would be kept off the airwaves. Heylin links the title to the Book of Proverbs, chapter 27, verse 15: "A continual dropping in a very rainy day and a contentious woman are alike." Released as a single on March 22, 1966, "Rainy Day Women" reached number two on the Billboard singles chart and number seven in the UK.
"Pledging My Time"
Following the good-time fun of "Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35", the Chicago blues-influenced "Pledging My Time" sets the album's somber tone. It draws on several traditional blues songs, including Elmore James's recording of "It Hurts Me Too". For critic Michael Gray, the lines "Somebody got lucky but it was an accident" echo the lines "Some joker got lucky, stole her back again" from Robert Johnson's "Come On in My Kitchen", which is itself an echo of Skip James's 1931 recording "Devil Got My Woman". Gray suggests that "the gulping movements of the melodic phrases" derive from the melody of "Sitting on Top of the World", recorded by the Mississippi Sheiks in 1930. The couplet at the end of each verse expresses the theme: a pledge made to a prospective lover in hopes she "will come through, too". Besides Dylan's vocals and improvised harmonica breaks, the song's sound is defined by Robbie Robertson's guitar, Hargus "Pig" Robbins' blues piano and Ken Buttrey's snare drum rolls. The song was released in edited form as the B-side of "Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35" in March.
"Visions of Johanna"
Considered by many critics one of Dylan's masterpieces, "Visions of Johanna" proved difficult to capture on tape. Heylin places the writing in the fall of 1965, when Dylan was living in the Hotel Chelsea with his wife Sara. In the New York recording studio, on November 30, Dylan announced his epic composition: "This is called 'Freeze Out'." Gill notes that this working title captures the "air of nocturnal suspension in which the verse tableaux are sketched ... full of whispering and muttering." Wilentz relates how Dylan guided his backing musicians through 14 takes, trying to sketch out how he wanted it played, saying at one point, "it's not hard rock, The only thing in it that's hard is Robbie." Wilentz notes that, as Dylan quiets things down, he inches closer to what will appear on the album.
Ten weeks later, "Visions of Johanna" fell into place quickly in the Nashville studio. Kooper recalled that he and Robertson had become adept at responding to Dylan's vocal and also singled out Joe South's contribution of "this throbbing ... rhythmically amazing bass part". Gill comments that the song begins by contrasting two lovers, the carnal Louise and "the more spiritual but unattainable" Johanna. Ultimately, for Gill, the song seeks to convey how the artist is compelled to keep striving to pursue some elusive vision of perfection. For Heylin, the triumph of the song is in "the way Dylan manages to write about the most inchoate feelings in such a vivid, immediate way."
"One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)"
When Dylan arrived at the studio on January 25, 1966, he had yet to work out the lyrics and title for what was to become the closing track on Blonde on Blondes first side. With Dylan piecing together the song's sections, and the chorus that gives the song its title only emerging on take five, the session stretched through the night and into the next morning. Only on the 15th take was a full version recorded. Dylan and the band persisted until they recorded take 24, which closed the session and made it onto the album four months later. Critic Jonathan Singer credits Griffin's piano for binding the song together: "At the chorus, Griffin unleashes a symphony; hammering his way up and down the keyboard, half Gershwin, half gospel, all heart. The follow-up, a killer left hand figure that links the chorus to the verse, releases none of the song's tension."
"One of Us Must Know" is a straightforward account of a burned-out relationship. Dissecting what went wrong, the narrator takes a defensive attitude in a one-sided conversation with his former lover. As he presents his case in the opening verse, it appears he is incapable of acknowledging his part or limiting the abuse: "I didn't mean to treat you so bad. You don't have to take it so personal. I didn't mean to make you so sad. You just happened to be there, that's all." "One of Us Must Know" was the first recording completed for Blonde on Blonde and the only one selected from the New York sessions. The song was released as the first single from the album on February 14, the same day Dylan began to record in Nashville. It failed to appear on the American charts, but reached number 33 in the UK.
Side two
"I Want You"
Andy Gill notes that the song displays a tension between the very direct tone of the chorus, the repeated phrase "I want you", and a weird and complex cast of characters, "too numerous to inhabit the song's three minutes comfortably", including a guilty undertaker, a lonesome organ grinder, weeping fathers, mothers, sleeping saviors, the Queen of Spades, and the "dancing child with his Chinese suit". Analyzing the lyrics' evolution through successive drafts, Wilentz writes that there are numerous failures, "about deputies asking him his name ... lines about fathers going down hugging one another and about their daughters putting him down because he isn't their brother". Finally Dylan arrives at the right formula.
Heylin points out that the "gorgeous" tune illustrates what Dylan explained to a reporter in 1966: "It's not just pretty words to a tune or putting tunes to words ... [It's] the words and the music [together]—I can hear the sound of what I want to say." Al Kooper has said that of all the songs that Dylan outlined to him in his hotel, this was his favorite, so Dylan delayed recording it to the very end of the Nashville sessions, "just to bug him". Released as a single in June 1966, shortly before the album, "I Want You" reached number 20 in the US and number 16 in the UK.
"Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again"
Recorded at the third Nashville session, this song was the culmination of another epic of simultaneous writing and recording in the studio. Wilentz describes how the lyrics evolved through a surviving part-typed, part-handwritten manuscript page, "which begins 'honey but it's just too hard' (a line that had survived from the very first New York session with the Hawks). Then the words meander through random combinations and disconnected fragments and images ('people just get uglier'; 'banjo eyes'; 'he was carrying a 22 but it was only a single shot'), before, in Dylan's own hand, amid many crossings-out, there appears 'Oh MAMA you're here IN MOBILE ALABAMA with the Memphis blues again'."
Inside the studio, the song evolved through several musical revisions. Heylin writes, "It is the song's arrangement, and not its lyrics, that occupies the musicians through the wee small hours." On the fifth take, released in 2005 on the No Direction Home Soundtrack, midtake Dylan stumbles on the formula "Stuck inside of Mobile" on the fourth verse, and never goes back. The song contains two oft-quoted pieces of Dylan's philosophy: "Your debutante just knows what you need/ But I know what you want" and "here I sit so patiently/ Waiting to find out what price/ You have to pay to get out of/ Going through all these things twice".
"Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat"
"Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" is a satire of materialism, fashion and faddism. Done in Chicago-blues style, the song derives its melody and part of its lyrics from Lightnin' Hopkins's "Automobile (Blues)". Paul Williams writes that its caustic attitude is "moderated slightly when one realizes that jealous pique is the underlying emotion". The narrator observes his former lover in various situations wearing her "brand new leopard-skin pill-box hat", at one point finding his doctor with her and later spying her making love with a new boyfriend because she "forgot to close the garage door". In the closing lines, the narrator says he knows what her boyfriend really loves her for—her hat.
The song evolved over the course of six takes in New York, 13 in the first Nashville session, and then one on March 10, the take used for the album. Dylan, who gets credit on the liner notes as lead guitarist, opens the song playing lead (on the center-right stereo channel), but Robertson handles the solos with a "searing" performance (on the left stereo channel). A year after the recording, "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" became the fifth single released from Blonde on Blonde, making it to number 81 on the Billboard Hot 100.
"Just Like a Woman"
According to Wilentz's analysis of the session's tapes, Dylan felt his way into the lyrics of one of his most popular songs, singing "disconnected lines and semi-gibberish" during the earlier takes. He was unsure what the person described in the song does that is just like a woman, rejecting "shakes", "wakes", and "makes mistakes". This exploration of female wiles and feminine vulnerability was widely rumored—"not least by her acquaintances among Andy Warhol's Factory retinue"—to be about Edie Sedgwick. The reference to Baby's penchant for "fog ... amphetamine and ... pearls" suggests Sedgwick or a similar debutante, according to Heylin.
Discussing the lyrics, literary critic Christopher Ricks detects a "note of social exclusion" in the line "I was hungry and it was your world". In response to the accusation that Dylan's depiction of female strategies is misogynistic, Ricks asks, "Could there ever be any challenging art about men and women where the accusation just didn't arise?" The song reached number 33 in the US.
Side three
"Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine"
A bright blues "stomper" about lovers parting, "Most Likely You Go Your Way And I'll Go Mine" is one of the more literal songs Dylan recorded in 1965–66. The narrator has tired of carrying his lover and is going to let her "pass". As in "Just Like a Woman" and "Absolutely Sweet Marie", he waits until the end of each verse to deliver the punch line, which in this case comes from the title. "Most Likely You Go Your Way" was issued as a single a year later, in March 1967, on the B-side of "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat".
"Temporary Like Achilles"
This slow-moving blues number is highlighted by Hargus "Pig" Robbins's "dusky barrelhouse piano" and Dylan's "brief wheeze of harmonica". The narrator has been spurned by his lover, who has already taken up with her latest boyfriend. Calling his rival "Achilles", the narrator senses the new suitor may be discarded as quickly as he was. The refrain that ends each of the main verses—"Honey, why are you so hard?"—is a double entendre Dylan had been wanting to work into a song.
"Absolutely Sweet Marie"
This song, described as "up-tempo blues shuffle, pure Memphis" and an example of "obvious pop sensibility and compulsive melody", was recorded in four takes on March 7, 1966. Gill sees the lyrics as a series of sexual metaphors, including "beating on my trumpet" and keys to locked gates, many deriving from traditional blues. Nonetheless, the song contains what has been termed "one of the most oft-repeated of Dylan's life lessons", that "to live outside the law you must be honest", which was later invoked in many bohemian and countercultural contexts.
"4th Time Around"
When the Beatles released their sixth studio album, Rubber Soul, in December 1965, John Lennon's song "Norwegian Wood" attracted attention for the way Lennon disguised his account of an illicit affair in cryptic, Dylanesque language. Dylan sketched out a response to the song, also in 3/4 time, copying the tune and circular structure, but taking Lennon's tale in a darker direction. Wilentz describes the result as sounding "like Bob Dylan impersonating John Lennon impersonating Bob Dylan".
"Obviously 5 Believers"
"Obviously 5 Believers", Blonde on Blondes second-to-last track, is a roadhouse blues love song similar in melody and structure to Memphis Minnie's "Chauffeur Blues", and was described by Robert Shelton as "the best R&B song on the album". Recorded in the early morning hours of the March 9–10 Nashville session under the working title "Black Dog Blues", the song is driven by Robertson's guitar, Charlie McCoy's harmonica and Ken Buttrey's drumming. After an initial breakdown, Dylan complained to the band that the song was "very easy, man" and that he didn't want to spend much time on it. Within four takes, the recording was done.
Side four
"Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands"
Written in the CBS recording studio in Nashville over the space of eight hours on the night of February 15–16, "Sad Eyed Lady" eventually occupied all of side four of Blonde On Blonde. Critics have observed that "Lowlands" hints at "Lownds", and Dylan biographer Robert Shelton wrote that this was a "wedding song" for Sara Lownds, whom Dylan had married just three months earlier. In his paean to his wife, "Sara", written in 1975, Dylan amends history slightly to claim that he stayed "up for days in the Chelsea Hotel/ Writin' 'Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands' for you".
When Dylan played Shelton the song, shortly after recording it, he claimed, "This is the best song I've ever written." Around the same time, Dylan enthused to journalist Jules Siegel, "Just listen to that! That's old-time religious carnival music!" But in 1969, Dylan told Rolling Stone editor Jann Wenner, "I just sat down at a table and started writing ... And I just got carried away with the whole thing ... I just started writing and I couldn't stop. After a period of time, I forgot what it was all about, and I started trying to get back to the beginning [laughs]."
Heard by some listeners as a hymn to an otherworldly woman, for Shelton "her travails seem beyond endurance, yet she radiates an inner strength, an ability to be reborn. This is Dylan at his most romantic." Wilentz comments that Dylan's writing had shifted from the days when he asked questions and supplied answers. Like the verses of William Blake's "The Tyger", Dylan asks a series of questions about the "Sad Eyed Lady" but never supplies any answers.
Outtakes and The Cutting Edge
The following outtakes were recorded during the Blonde on Blonde sessions.
In 2015, Dylan released Volume 12 of his Bootleg Series, The Cutting Edge, in three different formats. The 18-disc Collector's Edition was described as including "every note recorded during the 1965–1966 sessions, every alternate take and alternate lyric." The 18 CDs contain every take of every song recorded in the studio during the Blonde on Blonde sessions, from October 5, 1965, to March 10, 1966.
The New York sessions comprise: two takes of "Medicine Sunday", one take of "Jet Pilot", twelve takes of "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?", seven takes of "I Wanna Be Your Lover", fourteen takes of "Visions of Johanna", sixteen takes of "She's Your Lover Now", four takes of "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat", twenty-four takes of "One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)", one take of "I'll Keep It with Mine", and one take of "Lunatic Princess".
The Nashville sessions comprise 20 takes of "Fourth Time Around", four of "Visions of Johanna", 14 of "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat", four of "Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands", 15 of "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again", three of "Absolutely Sweet Marie", 18 of "Just Like a Woman", three of "Pledging My Time", six of "Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I'll Go Mine)", four of "Temporary Like Achilles", four of "Obviously Five Believers", five of "I Want You", and one of "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35". The 18 CDs also contain brief recordings of guitar and keyboard inserts.
Describing the process of listening to all these alternative versions, Neil McCormick wrote: "The Cutting Edge allows fans to bear witness to perhaps the most astonishing explosion of language and sound in rock history, a new approach to song being forged before our very ears."
Cover photo
The cover photo of Blonde on Blonde shows a 12-by-12-inch close-up portrait of Dylan. The double album gatefold sleeve opens to form a 12-by-26-inch photo of the artist, at three quarter length. The artist's name and the album's title only appear on the spine. A sticker was applied to the shrink wrap to promote the release's two hit singles, "I Want You" and "Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35".
The cover shows Dylan in front of a brick building, wearing a suede jacket and a black and white checkered scarf. The jacket is the same one he wore on his next two albums, John Wesley Harding and Nashville Skyline. The photographer, Jerry Schatzberg, described how the photo was taken:
Research by rock historian Bob Egan suggests the location of the cover photo was at 375 West Street, at the extreme west of Greenwich Village. The original inside gatefold featured nine black-and-white photos, all taken by Schatzberg and selected for the sleeve by Dylan himself. A shot of actress Claudia Cardinale from Schatzberg's portfolio was included but later withdrawn because it had been used without her authorization and Cardinale's representatives threatened to sue, making the original record sleeve a collector's item. Dylan included a self-portrait by Schatzberg as a credit to the photographer. The photos, for Gill, added up to "a shadowy glimpse of [Dylan's] life, including an enigmatic posed shot of Dylan holding a small portrait of a woman in one hand and a pair of pliers in the other: they all contributed to the album's air of reclusive yet sybaritic genius."
Release and reception
Blonde on Blonde reached the Top 10 in both the US and UK album charts, and also spawned a number of hits that restored Dylan to the upper echelons of the singles charts. In August 1967, the album was certified as a gold disc.
A high-definition 5.1 surround sound edition of the album was released on SACD by Columbia in 2003.
The album received generally favorable reviews. Pete Johnson in the Los Angeles Times wrote, "Dylan is a superbly eloquent writer of pop and folk songs with an unmatched ability to press complex ideas and iconoclastic philosophy into brief poetic lines and startling images." The editor of Crawdaddy!, Paul Williams, reviewed Blonde on Blonde in July 1966: "It is a cache of emotion, a well handled package of excellent music and better poetry, blended and meshed and ready to become part of your reality. Here is a man who will speak to you, a 1960s bard with electric lyre and color slides, but a truthful man with x-ray eyes you can look through if you want. All you have to do is listen."
To accompany the songbook of Blonde on Blonde, Paul Nelson wrote an introduction stating, "The very title suggests the singularity and the duality we expect from Dylan. For Dylan's music of illusion and delusion—with the tramp as explorer and the clown as happy victim, where the greatest crimes are lifelessness and the inability to see oneself as a circus performer in the show of life—has always carried within it its own inherent tensions ... Dylan in the end truly UNDERSTANDS situations, and once one truly understands anything, there can no longer be anger, no longer be moralizing, but only humor and compassion, only pity." In May 1968 for Esquire, Robert Christgau said Dylan had "presented his work at its most involuted, neurotic, and pop—and exhilarating—in Blonde on Blonde."
Date discrepancy
May 16, 1966 was commonly noted as the album's official release date. Michael Gray, author of The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, contended that the release date was actually around late June or early July. This coincides with the album's promotion in Billboard, which carried a full-page Columbia advertisement on June 25, selected the album as a "New Action LP" on July 9, and ran a review and article on July 16. In 2017, after viewing a Sony database of album releases, Heylin found that the release date was in fact June 20, 1966. This is supported by the fact that an overdub on "Fourth Time Around" was recorded in June.
The album debuted on Billboards Top LP's chart on July 23 at number 101—just six days before Dylan's motorcycle accident in Woodstock removed him from public view. By contrast, another contemporary LP which has an official 1966 release date of May 16, Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys, entered the Billboard LP chart less than two weeks after release on May 28 at number 105.
Blonde on Blonde has been described as rock's first studio double LP by a major artist, released just one week before Freak Out!, the double album by the Mothers of Invention.
Reappraisal and legacy
Twelve years after its release, Dylan said: "The closest I ever got to the sound I hear in my mind was on individual bands in the Blonde on Blonde album. It's that thin, that wild mercury sound. It's metallic and bright gold, with whatever that conjures up." For critics, the double album was seen as the last installment in Dylan's trilogy of mid-1960s rock albums. As Janet Maslin wrote, "The three albums of this period—Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited both released in 1965, and Blonde on Blonde from 1966—used their electric instrumentation and rock arrangements to achieve a crashing exuberance Dylan hadn't approached before." Mike Marqusee has described Dylan's output between late 1964 and the summer of 1966, when he recorded these three albums, as "a body of work that remains unique in popular music." For Patrick Humphries, "Dylan's body of work during the 14-months period ... stands unequalled in rock's 30-year history. In substance, style, ambition and achievement, no one has even come close to matching Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde." Music journalist Gary Graff points to Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde, along with the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds (1966), as possible starting points to the album era, as they each constituted "a cohesive and conceptual body of work rather than just some hit singles ... with filler tracks."
Dylan scholar Michael Gray wrote: "To have followed up one masterpiece with another was Dylan's history making achievement here ... Where Highway 61 Revisited has Dylan exposing and confronting like a laser beam in surgery, descending from outside the sickness, Blonde on Blonde offers a persona awash inside the chaos ... We're tossed from song to song ... The feel and the music are on a grand scale, and the language and delivery are a unique mixture of the visionary and the colloquial." Critic Tim Riley wrote: "A sprawling abstraction of eccentric blues revisionism, Blonde on Blonde confirms Dylan's stature as the greatest American rock presence since Elvis Presley." Biographer Robert Shelton saw the album as "a hallmark collection that completes his first major rock cycle, which began with Bringing It All Back Home". Summing up the album's achievement, Shelton wrote that Blonde on Blonde "begins with a joke and ends with a hymn; in between wit alternates with a dominant theme of entrapment by circumstances, love, society, and unrealized hope ... There's a remarkable marriage of funky, bluesy rock expressionism, and Rimbaud-like visions of discontinuity, chaos, emptiness, loss, being 'stuck'."
That sense of crossing cultural boundaries was, for Al Kooper, at the heart of Blonde on Blonde: "[Bob Dylan] was the quintessential New York hipster—what was he doing in Nashville? It didn't make any sense whatsoever. But you take those two elements, pour them into a test tube, and it just exploded." For Mike Marqusee, Dylan had succeeded in combining traditional blues material with modernist literary techniques: "[Dylan] took inherited idioms and boosted them into a modernist stratosphere. 'Pledging My Time' and 'Obviously 5 Believers' adhered to blues patterns that were venerable when Dylan first encountered them in the mid-fifties (both begin with the ritual Delta invocation of "early in the mornin"). Yet like 'Visions of Johanna' or 'Memphis Blues Again', these songs are beyond category. They are allusive, repetitive, jaggedly abstract compositions that defy reduction."
Blonde on Blonde has been consistently ranked high in critics' polls of the greatest albums of all time. According to Acclaimed Music, it is the 9th most ranked album on all-time lists. In 1974, the writers of NME voted Blonde on Blonde the number-two album of all time. It was ranked second in the 1978 book Critic's Choice: Top 200 Albums and third in the 1987 edition. In 1997 the album was placed at number 16 in a "Music of the Millennium" poll conducted by HMV, Channel 4, The Guardian and Classic FM. In 2006, Time magazine included the record on their 100 All-Time Albums list. In 2003, the album was ranked number nine on Rolling Stone magazine's list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time", maintaining the rating in a 2012 revised list, while dropping to number 38 in 2020. In 2004, two songs from the album also appeared on the magazine's list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time": "Just Like a Woman" ranked number 230 and "Visions of Johanna" number 404. (When Rolling Stone updated this list in 2010, "Just Like a Woman" dropped to number 232 and "Visions of Johanna" to number 413. Then in 2021, "Visions of Johanna" was re-ranked at number 317.) The album was additionally included in Robert Christgau's "Basic Record Library" of 1950s and 1960s recordings—published in Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981)—and in critic Robert Dimery's book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.
It was voted number 33 in the third edition of Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums (2000). It was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999.
When Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016, Swedish Academy Secretary Sara Danius, when asked how to evaluate Dylan's literary merit, suggested listening first to "Blonde on Blonde."
Track listing
All songs are written by Bob Dylan.
Side one
"Rainy Day Women #12 & 35" – 4:36
"Pledging My Time" – 3:50
"Visions of Johanna" – 7:33
"One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)" – 4:54
Side two
"I Want You" – 3:07
"Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again" – 7:05
"Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" – 3:58
"Just Like a Woman" – 4:52
Side three
"Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine" – 3:30
"Temporary Like Achilles" – 5:02
"Absolutely Sweet Marie" – 4:57
"4th Time Around" – 4:35
"Obviously 5 Believers" – 3:35
Side four
"Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" – 11:23
Personnel
The personnel involved in making Blonde on Blonde is subject to some discrepancy:
Bob Dylan – vocals, guitar, harmonica, piano
Additional musicians
Bill Aikins – keyboards
Wayne Butler – trombone
Kenneth Buttrey – drums
Rick Danko – bass guitar (New York)
Bobby Gregg – drums (New York)
Paul Griffin – piano (New York)
Jerry Kennedy – guitar
Al Kooper – organ, guitar
Charlie McCoy – bass guitar, guitar, harmonica, trumpet
Wayne Moss – guitar, vocals
Hargus "Pig" Robbins – piano, keyboards
Robbie Robertson – guitar, vocals
Henry Strzelecki – bass guitar
Joe South – bass guitar, guitar
Technical
Bob Johnston – record producer
Jerry Schatzberg – cover photographer
Charts
Weekly charts
Singles
Certifications
See also
50 Years of Blonde on Blonde, a 2017 live album by Old Crow Medicine Show covering these songs
Notes
Footnotes
References
External links
Mystic Nights: The Making of Blonde on Blonde in Nashville by Sean Wilentz
Still on the Road: 1966 Blonde on Blonde recording sessions and world tour
1966 albums
Albums produced by Bob Johnston
Bob Dylan albums
Columbia Records albums
Grammy Hall of Fame Award recipients | false | [
"Baffle spray scrubbers are a technology for air pollution control. They are very similar to spray towers in design and operation. However, in addition to using the energy provided by the spray nozzles, baffles are added to allow the gas stream to atomize some liquid as it passes over them. \n\nA simple baffle scrubber system is shown in Figure 1. Liquid sprays capture pollutants and also remove collected particles from the baffles. Adding baffles slightly increases the pressure drop of the system.\n\nThis type of technology is a part of the group of air pollution controls collectively referred to as wet scrubbers.\n\nA number of wet-scrubber designs use energy from both the gas stream and liquid stream to collect pollutants. Many of these combination devices are available commercially. \n\nA seemingly unending number of scrubber designs have been developed by changing system geometry and incorporating vanes, nozzles, and baffles.\n\nParticle collection\n\nThese devices are used much the same as spray towers - to preclean or remove particles larger than 10 μm in diameter. However, they will tend to plug or corrode if particle concentration of the exhaust gas stream is high.\n\nGas collection\n\nEven though these devices are not specifically used for gas collection, they are capable of a small amount of gas absorption because of their large wetted surface.\n\nSummary\n\nThese devices are most commonly used as precleaners to remove large particles (>10 μm in diameter). The pressure drops across baffle scrubbers are usually low, but so are the collection efficiencies. Maintenance problems are minimal. The main problem is the buildup of solids on the baffles.Table 1 summarizes the operating characteristics of baffle spray scrubbers.\n\nBibliography\n\nBethea, R. M. 1978. Air Pollution Control Technology. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.\nMcIlvaine Company. 1974. The Wet Scrubber Handbook. Northbrook, IL: McIlvaine Company.\nRichards, J. R. 1995. Control of Particulate Emissions (APTI Course 413). U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.\nRichards, J. R. 1995. Control of Gaseous Emissions. (APTI Course 415). U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.\nU.S. Environmental Protection Agency. 1969. Control Techniques for Particulate Air Pollutants. AP-51.\n\nReferences\n\nInstitute of Clean Air Companies - national trade association representing emissions control manufacturers\n\nPollution control technologies\nAir pollution control systems\nWet scrubbers\nLiquid-phase and gas-phase contacting scrubbers",
"Baffles are flow-directing or obstructing vanes or panels used to direct a flow of liquid or gas. It is used in some household stoves and in some industrial process vessels (tanks), such as shell and tube heat exchangers, chemical reactors, and static mixers. \n\nBaffles are an integral part of the shell and tube heat exchanger design. A baffle is designed to support tube bundles and direct the flow of fluids for maximum efficiency. Baffle design and tolerances for heat exchangers are discussed in the standards of the Tubular Exchanger Manufacturers Association (TEMA).\n\nUse of baffles\nThe main roles of a baffle in a shell and tube heat exchanger are to:\n\n Hold tubes in position (preventing sagging), both in production and operation\n Prevent the effects of steam starvation, which is increased with both fluid velocity and the length of the exchanger\n Direct shell-side fluid flow along tube field. This increases fluid velocity and the effective heat transfer co-efficient of the exchanger\n\nIn a static mixer, baffles are used to minimize the tangential component of velocity which causes vortex formation, and thus promotes mixing.\n\nIn a chemical reactor, baffles are often attached to the interior walls to promote mixing and thus increase heat transfer and possibly chemical reaction rates.\n\nIn a household stoves like Handölkassetten and similar stoves a baffle is used to prevent the gas from going directly up in the chimney and possibly causing a chimney fire and direct the gas towards the front of the oven before it continues upwards into the chimney. In this case the baffle helps increase the efficiency of the stove as more heat leaves the gas before it exits.\n\nTypes of baffles\nImplementation of baffles is decided on the basis of size, cost and their ability to lend support to the tube bundles and direct flow:\n Longitudinal Flow Baffles (used in a two-pass shell)\n Impingement Baffles (used for protecting bundle when entrance velocity is high)\n Orifice Baffles\n Single segmental\n Double segmental\n Support/Blanking baffles\n Deresonating (detuning) baffles used to reduce tube vibration\n\nInstallation of baffles\nAs mentioned, baffles deal with the concern of support and fluid direction in heat exchangers. In this way it is vital that they are spaced correctly at installation. The minimum baffle spacing is the greater of 50.8 mm or one fifth of the inner shell diameter. The maximum baffle spacing is dependent on material and size of tubes. The Tubular Exchanger Manufacturers Association sets out guidelines. There are also segments with a \"no tubes in window\" design that affects the acceptable spacing within the design. An important design consideration is that no recirculation zones or dead spots form – both of which are counterproductive to effective heat transfer.\n\nReferences\n\n (Editors)Perry, R.H. and Green, D.W. (Oct,2007) Perry's Chemical Engineers' Handbook (8th ed.) McGraw-Hill \n Wolverine Tube Inc, (2008) Heat Transfer Data Book Available \n Professor J. Kavanagh (2009) Heat Transfer Lectures 4&5 Usyd Chemical Engineering Department\n\nHeat exchangers"
]
|
[
"Blonde on Blonde",
"Recording sessions in Nashville",
"What happened on February 15?",
"two blocks of recording",
"When was Nashville's first session?",
"February 14-17",
"Did they remove the baffles?",
"I don't know."
]
| C_6ae80bc19e3e4910915f6ca02f15467e_0 | what happened in 1966? | 4 | What happened to Blonde on Blonde in 1966? | Blonde on Blonde | Most accounts of recording Blonde on Blonde, including those by Dylan scholars Clinton Heylin and Michael Gray, agree that there were two blocks of recording sessions: February 14-17 and March 8-10, 1966. This chronology is based on the logs and files kept by Columbia Records. Dylan and the Hawks performed concerts in Ottawa, Montreal, and Philadelphia in February and March, and then Dylan resumed recording in Nashville on March 8. On that date, Dylan and the musicians recorded the take of "Absolutely Sweet Marie" that Dylan selected for the album. Historian Sean Wilentz observed that "with the sound of 'Sweet Marie', Blonde on Blonde entered fully and sublimely into what is now considered classic rock and roll". The same day saw the successful takes of "Just Like a Woman", and "Pledging My Time", the latter "driven by Robertson's screaming guitar". According to Wilentz the final recording session, on March 9-10, produced six songs in 13 hours of studio time. The first number to be recorded to Dylan's satisfaction was "Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine", when McCoy reinforced on trumpet a musical phrase Dylan played on his harmonica, changing the sound of the song radically. Dylan and his band then quickly recorded "Temporary Like Achilles". The session atmosphere began to "get giddy" around midnight when Dylan roughed out "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35" on the piano. Johnston recalled commenting; "That sounds like the damn Salvation Army band". Dylan replied; "Can you get one?" Johnston then telephoned trombonist Wayne Butler, the only additional musician required, and Dylan and the band, with McCoy again on trumpet, played a high-spirited version of the song. In quick succession Dylan and the musicians then recorded "Obviously 5 Believers" and a final take of "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" powered by Robertson's lead guitar. The session concluded with "I Want You" on which, as Wilentz notes, "Wayne Moss's rapid-fire sixteenth notes on the guitar" are an impressive element of the recording. CANNOTANSWER | two blocks of recording | Blonde on Blonde is the seventh studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released as a double album on June 20, 1966, by Columbia Records. Recording sessions began in New York in October 1965 with numerous backing musicians, including members of Dylan's live backing band, the Hawks. Though sessions continued until January 1966, they yielded only one track that made it onto the final album—"One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)". At producer Bob Johnston's suggestion, Dylan, keyboardist Al Kooper, and guitarist Robbie Robertson moved to the CBS studios in Nashville, Tennessee. These sessions, augmented by some of Nashville's top session musicians, were more fruitful, and in February and March all the remaining songs for the album were recorded.
Blonde on Blonde completed the trilogy of rock albums that Dylan recorded in 1965 and 1966, starting with Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited. Critics often rank Blonde on Blonde as one of the greatest albums of all time. Combining the expertise of Nashville session musicians with a modernist literary sensibility, the album's songs have been described as operating on a grand scale musically, while featuring lyrics one critic called "a unique mixture of the visionary and the colloquial". It was one of the first double albums in rock music.
The album peaked at number nine on the Billboard 200 chart in the US, where it eventually was certified double platinum, and it reached number three in the UK. Blonde on Blonde spawned two singles that were top-twenty hits in the US: "Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35" and "I Want You". Two additional songs—"Just Like a Woman" and "Visions of Johanna"—have been named as among Dylan's greatest compositions and were featured in Rolling Stones 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list.
In 1999, the album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, and was ranked number 38 in Rolling Stones 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list in 2020.
Recording sessions
Background
After the release of Highway 61 Revisited in August 1965, Dylan set about hiring a touring band. Guitarist Mike Bloomfield and keyboard player Al Kooper had backed Dylan on the album and at Dylan's controversial electric debut at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. However, Bloomfield chose not to tour with Dylan, preferring to remain with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. After backing him at concerts in late August and early September, Kooper informed Dylan he did not wish to continue touring with him. Dylan's manager, Albert Grossman, was in the process of setting up a grueling concert schedule that would keep Dylan on the road for the next nine months, touring the U.S., Australia, and Europe. Dylan contacted a group who were performing as Levon and the Hawks, consisting of Levon Helm from Arkansas and four Canadian musicians: Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko, Richard Manuel and Garth Hudson. They had come together as a band in Canada, backing American rocker Ronnie Hawkins. Two people had strongly recommended the Hawks to Dylan: Mary Martin, the executive secretary of Grossman, and blues singer John Hammond, Jr., son of record producer John Hammond, who had signed Dylan to Columbia Records in 1961; the Hawks had backed the younger Hammond on his 1965 album So Many Roads.
Dylan rehearsed with the Hawks in Toronto on September 15, where they were playing a hometown residency at Friar's Club, and on September 24, they made their debut in Austin, Texas. Two weeks later, encouraged by the success of their Texas performance, Dylan took the Hawks into Studio A of Columbia Records in New York City. Their immediate task was to record a hit single as the follow-up to "Positively 4th Street", but Dylan was already shaping his next album, the third one that year backed by rock musicians.
New York sessions
Producer Bob Johnston, who had overseen the recording of Highway 61 Revisited, started work with Dylan and the Hawks at Columbia Studio A, 799 Seventh Avenue, New York, on October 5. They concentrated on a new arrangement of "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?", a song recorded during the Highway 61 Revisited sessions but not included on that album. Three further numbers were attempted, but none progressed into completed songs. Both the fragmentary "Jet Pilot" and "I Wanna Be Your Lover", a quasi-parody of the Beatles' "I Wanna Be Your Man", finally appeared on the 1985 box set retrospective, Biograph. Also attempted were two takes of "Medicine Sunday", a song that later evolved into "Temporary Like Achilles".
On November 30, the Hawks joined Dylan again at Studio A, but drummer Bobby Gregg replaced Levon Helm, who had tired of playing in a backing band and quit. They began work on a new composition, "Freeze Out", which was later retitled "Visions of Johanna", but Dylan wasn't satisfied with the results. One of the November 30 recordings was eventually released on The Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home: The Soundtrack in 2005. At this session, they completed "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?" The song was released as a single in December, but only reached number 58 on the American charts.
Dylan spent most of December in California, performing a dozen concerts with his band, and then took a break through the third week in January following the birth of his son Jesse. On January 21, 1966, he returned to Columbia's Studio A to record another long composition, "She's Your Lover Now", accompanied by the Hawks (this time with Sandy Konikoff on drums). Despite nineteen takes, the session failed to yield any complete recordings. Dylan did not attempt the song again, but one of the outtakes from the January 21 session finally appeared 25 years later on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961–1991. (Although the song breaks down at the start of the last verse, Columbia released it as the most complete take from the session.)
Around this time, Dylan became disillusioned about using the Hawks in the studio. He recorded more material at Studio A on January 25, backed by drummer Bobby Gregg, bassist Rick Danko (or Bill Lee), guitarist Robbie Robertson, pianist Paul Griffin, and organist Al Kooper. Two more new compositions were attempted: "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" and "One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)". Dylan was satisfied with "One of Us Must Know"; the January 25 take was released as a single a few weeks later and was subsequently selected for the album.
Another session took place on January 27, this time with Robertson, Danko, Kooper and Gregg. Dylan and his band recorded "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" and "One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)" again, but Dylan was not satisfied with the recorded performance of either song. Also at this session Dylan attempted a rough performance of "I'll Keep It with Mine", a song which he had already recorded twice as a demo. The musicians added some tentative backing in a rendering biographer Clinton Heylin described as "cursory". The recording was ultimately released on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 in 1991.
A shortage of new material and the slow progress of the sessions contributed to Dylan's decision to cancel three additional recording dates. Six weeks later Dylan confided to critic Robert Shelton, "Oh, I was really down. I mean, in ten recording sessions, man, we didn't get one song ... It was the band. But you see, I didn't know that. I didn't want to think that".
Move to Nashville
Recognizing Dylan's dissatisfaction with the progress of the recordings, producer Bob Johnston suggested that they move the sessions to Nashville. Johnston lived there and had extensive experience working with Nashville session musicians. He recalled how Dylan's manager, Albert Grossman, was hostile to the idea: "Grossman came up to me and said 'If you ever mention Nashville to Dylan again, you're gone.' I said, 'What do you mean?' He said, 'You heard me. We got a thing going here'". Despite Grossman's opposition, Dylan agreed to Johnston's suggestion, and preparations were made to record the album at Columbia's A Studio on Nashville's Music Row in February 1966.
In addition to Kooper and Robertson, who accompanied Dylan from New York, Johnston recruited harmonica player, guitarist and bassist Charlie McCoy, guitarist Wayne Moss, guitarist and bassist Joe South, and drummer Kenny Buttrey. At Dylan's request, Johnston removed the baffles—partitions separating the musicians so that there was "an ambience fit for an ensemble". Buttrey credited the distinctive sound of the album to Johnston's re-arrangement of the studio, "as if we were on a tight stage, as opposed to playing in a big hall where you're ninety miles apart". Dylan had a piano installed in his Nashville hotel room which Kooper would play to help Dylan write lyrics. Kooper would then teach the tunes to the musicians before Dylan arrived for the sessions.
On the first Nashville session, on February 14, Dylan successfully recorded "Visions of Johanna", which he had attempted several times in New York. Also recorded was a take of "4th Time Around" which made it onto the album and a take of "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" which did not.
On February 15 the session began at 6 p.m. but Dylan simply sat in the studio working on his lyrics while the musicians played cards, napped and chatted. Finally, at 4 am, Dylan called the musicians in and outlined the structure of the song. Dylan counted off and the musicians fell in, as he attempted his epic composition "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands". Kenny Buttrey recalled, "If you notice that record, that thing after like the second chorus starts building and building like crazy, and everybody's just peaking it up 'cause we thought, Man, this is it ... This is gonna be the last chorus and we've gotta put everything into it we can. And he played another harmonica solo and went back down to another verse and the dynamics had to drop back down to a verse kind of feel ... After about ten minutes of this thing we're cracking up at each other, at what we were doing. I mean, we peaked five minutes ago. Where do we go from here?" The finished song clocked in at 11 minutes, 23 seconds, and would occupy the entire fourth side of the album.
The next session began similarly—Dylan spent the afternoon writing lyrics, and the session continued into the early hours of February 17, when the musicians began to record "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again". After several musical revisions and false starts, the fourteenth take was the version selected for the album.
Recording sessions in Nashville
Most accounts of recording Blonde on Blonde, including those by Dylan scholars Clinton Heylin and Michael Gray, agree that there were two blocks of recording sessions: February 14–17 and March 8–10, 1966. This chronology is based on the logs and files kept by Columbia Records.
Dylan and the Hawks performed concerts in Ottawa, Montreal, and Philadelphia in February and March, and then Dylan resumed recording in Nashville on March 8. On that date, Dylan and the musicians recorded the take of "Absolutely Sweet Marie" that Dylan selected for the album. Historian Sean Wilentz observed that "with the sound of 'Sweet Marie', Blonde on Blonde entered fully and sublimely into what is now considered classic rock and roll". The same day saw the successful takes of "Just Like a Woman", and "Pledging My Time", the latter "driven by Robertson's screaming guitar".
According to Wilentz the final recording session, on March 9–10, produced six songs in 13 hours of studio time. The first number to be recorded to Dylan's satisfaction was "Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine", when McCoy reinforced on trumpet a musical phrase Dylan played on his harmonica, changing the sound of the song radically. Dylan and his band then quickly recorded "Temporary Like Achilles". The session atmosphere began to "get giddy" around midnight when Dylan roughed out "Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35" on the piano. Johnston recalled commenting; "That sounds like the damn Salvation Army band". Dylan replied; "Can you get one?" Johnston then telephoned trombonist Wayne Butler, the only additional musician required, and Dylan and the band, with McCoy again on trumpet, played a high-spirited version of the song.
In quick succession Dylan and the musicians then recorded "Obviously 5 Believers" and a final take of "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" powered by Robertson's lead guitar. The session concluded with "I Want You" on which, as Wilentz notes, "Wayne Moss's rapid-fire sixteenth notes on the guitar" are an impressive element of the recording.
Disagreement over Nashville recording dates
Al Kooper, who played keyboards on every track of Blonde on Blonde, has contested the conventional account that there were two blocks of recording sessions in Nashville. In comments on Michael Gray's website, Kooper wrote: "There was only ONE trip to Nashville for Robbie and I, and ALL THE TRACKS were cut in that one visit", stating that Dylan merely broke for an outstanding concert. Charlie McCoy agreed with Kooper's version. Wilentz analyzed the recording of Blonde on Blonde in his book Bob Dylan in America, concluding that the "official" documented version fits Dylan's known touring schedule, and notes that five of the eight songs first recorded after "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again", but none of those recorded earlier, include a middle-eight section—Dylan's first extensive foray as a writer into that conventional structure".
Mixing
Dylan mixed the album in Los Angeles in early April, before he departed on the Australian leg of his 1966 world tour. Wilentz writes that it was at this point it became "obvious that the riches of the Nashville sessions could not fit onto a single LP", and they had "produced enough solid material to demand an oddly configured double album, the first of its kind in contemporary popular music". According to producer Steve Berkowitz, who supervised the reissue of Dylan's LPs in mono as The Original Mono Recordings in 2010, Johnston told him that they carefully worked on the mono mix for about three or four days whereas the stereo mix was finished in about four hours.
Origin of album title
Al Kooper recalled that both the album title, Blonde on Blonde, and song titles arrived during the mixing sessions. "When they were mixing it, we were sitting around and Bob Johnston came in and said, 'What do you want to call this?' And [Bob] just like said them out one at a time ... Free association and silliness, I'm sure, played a big role." Another Dylan chronicler, Oliver Trager, notes that besides spelling out the initials of Dylan's first name, the album title is also a riff on Brecht on Brecht, a stage production based on works by German playwright Bertolt Brecht that had influenced his early songwriting. Dylan himself has said of the title: "Well, I don't even recall exactly how it came up, but I know it was all in good faith ... I don't know who thought of that. I certainly didn't."
Songs
Side one
"Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35"
According to author Andy Gill, by starting his new album with what sounded like "a demented marching-band ... staffed by crazy people out of their mind on loco-weed", Dylan delivered his biggest shock yet for his former folkie fans. The elaborate puns on getting stoned combine a sense of paranoiac persecution with "nudge-nudge wink-wink bohemian hedonism". Heylin points out that the Old Testament connotations of getting stoned made the Salvation Army-style musical backing seem like a good joke. The enigmatic title came about, Heylin suggests, because Dylan knew a song called "Everybody Must Get Stoned" would be kept off the airwaves. Heylin links the title to the Book of Proverbs, chapter 27, verse 15: "A continual dropping in a very rainy day and a contentious woman are alike." Released as a single on March 22, 1966, "Rainy Day Women" reached number two on the Billboard singles chart and number seven in the UK.
"Pledging My Time"
Following the good-time fun of "Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35", the Chicago blues-influenced "Pledging My Time" sets the album's somber tone. It draws on several traditional blues songs, including Elmore James's recording of "It Hurts Me Too". For critic Michael Gray, the lines "Somebody got lucky but it was an accident" echo the lines "Some joker got lucky, stole her back again" from Robert Johnson's "Come On in My Kitchen", which is itself an echo of Skip James's 1931 recording "Devil Got My Woman". Gray suggests that "the gulping movements of the melodic phrases" derive from the melody of "Sitting on Top of the World", recorded by the Mississippi Sheiks in 1930. The couplet at the end of each verse expresses the theme: a pledge made to a prospective lover in hopes she "will come through, too". Besides Dylan's vocals and improvised harmonica breaks, the song's sound is defined by Robbie Robertson's guitar, Hargus "Pig" Robbins' blues piano and Ken Buttrey's snare drum rolls. The song was released in edited form as the B-side of "Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35" in March.
"Visions of Johanna"
Considered by many critics one of Dylan's masterpieces, "Visions of Johanna" proved difficult to capture on tape. Heylin places the writing in the fall of 1965, when Dylan was living in the Hotel Chelsea with his wife Sara. In the New York recording studio, on November 30, Dylan announced his epic composition: "This is called 'Freeze Out'." Gill notes that this working title captures the "air of nocturnal suspension in which the verse tableaux are sketched ... full of whispering and muttering." Wilentz relates how Dylan guided his backing musicians through 14 takes, trying to sketch out how he wanted it played, saying at one point, "it's not hard rock, The only thing in it that's hard is Robbie." Wilentz notes that, as Dylan quiets things down, he inches closer to what will appear on the album.
Ten weeks later, "Visions of Johanna" fell into place quickly in the Nashville studio. Kooper recalled that he and Robertson had become adept at responding to Dylan's vocal and also singled out Joe South's contribution of "this throbbing ... rhythmically amazing bass part". Gill comments that the song begins by contrasting two lovers, the carnal Louise and "the more spiritual but unattainable" Johanna. Ultimately, for Gill, the song seeks to convey how the artist is compelled to keep striving to pursue some elusive vision of perfection. For Heylin, the triumph of the song is in "the way Dylan manages to write about the most inchoate feelings in such a vivid, immediate way."
"One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)"
When Dylan arrived at the studio on January 25, 1966, he had yet to work out the lyrics and title for what was to become the closing track on Blonde on Blondes first side. With Dylan piecing together the song's sections, and the chorus that gives the song its title only emerging on take five, the session stretched through the night and into the next morning. Only on the 15th take was a full version recorded. Dylan and the band persisted until they recorded take 24, which closed the session and made it onto the album four months later. Critic Jonathan Singer credits Griffin's piano for binding the song together: "At the chorus, Griffin unleashes a symphony; hammering his way up and down the keyboard, half Gershwin, half gospel, all heart. The follow-up, a killer left hand figure that links the chorus to the verse, releases none of the song's tension."
"One of Us Must Know" is a straightforward account of a burned-out relationship. Dissecting what went wrong, the narrator takes a defensive attitude in a one-sided conversation with his former lover. As he presents his case in the opening verse, it appears he is incapable of acknowledging his part or limiting the abuse: "I didn't mean to treat you so bad. You don't have to take it so personal. I didn't mean to make you so sad. You just happened to be there, that's all." "One of Us Must Know" was the first recording completed for Blonde on Blonde and the only one selected from the New York sessions. The song was released as the first single from the album on February 14, the same day Dylan began to record in Nashville. It failed to appear on the American charts, but reached number 33 in the UK.
Side two
"I Want You"
Andy Gill notes that the song displays a tension between the very direct tone of the chorus, the repeated phrase "I want you", and a weird and complex cast of characters, "too numerous to inhabit the song's three minutes comfortably", including a guilty undertaker, a lonesome organ grinder, weeping fathers, mothers, sleeping saviors, the Queen of Spades, and the "dancing child with his Chinese suit". Analyzing the lyrics' evolution through successive drafts, Wilentz writes that there are numerous failures, "about deputies asking him his name ... lines about fathers going down hugging one another and about their daughters putting him down because he isn't their brother". Finally Dylan arrives at the right formula.
Heylin points out that the "gorgeous" tune illustrates what Dylan explained to a reporter in 1966: "It's not just pretty words to a tune or putting tunes to words ... [It's] the words and the music [together]—I can hear the sound of what I want to say." Al Kooper has said that of all the songs that Dylan outlined to him in his hotel, this was his favorite, so Dylan delayed recording it to the very end of the Nashville sessions, "just to bug him". Released as a single in June 1966, shortly before the album, "I Want You" reached number 20 in the US and number 16 in the UK.
"Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again"
Recorded at the third Nashville session, this song was the culmination of another epic of simultaneous writing and recording in the studio. Wilentz describes how the lyrics evolved through a surviving part-typed, part-handwritten manuscript page, "which begins 'honey but it's just too hard' (a line that had survived from the very first New York session with the Hawks). Then the words meander through random combinations and disconnected fragments and images ('people just get uglier'; 'banjo eyes'; 'he was carrying a 22 but it was only a single shot'), before, in Dylan's own hand, amid many crossings-out, there appears 'Oh MAMA you're here IN MOBILE ALABAMA with the Memphis blues again'."
Inside the studio, the song evolved through several musical revisions. Heylin writes, "It is the song's arrangement, and not its lyrics, that occupies the musicians through the wee small hours." On the fifth take, released in 2005 on the No Direction Home Soundtrack, midtake Dylan stumbles on the formula "Stuck inside of Mobile" on the fourth verse, and never goes back. The song contains two oft-quoted pieces of Dylan's philosophy: "Your debutante just knows what you need/ But I know what you want" and "here I sit so patiently/ Waiting to find out what price/ You have to pay to get out of/ Going through all these things twice".
"Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat"
"Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" is a satire of materialism, fashion and faddism. Done in Chicago-blues style, the song derives its melody and part of its lyrics from Lightnin' Hopkins's "Automobile (Blues)". Paul Williams writes that its caustic attitude is "moderated slightly when one realizes that jealous pique is the underlying emotion". The narrator observes his former lover in various situations wearing her "brand new leopard-skin pill-box hat", at one point finding his doctor with her and later spying her making love with a new boyfriend because she "forgot to close the garage door". In the closing lines, the narrator says he knows what her boyfriend really loves her for—her hat.
The song evolved over the course of six takes in New York, 13 in the first Nashville session, and then one on March 10, the take used for the album. Dylan, who gets credit on the liner notes as lead guitarist, opens the song playing lead (on the center-right stereo channel), but Robertson handles the solos with a "searing" performance (on the left stereo channel). A year after the recording, "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" became the fifth single released from Blonde on Blonde, making it to number 81 on the Billboard Hot 100.
"Just Like a Woman"
According to Wilentz's analysis of the session's tapes, Dylan felt his way into the lyrics of one of his most popular songs, singing "disconnected lines and semi-gibberish" during the earlier takes. He was unsure what the person described in the song does that is just like a woman, rejecting "shakes", "wakes", and "makes mistakes". This exploration of female wiles and feminine vulnerability was widely rumored—"not least by her acquaintances among Andy Warhol's Factory retinue"—to be about Edie Sedgwick. The reference to Baby's penchant for "fog ... amphetamine and ... pearls" suggests Sedgwick or a similar debutante, according to Heylin.
Discussing the lyrics, literary critic Christopher Ricks detects a "note of social exclusion" in the line "I was hungry and it was your world". In response to the accusation that Dylan's depiction of female strategies is misogynistic, Ricks asks, "Could there ever be any challenging art about men and women where the accusation just didn't arise?" The song reached number 33 in the US.
Side three
"Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine"
A bright blues "stomper" about lovers parting, "Most Likely You Go Your Way And I'll Go Mine" is one of the more literal songs Dylan recorded in 1965–66. The narrator has tired of carrying his lover and is going to let her "pass". As in "Just Like a Woman" and "Absolutely Sweet Marie", he waits until the end of each verse to deliver the punch line, which in this case comes from the title. "Most Likely You Go Your Way" was issued as a single a year later, in March 1967, on the B-side of "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat".
"Temporary Like Achilles"
This slow-moving blues number is highlighted by Hargus "Pig" Robbins's "dusky barrelhouse piano" and Dylan's "brief wheeze of harmonica". The narrator has been spurned by his lover, who has already taken up with her latest boyfriend. Calling his rival "Achilles", the narrator senses the new suitor may be discarded as quickly as he was. The refrain that ends each of the main verses—"Honey, why are you so hard?"—is a double entendre Dylan had been wanting to work into a song.
"Absolutely Sweet Marie"
This song, described as "up-tempo blues shuffle, pure Memphis" and an example of "obvious pop sensibility and compulsive melody", was recorded in four takes on March 7, 1966. Gill sees the lyrics as a series of sexual metaphors, including "beating on my trumpet" and keys to locked gates, many deriving from traditional blues. Nonetheless, the song contains what has been termed "one of the most oft-repeated of Dylan's life lessons", that "to live outside the law you must be honest", which was later invoked in many bohemian and countercultural contexts.
"4th Time Around"
When the Beatles released their sixth studio album, Rubber Soul, in December 1965, John Lennon's song "Norwegian Wood" attracted attention for the way Lennon disguised his account of an illicit affair in cryptic, Dylanesque language. Dylan sketched out a response to the song, also in 3/4 time, copying the tune and circular structure, but taking Lennon's tale in a darker direction. Wilentz describes the result as sounding "like Bob Dylan impersonating John Lennon impersonating Bob Dylan".
"Obviously 5 Believers"
"Obviously 5 Believers", Blonde on Blondes second-to-last track, is a roadhouse blues love song similar in melody and structure to Memphis Minnie's "Chauffeur Blues", and was described by Robert Shelton as "the best R&B song on the album". Recorded in the early morning hours of the March 9–10 Nashville session under the working title "Black Dog Blues", the song is driven by Robertson's guitar, Charlie McCoy's harmonica and Ken Buttrey's drumming. After an initial breakdown, Dylan complained to the band that the song was "very easy, man" and that he didn't want to spend much time on it. Within four takes, the recording was done.
Side four
"Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands"
Written in the CBS recording studio in Nashville over the space of eight hours on the night of February 15–16, "Sad Eyed Lady" eventually occupied all of side four of Blonde On Blonde. Critics have observed that "Lowlands" hints at "Lownds", and Dylan biographer Robert Shelton wrote that this was a "wedding song" for Sara Lownds, whom Dylan had married just three months earlier. In his paean to his wife, "Sara", written in 1975, Dylan amends history slightly to claim that he stayed "up for days in the Chelsea Hotel/ Writin' 'Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands' for you".
When Dylan played Shelton the song, shortly after recording it, he claimed, "This is the best song I've ever written." Around the same time, Dylan enthused to journalist Jules Siegel, "Just listen to that! That's old-time religious carnival music!" But in 1969, Dylan told Rolling Stone editor Jann Wenner, "I just sat down at a table and started writing ... And I just got carried away with the whole thing ... I just started writing and I couldn't stop. After a period of time, I forgot what it was all about, and I started trying to get back to the beginning [laughs]."
Heard by some listeners as a hymn to an otherworldly woman, for Shelton "her travails seem beyond endurance, yet she radiates an inner strength, an ability to be reborn. This is Dylan at his most romantic." Wilentz comments that Dylan's writing had shifted from the days when he asked questions and supplied answers. Like the verses of William Blake's "The Tyger", Dylan asks a series of questions about the "Sad Eyed Lady" but never supplies any answers.
Outtakes and The Cutting Edge
The following outtakes were recorded during the Blonde on Blonde sessions.
In 2015, Dylan released Volume 12 of his Bootleg Series, The Cutting Edge, in three different formats. The 18-disc Collector's Edition was described as including "every note recorded during the 1965–1966 sessions, every alternate take and alternate lyric." The 18 CDs contain every take of every song recorded in the studio during the Blonde on Blonde sessions, from October 5, 1965, to March 10, 1966.
The New York sessions comprise: two takes of "Medicine Sunday", one take of "Jet Pilot", twelve takes of "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?", seven takes of "I Wanna Be Your Lover", fourteen takes of "Visions of Johanna", sixteen takes of "She's Your Lover Now", four takes of "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat", twenty-four takes of "One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)", one take of "I'll Keep It with Mine", and one take of "Lunatic Princess".
The Nashville sessions comprise 20 takes of "Fourth Time Around", four of "Visions of Johanna", 14 of "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat", four of "Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands", 15 of "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again", three of "Absolutely Sweet Marie", 18 of "Just Like a Woman", three of "Pledging My Time", six of "Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I'll Go Mine)", four of "Temporary Like Achilles", four of "Obviously Five Believers", five of "I Want You", and one of "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35". The 18 CDs also contain brief recordings of guitar and keyboard inserts.
Describing the process of listening to all these alternative versions, Neil McCormick wrote: "The Cutting Edge allows fans to bear witness to perhaps the most astonishing explosion of language and sound in rock history, a new approach to song being forged before our very ears."
Cover photo
The cover photo of Blonde on Blonde shows a 12-by-12-inch close-up portrait of Dylan. The double album gatefold sleeve opens to form a 12-by-26-inch photo of the artist, at three quarter length. The artist's name and the album's title only appear on the spine. A sticker was applied to the shrink wrap to promote the release's two hit singles, "I Want You" and "Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35".
The cover shows Dylan in front of a brick building, wearing a suede jacket and a black and white checkered scarf. The jacket is the same one he wore on his next two albums, John Wesley Harding and Nashville Skyline. The photographer, Jerry Schatzberg, described how the photo was taken:
Research by rock historian Bob Egan suggests the location of the cover photo was at 375 West Street, at the extreme west of Greenwich Village. The original inside gatefold featured nine black-and-white photos, all taken by Schatzberg and selected for the sleeve by Dylan himself. A shot of actress Claudia Cardinale from Schatzberg's portfolio was included but later withdrawn because it had been used without her authorization and Cardinale's representatives threatened to sue, making the original record sleeve a collector's item. Dylan included a self-portrait by Schatzberg as a credit to the photographer. The photos, for Gill, added up to "a shadowy glimpse of [Dylan's] life, including an enigmatic posed shot of Dylan holding a small portrait of a woman in one hand and a pair of pliers in the other: they all contributed to the album's air of reclusive yet sybaritic genius."
Release and reception
Blonde on Blonde reached the Top 10 in both the US and UK album charts, and also spawned a number of hits that restored Dylan to the upper echelons of the singles charts. In August 1967, the album was certified as a gold disc.
A high-definition 5.1 surround sound edition of the album was released on SACD by Columbia in 2003.
The album received generally favorable reviews. Pete Johnson in the Los Angeles Times wrote, "Dylan is a superbly eloquent writer of pop and folk songs with an unmatched ability to press complex ideas and iconoclastic philosophy into brief poetic lines and startling images." The editor of Crawdaddy!, Paul Williams, reviewed Blonde on Blonde in July 1966: "It is a cache of emotion, a well handled package of excellent music and better poetry, blended and meshed and ready to become part of your reality. Here is a man who will speak to you, a 1960s bard with electric lyre and color slides, but a truthful man with x-ray eyes you can look through if you want. All you have to do is listen."
To accompany the songbook of Blonde on Blonde, Paul Nelson wrote an introduction stating, "The very title suggests the singularity and the duality we expect from Dylan. For Dylan's music of illusion and delusion—with the tramp as explorer and the clown as happy victim, where the greatest crimes are lifelessness and the inability to see oneself as a circus performer in the show of life—has always carried within it its own inherent tensions ... Dylan in the end truly UNDERSTANDS situations, and once one truly understands anything, there can no longer be anger, no longer be moralizing, but only humor and compassion, only pity." In May 1968 for Esquire, Robert Christgau said Dylan had "presented his work at its most involuted, neurotic, and pop—and exhilarating—in Blonde on Blonde."
Date discrepancy
May 16, 1966 was commonly noted as the album's official release date. Michael Gray, author of The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, contended that the release date was actually around late June or early July. This coincides with the album's promotion in Billboard, which carried a full-page Columbia advertisement on June 25, selected the album as a "New Action LP" on July 9, and ran a review and article on July 16. In 2017, after viewing a Sony database of album releases, Heylin found that the release date was in fact June 20, 1966. This is supported by the fact that an overdub on "Fourth Time Around" was recorded in June.
The album debuted on Billboards Top LP's chart on July 23 at number 101—just six days before Dylan's motorcycle accident in Woodstock removed him from public view. By contrast, another contemporary LP which has an official 1966 release date of May 16, Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys, entered the Billboard LP chart less than two weeks after release on May 28 at number 105.
Blonde on Blonde has been described as rock's first studio double LP by a major artist, released just one week before Freak Out!, the double album by the Mothers of Invention.
Reappraisal and legacy
Twelve years after its release, Dylan said: "The closest I ever got to the sound I hear in my mind was on individual bands in the Blonde on Blonde album. It's that thin, that wild mercury sound. It's metallic and bright gold, with whatever that conjures up." For critics, the double album was seen as the last installment in Dylan's trilogy of mid-1960s rock albums. As Janet Maslin wrote, "The three albums of this period—Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited both released in 1965, and Blonde on Blonde from 1966—used their electric instrumentation and rock arrangements to achieve a crashing exuberance Dylan hadn't approached before." Mike Marqusee has described Dylan's output between late 1964 and the summer of 1966, when he recorded these three albums, as "a body of work that remains unique in popular music." For Patrick Humphries, "Dylan's body of work during the 14-months period ... stands unequalled in rock's 30-year history. In substance, style, ambition and achievement, no one has even come close to matching Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde." Music journalist Gary Graff points to Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde, along with the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds (1966), as possible starting points to the album era, as they each constituted "a cohesive and conceptual body of work rather than just some hit singles ... with filler tracks."
Dylan scholar Michael Gray wrote: "To have followed up one masterpiece with another was Dylan's history making achievement here ... Where Highway 61 Revisited has Dylan exposing and confronting like a laser beam in surgery, descending from outside the sickness, Blonde on Blonde offers a persona awash inside the chaos ... We're tossed from song to song ... The feel and the music are on a grand scale, and the language and delivery are a unique mixture of the visionary and the colloquial." Critic Tim Riley wrote: "A sprawling abstraction of eccentric blues revisionism, Blonde on Blonde confirms Dylan's stature as the greatest American rock presence since Elvis Presley." Biographer Robert Shelton saw the album as "a hallmark collection that completes his first major rock cycle, which began with Bringing It All Back Home". Summing up the album's achievement, Shelton wrote that Blonde on Blonde "begins with a joke and ends with a hymn; in between wit alternates with a dominant theme of entrapment by circumstances, love, society, and unrealized hope ... There's a remarkable marriage of funky, bluesy rock expressionism, and Rimbaud-like visions of discontinuity, chaos, emptiness, loss, being 'stuck'."
That sense of crossing cultural boundaries was, for Al Kooper, at the heart of Blonde on Blonde: "[Bob Dylan] was the quintessential New York hipster—what was he doing in Nashville? It didn't make any sense whatsoever. But you take those two elements, pour them into a test tube, and it just exploded." For Mike Marqusee, Dylan had succeeded in combining traditional blues material with modernist literary techniques: "[Dylan] took inherited idioms and boosted them into a modernist stratosphere. 'Pledging My Time' and 'Obviously 5 Believers' adhered to blues patterns that were venerable when Dylan first encountered them in the mid-fifties (both begin with the ritual Delta invocation of "early in the mornin"). Yet like 'Visions of Johanna' or 'Memphis Blues Again', these songs are beyond category. They are allusive, repetitive, jaggedly abstract compositions that defy reduction."
Blonde on Blonde has been consistently ranked high in critics' polls of the greatest albums of all time. According to Acclaimed Music, it is the 9th most ranked album on all-time lists. In 1974, the writers of NME voted Blonde on Blonde the number-two album of all time. It was ranked second in the 1978 book Critic's Choice: Top 200 Albums and third in the 1987 edition. In 1997 the album was placed at number 16 in a "Music of the Millennium" poll conducted by HMV, Channel 4, The Guardian and Classic FM. In 2006, Time magazine included the record on their 100 All-Time Albums list. In 2003, the album was ranked number nine on Rolling Stone magazine's list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time", maintaining the rating in a 2012 revised list, while dropping to number 38 in 2020. In 2004, two songs from the album also appeared on the magazine's list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time": "Just Like a Woman" ranked number 230 and "Visions of Johanna" number 404. (When Rolling Stone updated this list in 2010, "Just Like a Woman" dropped to number 232 and "Visions of Johanna" to number 413. Then in 2021, "Visions of Johanna" was re-ranked at number 317.) The album was additionally included in Robert Christgau's "Basic Record Library" of 1950s and 1960s recordings—published in Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981)—and in critic Robert Dimery's book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.
It was voted number 33 in the third edition of Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums (2000). It was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999.
When Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016, Swedish Academy Secretary Sara Danius, when asked how to evaluate Dylan's literary merit, suggested listening first to "Blonde on Blonde."
Track listing
All songs are written by Bob Dylan.
Side one
"Rainy Day Women #12 & 35" – 4:36
"Pledging My Time" – 3:50
"Visions of Johanna" – 7:33
"One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)" – 4:54
Side two
"I Want You" – 3:07
"Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again" – 7:05
"Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" – 3:58
"Just Like a Woman" – 4:52
Side three
"Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine" – 3:30
"Temporary Like Achilles" – 5:02
"Absolutely Sweet Marie" – 4:57
"4th Time Around" – 4:35
"Obviously 5 Believers" – 3:35
Side four
"Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" – 11:23
Personnel
The personnel involved in making Blonde on Blonde is subject to some discrepancy:
Bob Dylan – vocals, guitar, harmonica, piano
Additional musicians
Bill Aikins – keyboards
Wayne Butler – trombone
Kenneth Buttrey – drums
Rick Danko – bass guitar (New York)
Bobby Gregg – drums (New York)
Paul Griffin – piano (New York)
Jerry Kennedy – guitar
Al Kooper – organ, guitar
Charlie McCoy – bass guitar, guitar, harmonica, trumpet
Wayne Moss – guitar, vocals
Hargus "Pig" Robbins – piano, keyboards
Robbie Robertson – guitar, vocals
Henry Strzelecki – bass guitar
Joe South – bass guitar, guitar
Technical
Bob Johnston – record producer
Jerry Schatzberg – cover photographer
Charts
Weekly charts
Singles
Certifications
See also
50 Years of Blonde on Blonde, a 2017 live album by Old Crow Medicine Show covering these songs
Notes
Footnotes
References
External links
Mystic Nights: The Making of Blonde on Blonde in Nashville by Sean Wilentz
Still on the Road: 1966 Blonde on Blonde recording sessions and world tour
1966 albums
Albums produced by Bob Johnston
Bob Dylan albums
Columbia Records albums
Grammy Hall of Fame Award recipients | true | [
"Don Juan Manuel's Tales of Count Lucanor, in Spanish Libro de los ejemplos del conde Lucanor y de Patronio (Book of the Examples of Count Lucanor and of Patronio), also commonly known as El Conde Lucanor, Libro de Patronio, or Libro de los ejemplos (original Old Castilian: Libro de los enxiemplos del Conde Lucanor et de Patronio), is one of the earliest works of prose in Castilian Spanish. It was first written in 1335.\n\nThe book is divided into four parts. The first and most well-known part is a series of 51 short stories (some no more than a page or two) drawn from various sources, such as Aesop and other classical writers, and Arabic folktales.\n\nTales of Count Lucanor was first printed in 1575 when it was published at Seville under the auspices of Argote de Molina. It was again printed at Madrid in 1642, after which it lay forgotten for nearly two centuries.\n\nPurpose and structure\n\nA didactic, moralistic purpose, which would color so much of the Spanish literature to follow (see Novela picaresca), is the mark of this book. Count Lucanor engages in conversation with his advisor Patronio, putting to him a problem (\"Some man has made me a proposition...\" or \"I fear that such and such person intends to...\") and asking for advice. Patronio responds always with the greatest humility, claiming not to wish to offer advice to so illustrious a person as the Count, but offering to tell him a story of which the Count's problem reminds him. (Thus, the stories are \"examples\" [ejemplos] of wise action.) At the end he advises the Count to do as the protagonist of his story did.\n\nEach chapter ends in more or less the same way, with slight variations on: \"And this pleased the Count greatly and he did just so, and found it well. And Don Johán (Juan) saw that this example was very good, and had it written in this book, and composed the following verses.\" A rhymed couplet closes, giving the moral of the story.\n\nOrigin of stories and influence on later literature\nMany of the stories written in the book are the first examples written in a modern European language of various stories, which many other writers would use in the proceeding centuries. Many of the stories he included were themselves derived from other stories, coming from western and Arab sources.\n\nShakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew has the basic elements of Tale 35, \"What Happened to a Young Man Who Married a Strong and Ill-tempered Woman\".\n\nTale 32, \"What Happened to the King and the Tricksters Who Made Cloth\" tells the story that Hans Christian Andersen made popular as The Emperor's New Clothes.\n\nStory 7, \"What Happened to a Woman Named Truhana\", a version of Aesop's The Milkmaid and Her Pail, was claimed by Max Müller to originate in the Hindu cycle Panchatantra.\n\nTale 2, \"What happened to a good Man and his Son, leading a beast to market,\" is the familiar fable The miller, his son and the donkey.\n\nIn 2016, Baroque Decay released a game under the name \"The Count Lucanor\". As well as some protagonists' names, certain events from the books inspired past events in the game.\n\nThe stories\n\nThe book opens with a prologue which introduces the characters of the Count and Patronio. The titles in the following list are those given in Keller and Keating's 1977 translation into English. James York's 1868 translation into English gives a significantly different ordering of the stories and omits the fifty-first.\n\n What Happened to a King and His Favorite \n What Happened to a Good Man and His Son \n How King Richard of England Leapt into the Sea against the Moors\n What a Genoese Said to His Soul When He Was about to Die \n What Happened to a Fox and a Crow Who Had a Piece of Cheese in His Beak\n How the Swallow Warned the Other Birds When She Saw Flax Being Sown \n What Happened to a Woman Named Truhana \n What Happened to a Man Whose Liver Had to Be Washed \n What Happened to Two Horses Which Were Thrown to the Lion \n What Happened to a Man Who on Account of Poverty and Lack of Other Food Was Eating Bitter Lentils \n What Happened to a Dean of Santiago de Compostela and Don Yllán, the Grand Master of Toledo\n What Happened to the Fox and the Rooster \n What Happened to a Man Who Was Hunting Partridges \n The Miracle of Saint Dominick When He Preached against the Usurer \n What Happened to Lorenzo Suárez at the Siege of Seville \n The Reply that count Fernán González Gave to His Relative Núño Laynes \n What Happened to a Very Hungry Man Who Was Half-heartedly Invited to Dinner \n What Happened to Pero Meléndez de Valdés When He Broke His Leg \n What Happened to the Crows and the Owls \n What Happened to a King for Whom a Man Promised to Perform Alchemy \n What Happened to a Young King and a Philosopher to Whom his Father Commended Him \n What Happened to the Lion and the Bull \n How the Ants Provide for Themselves \n What Happened to the King Who Wanted to Test His Three Sons \n What Happened to the Count of Provence and How He Was Freed from Prison by the Advice of Saladin\n What Happened to the Tree of Lies \n What Happened to an Emperor and to Don Alvarfáñez Minaya and Their Wives \n What Happened in Granada to Don Lorenzo Suárez Gallinato When He Beheaded the Renegade Chaplain \n What Happened to a Fox Who Lay down in the Street to Play Dead \n What Happened to King Abenabet of Seville and Ramayquía His Wife \n How a Cardinal Judged between the Canons of Paris and the Friars Minor \n What Happened to the King and the Tricksters Who Made Cloth \n What Happened to Don Juan Manuel's Saker Falcon and an Eagle and a Heron \n What Happened to a Blind Man Who Was Leading Another \n What Happened to a Young Man Who Married a Strong and Ill-tempered Woman\n What Happened to a Merchant When He Found His Son and His Wife Sleeping Together \n What Happened to Count Fernán González with His Men after He Had Won the Battle of Hacinas \n What Happened to a Man Who Was Loaded down with Precious Stones and Drowned in the River \n What Happened to a Man and a Swallow and a Sparrow \n Why the Seneschal of Carcassonne Lost His Soul \n What Happened to a King of Córdova Named Al-Haquem \n What Happened to a Woman of Sham Piety \n What Happened to Good and Evil and the Wise Man and the Madman \n What Happened to Don Pero Núñez the Loyal, to Don Ruy González de Zavallos, and to Don Gutier Roiz de Blaguiello with Don Rodrigo the Generous \n What Happened to a Man Who Became the Devil's Friend and Vassal \n What Happened to a Philosopher who by Accident Went down a Street Where Prostitutes Lived \n What Befell a Moor and His Sister Who Pretended That She Was Timid \n What Happened to a Man Who Tested His Friends \n What Happened to the Man Whom They Cast out Naked on an Island When They Took away from Him the Kingdom He Ruled \n What Happened to Saladin and a Lady, the Wife of a Knight Who Was His Vassal \n What Happened to a Christian King Who Was Very Powerful and Haughty\n\nReferences\n\nNotes\n\nBibliography\n\n Sturm, Harlan\n\n Wacks, David\n\nExternal links\n\nThe Internet Archive provides free access to the 1868 translation by James York.\nJSTOR has the to the 1977 translation by Keller and Keating.\nSelections in English and Spanish (pedagogical edition) with introduction, notes, and bibliography in Open Iberia/América (open access teaching anthology)\n\n14th-century books\nSpanish literature\n1335 books",
"\"What Happened to Us\" is a song by Australian recording artist Jessica Mauboy, featuring English recording artist Jay Sean. It was written by Sean, Josh Alexander, Billy Steinberg, Jeremy Skaller, Rob Larow, Khaled Rohaim and Israel Cruz. \"What Happened to Us\" was leaked online in October 2010, and was released on 10 March 2011, as the third single from Mauboy's second studio album, Get 'Em Girls (2010). The song received positive reviews from critics.\n\nA remix of \"What Happened to Us\" made by production team OFM, was released on 11 April 2011. A different version of the song which features Stan Walker, was released on 29 May 2011. \"What Happened to Us\" charted on the ARIA Singles Chart at number 14 and was certified platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA). An accompanying music video was directed by Mark Alston, and reminisces on a former relationship between Mauboy and Sean.\n\nProduction and release\n\n\"What Happened to Us\" was written by Josh Alexander, Billy Steinberg, Jeremy Skaller, Rob Larow, Khaled Rohaim, Israel Cruz and Jay Sean. It was produced by Skaller, Cruz, Rohaim and Bobby Bass. The song uses C, D, and B minor chords in the chorus. \"What Happened to Us\" was sent to contemporary hit radio in Australia on 14 February 2011. The cover art for the song was revealed on 22 February on Mauboy's official Facebook page. A CD release was available for purchase via her official website on 10 March, for one week only. It was released digitally the following day.\n\nReception\nMajhid Heath from ABC Online Indigenous called the song a \"Jordin Sparks-esque duet\", and wrote that it \"has a nice innocence to it that rings true to the experience of losing a first love.\" Chris Urankar from Nine to Five wrote that it as a \"mid-tempo duet ballad\" which signifies Mauboy's strength as a global player. On 21 March 2011, \"What Happened to Us\" debuted at number 30 on the ARIA Singles Chart, and peaked at number 14 the following week. The song was certified platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA), for selling 70,000 copies. \"What Happened to Us\" spent a total of ten weeks in the ARIA top fifty.\n\nMusic video\n\nBackground\nThe music video for the song was shot in the Elizabeth Bay House in Sydney on 26 November 2010. The video was shot during Sean's visit to Australia for the Summerbeatz tour. During an interview with The Daily Telegraph while on the set of the video, Sean said \"the song is sick! ... Jessica's voice is amazing and we're shooting [the video] in this ridiculously beautiful mansion overlooking the harbour.\" The video was directed by Mark Alston, who had previously directed the video for Mauboy's single \"Let Me Be Me\" (2009). It premiered on YouTube on 10 February 2011.\n\nSynopsis and reception\nThe video begins showing Mauboy who appears to be sitting on a yellow antique couch in a mansion, wearing a purple dress. As the video progresses, scenes of memories are displayed of Mauboy and her love interest, played by Sean, spending time there previously. It then cuts to the scenes where Sean appears in the main entrance room of the mansion. The final scene shows Mauboy outdoors in a gold dress, surrounded by green grass and trees. She is later joined by Sean who appears in a black suit and a white shirt, and together they sing the chorus of the song to each other. David Lim of Feed Limmy wrote that the video is \"easily the best thing our R&B princess has committed to film – ever\" and praised the \"mansion and wondrous interior décor\". He also commended Mauboy for choosing Australian talent to direct the video instead of American directors, which she had used for her previous two music videos. Since its release, the video has received over two million views on Vevo.\n\nLive performances\nMauboy performed \"What Happened to Us\" live for the first time during her YouTube Live Sessions program on 4 December 2010. She also appeared on Adam Hills in Gordon Street Tonight on 23 February 2011 for an interview and later performed the song. On 15 March 2011, Mauboy performed \"What Happened to Us\" on Sunrise. She also performed the song with Stan Walker during the Australian leg of Chris Brown's F.A.M.E. Tour in April 2011. Mauboy and Walker later performed \"What Happened to Us\" on Dancing with the Stars Australia on 29 May 2011. From November 2013 to February 2014, \"What Happened to Us\" was part of the set list of the To the End of the Earth Tour, Mauboy's second headlining tour of Australia, with Nathaniel Willemse singing Sean's part.\n\nTrack listing\n\nDigital download\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean – 3:19\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean (Sgt Slick Remix) – 6:33\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean (Just Witness Remix) – 3:45\n\nCD single\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean (Album Version) – 3:19\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean (Sgt Slick Remix) – 6:33\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean (OFM Remix) – 3:39\n\nDigital download – Remix\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean (OFM Remix) – 3:38\n\nDigital download\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Stan Walker – 3:20\n\nPersonnel\nSongwriting – Josh Alexander, Billy Steinberg, Jeremy Skaller, Rob Larow, Khaled Rohaim, Israel Cruz, Jay Sean\nProduction – Jeremy Skaller, Bobby Bass\nAdditional production – Israel Cruz, Khaled Rohaim\nLead vocals – Jessica Mauboy, Jay Sean\nMixing – Phil Tan\nAdditional mixing – Damien Lewis\nMastering – Tom Coyne \nSource:\n\nCharts\n\nWeekly chart\n\nYear-end chart\n\nCertification\n\nRadio dates and release history\n\nReferences\n\n2010 songs\n2011 singles\nJessica Mauboy songs\nJay Sean songs\nSongs written by Billy Steinberg\nSongs written by Jay Sean\nSongs written by Josh Alexander\nSongs written by Israel Cruz\nVocal duets\nSony Music Australia singles\nSongs written by Khaled Rohaim"
]
|
[
"Blonde on Blonde",
"Recording sessions in Nashville",
"What happened on February 15?",
"two blocks of recording",
"When was Nashville's first session?",
"February 14-17",
"Did they remove the baffles?",
"I don't know.",
"what happened in 1966?",
"two blocks of recording"
]
| C_6ae80bc19e3e4910915f6ca02f15467e_0 | What was one of their songs? | 5 | What was one of Blonde on Blonde's songs? | Blonde on Blonde | Most accounts of recording Blonde on Blonde, including those by Dylan scholars Clinton Heylin and Michael Gray, agree that there were two blocks of recording sessions: February 14-17 and March 8-10, 1966. This chronology is based on the logs and files kept by Columbia Records. Dylan and the Hawks performed concerts in Ottawa, Montreal, and Philadelphia in February and March, and then Dylan resumed recording in Nashville on March 8. On that date, Dylan and the musicians recorded the take of "Absolutely Sweet Marie" that Dylan selected for the album. Historian Sean Wilentz observed that "with the sound of 'Sweet Marie', Blonde on Blonde entered fully and sublimely into what is now considered classic rock and roll". The same day saw the successful takes of "Just Like a Woman", and "Pledging My Time", the latter "driven by Robertson's screaming guitar". According to Wilentz the final recording session, on March 9-10, produced six songs in 13 hours of studio time. The first number to be recorded to Dylan's satisfaction was "Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine", when McCoy reinforced on trumpet a musical phrase Dylan played on his harmonica, changing the sound of the song radically. Dylan and his band then quickly recorded "Temporary Like Achilles". The session atmosphere began to "get giddy" around midnight when Dylan roughed out "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35" on the piano. Johnston recalled commenting; "That sounds like the damn Salvation Army band". Dylan replied; "Can you get one?" Johnston then telephoned trombonist Wayne Butler, the only additional musician required, and Dylan and the band, with McCoy again on trumpet, played a high-spirited version of the song. In quick succession Dylan and the musicians then recorded "Obviously 5 Believers" and a final take of "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" powered by Robertson's lead guitar. The session concluded with "I Want You" on which, as Wilentz notes, "Wayne Moss's rapid-fire sixteenth notes on the guitar" are an impressive element of the recording. CANNOTANSWER | Just Like a Woman", and "Pledging My Time", | Blonde on Blonde is the seventh studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released as a double album on June 20, 1966, by Columbia Records. Recording sessions began in New York in October 1965 with numerous backing musicians, including members of Dylan's live backing band, the Hawks. Though sessions continued until January 1966, they yielded only one track that made it onto the final album—"One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)". At producer Bob Johnston's suggestion, Dylan, keyboardist Al Kooper, and guitarist Robbie Robertson moved to the CBS studios in Nashville, Tennessee. These sessions, augmented by some of Nashville's top session musicians, were more fruitful, and in February and March all the remaining songs for the album were recorded.
Blonde on Blonde completed the trilogy of rock albums that Dylan recorded in 1965 and 1966, starting with Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited. Critics often rank Blonde on Blonde as one of the greatest albums of all time. Combining the expertise of Nashville session musicians with a modernist literary sensibility, the album's songs have been described as operating on a grand scale musically, while featuring lyrics one critic called "a unique mixture of the visionary and the colloquial". It was one of the first double albums in rock music.
The album peaked at number nine on the Billboard 200 chart in the US, where it eventually was certified double platinum, and it reached number three in the UK. Blonde on Blonde spawned two singles that were top-twenty hits in the US: "Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35" and "I Want You". Two additional songs—"Just Like a Woman" and "Visions of Johanna"—have been named as among Dylan's greatest compositions and were featured in Rolling Stones 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list.
In 1999, the album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, and was ranked number 38 in Rolling Stones 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list in 2020.
Recording sessions
Background
After the release of Highway 61 Revisited in August 1965, Dylan set about hiring a touring band. Guitarist Mike Bloomfield and keyboard player Al Kooper had backed Dylan on the album and at Dylan's controversial electric debut at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. However, Bloomfield chose not to tour with Dylan, preferring to remain with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. After backing him at concerts in late August and early September, Kooper informed Dylan he did not wish to continue touring with him. Dylan's manager, Albert Grossman, was in the process of setting up a grueling concert schedule that would keep Dylan on the road for the next nine months, touring the U.S., Australia, and Europe. Dylan contacted a group who were performing as Levon and the Hawks, consisting of Levon Helm from Arkansas and four Canadian musicians: Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko, Richard Manuel and Garth Hudson. They had come together as a band in Canada, backing American rocker Ronnie Hawkins. Two people had strongly recommended the Hawks to Dylan: Mary Martin, the executive secretary of Grossman, and blues singer John Hammond, Jr., son of record producer John Hammond, who had signed Dylan to Columbia Records in 1961; the Hawks had backed the younger Hammond on his 1965 album So Many Roads.
Dylan rehearsed with the Hawks in Toronto on September 15, where they were playing a hometown residency at Friar's Club, and on September 24, they made their debut in Austin, Texas. Two weeks later, encouraged by the success of their Texas performance, Dylan took the Hawks into Studio A of Columbia Records in New York City. Their immediate task was to record a hit single as the follow-up to "Positively 4th Street", but Dylan was already shaping his next album, the third one that year backed by rock musicians.
New York sessions
Producer Bob Johnston, who had overseen the recording of Highway 61 Revisited, started work with Dylan and the Hawks at Columbia Studio A, 799 Seventh Avenue, New York, on October 5. They concentrated on a new arrangement of "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?", a song recorded during the Highway 61 Revisited sessions but not included on that album. Three further numbers were attempted, but none progressed into completed songs. Both the fragmentary "Jet Pilot" and "I Wanna Be Your Lover", a quasi-parody of the Beatles' "I Wanna Be Your Man", finally appeared on the 1985 box set retrospective, Biograph. Also attempted were two takes of "Medicine Sunday", a song that later evolved into "Temporary Like Achilles".
On November 30, the Hawks joined Dylan again at Studio A, but drummer Bobby Gregg replaced Levon Helm, who had tired of playing in a backing band and quit. They began work on a new composition, "Freeze Out", which was later retitled "Visions of Johanna", but Dylan wasn't satisfied with the results. One of the November 30 recordings was eventually released on The Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home: The Soundtrack in 2005. At this session, they completed "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?" The song was released as a single in December, but only reached number 58 on the American charts.
Dylan spent most of December in California, performing a dozen concerts with his band, and then took a break through the third week in January following the birth of his son Jesse. On January 21, 1966, he returned to Columbia's Studio A to record another long composition, "She's Your Lover Now", accompanied by the Hawks (this time with Sandy Konikoff on drums). Despite nineteen takes, the session failed to yield any complete recordings. Dylan did not attempt the song again, but one of the outtakes from the January 21 session finally appeared 25 years later on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961–1991. (Although the song breaks down at the start of the last verse, Columbia released it as the most complete take from the session.)
Around this time, Dylan became disillusioned about using the Hawks in the studio. He recorded more material at Studio A on January 25, backed by drummer Bobby Gregg, bassist Rick Danko (or Bill Lee), guitarist Robbie Robertson, pianist Paul Griffin, and organist Al Kooper. Two more new compositions were attempted: "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" and "One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)". Dylan was satisfied with "One of Us Must Know"; the January 25 take was released as a single a few weeks later and was subsequently selected for the album.
Another session took place on January 27, this time with Robertson, Danko, Kooper and Gregg. Dylan and his band recorded "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" and "One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)" again, but Dylan was not satisfied with the recorded performance of either song. Also at this session Dylan attempted a rough performance of "I'll Keep It with Mine", a song which he had already recorded twice as a demo. The musicians added some tentative backing in a rendering biographer Clinton Heylin described as "cursory". The recording was ultimately released on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 in 1991.
A shortage of new material and the slow progress of the sessions contributed to Dylan's decision to cancel three additional recording dates. Six weeks later Dylan confided to critic Robert Shelton, "Oh, I was really down. I mean, in ten recording sessions, man, we didn't get one song ... It was the band. But you see, I didn't know that. I didn't want to think that".
Move to Nashville
Recognizing Dylan's dissatisfaction with the progress of the recordings, producer Bob Johnston suggested that they move the sessions to Nashville. Johnston lived there and had extensive experience working with Nashville session musicians. He recalled how Dylan's manager, Albert Grossman, was hostile to the idea: "Grossman came up to me and said 'If you ever mention Nashville to Dylan again, you're gone.' I said, 'What do you mean?' He said, 'You heard me. We got a thing going here'". Despite Grossman's opposition, Dylan agreed to Johnston's suggestion, and preparations were made to record the album at Columbia's A Studio on Nashville's Music Row in February 1966.
In addition to Kooper and Robertson, who accompanied Dylan from New York, Johnston recruited harmonica player, guitarist and bassist Charlie McCoy, guitarist Wayne Moss, guitarist and bassist Joe South, and drummer Kenny Buttrey. At Dylan's request, Johnston removed the baffles—partitions separating the musicians so that there was "an ambience fit for an ensemble". Buttrey credited the distinctive sound of the album to Johnston's re-arrangement of the studio, "as if we were on a tight stage, as opposed to playing in a big hall where you're ninety miles apart". Dylan had a piano installed in his Nashville hotel room which Kooper would play to help Dylan write lyrics. Kooper would then teach the tunes to the musicians before Dylan arrived for the sessions.
On the first Nashville session, on February 14, Dylan successfully recorded "Visions of Johanna", which he had attempted several times in New York. Also recorded was a take of "4th Time Around" which made it onto the album and a take of "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" which did not.
On February 15 the session began at 6 p.m. but Dylan simply sat in the studio working on his lyrics while the musicians played cards, napped and chatted. Finally, at 4 am, Dylan called the musicians in and outlined the structure of the song. Dylan counted off and the musicians fell in, as he attempted his epic composition "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands". Kenny Buttrey recalled, "If you notice that record, that thing after like the second chorus starts building and building like crazy, and everybody's just peaking it up 'cause we thought, Man, this is it ... This is gonna be the last chorus and we've gotta put everything into it we can. And he played another harmonica solo and went back down to another verse and the dynamics had to drop back down to a verse kind of feel ... After about ten minutes of this thing we're cracking up at each other, at what we were doing. I mean, we peaked five minutes ago. Where do we go from here?" The finished song clocked in at 11 minutes, 23 seconds, and would occupy the entire fourth side of the album.
The next session began similarly—Dylan spent the afternoon writing lyrics, and the session continued into the early hours of February 17, when the musicians began to record "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again". After several musical revisions and false starts, the fourteenth take was the version selected for the album.
Recording sessions in Nashville
Most accounts of recording Blonde on Blonde, including those by Dylan scholars Clinton Heylin and Michael Gray, agree that there were two blocks of recording sessions: February 14–17 and March 8–10, 1966. This chronology is based on the logs and files kept by Columbia Records.
Dylan and the Hawks performed concerts in Ottawa, Montreal, and Philadelphia in February and March, and then Dylan resumed recording in Nashville on March 8. On that date, Dylan and the musicians recorded the take of "Absolutely Sweet Marie" that Dylan selected for the album. Historian Sean Wilentz observed that "with the sound of 'Sweet Marie', Blonde on Blonde entered fully and sublimely into what is now considered classic rock and roll". The same day saw the successful takes of "Just Like a Woman", and "Pledging My Time", the latter "driven by Robertson's screaming guitar".
According to Wilentz the final recording session, on March 9–10, produced six songs in 13 hours of studio time. The first number to be recorded to Dylan's satisfaction was "Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine", when McCoy reinforced on trumpet a musical phrase Dylan played on his harmonica, changing the sound of the song radically. Dylan and his band then quickly recorded "Temporary Like Achilles". The session atmosphere began to "get giddy" around midnight when Dylan roughed out "Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35" on the piano. Johnston recalled commenting; "That sounds like the damn Salvation Army band". Dylan replied; "Can you get one?" Johnston then telephoned trombonist Wayne Butler, the only additional musician required, and Dylan and the band, with McCoy again on trumpet, played a high-spirited version of the song.
In quick succession Dylan and the musicians then recorded "Obviously 5 Believers" and a final take of "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" powered by Robertson's lead guitar. The session concluded with "I Want You" on which, as Wilentz notes, "Wayne Moss's rapid-fire sixteenth notes on the guitar" are an impressive element of the recording.
Disagreement over Nashville recording dates
Al Kooper, who played keyboards on every track of Blonde on Blonde, has contested the conventional account that there were two blocks of recording sessions in Nashville. In comments on Michael Gray's website, Kooper wrote: "There was only ONE trip to Nashville for Robbie and I, and ALL THE TRACKS were cut in that one visit", stating that Dylan merely broke for an outstanding concert. Charlie McCoy agreed with Kooper's version. Wilentz analyzed the recording of Blonde on Blonde in his book Bob Dylan in America, concluding that the "official" documented version fits Dylan's known touring schedule, and notes that five of the eight songs first recorded after "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again", but none of those recorded earlier, include a middle-eight section—Dylan's first extensive foray as a writer into that conventional structure".
Mixing
Dylan mixed the album in Los Angeles in early April, before he departed on the Australian leg of his 1966 world tour. Wilentz writes that it was at this point it became "obvious that the riches of the Nashville sessions could not fit onto a single LP", and they had "produced enough solid material to demand an oddly configured double album, the first of its kind in contemporary popular music". According to producer Steve Berkowitz, who supervised the reissue of Dylan's LPs in mono as The Original Mono Recordings in 2010, Johnston told him that they carefully worked on the mono mix for about three or four days whereas the stereo mix was finished in about four hours.
Origin of album title
Al Kooper recalled that both the album title, Blonde on Blonde, and song titles arrived during the mixing sessions. "When they were mixing it, we were sitting around and Bob Johnston came in and said, 'What do you want to call this?' And [Bob] just like said them out one at a time ... Free association and silliness, I'm sure, played a big role." Another Dylan chronicler, Oliver Trager, notes that besides spelling out the initials of Dylan's first name, the album title is also a riff on Brecht on Brecht, a stage production based on works by German playwright Bertolt Brecht that had influenced his early songwriting. Dylan himself has said of the title: "Well, I don't even recall exactly how it came up, but I know it was all in good faith ... I don't know who thought of that. I certainly didn't."
Songs
Side one
"Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35"
According to author Andy Gill, by starting his new album with what sounded like "a demented marching-band ... staffed by crazy people out of their mind on loco-weed", Dylan delivered his biggest shock yet for his former folkie fans. The elaborate puns on getting stoned combine a sense of paranoiac persecution with "nudge-nudge wink-wink bohemian hedonism". Heylin points out that the Old Testament connotations of getting stoned made the Salvation Army-style musical backing seem like a good joke. The enigmatic title came about, Heylin suggests, because Dylan knew a song called "Everybody Must Get Stoned" would be kept off the airwaves. Heylin links the title to the Book of Proverbs, chapter 27, verse 15: "A continual dropping in a very rainy day and a contentious woman are alike." Released as a single on March 22, 1966, "Rainy Day Women" reached number two on the Billboard singles chart and number seven in the UK.
"Pledging My Time"
Following the good-time fun of "Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35", the Chicago blues-influenced "Pledging My Time" sets the album's somber tone. It draws on several traditional blues songs, including Elmore James's recording of "It Hurts Me Too". For critic Michael Gray, the lines "Somebody got lucky but it was an accident" echo the lines "Some joker got lucky, stole her back again" from Robert Johnson's "Come On in My Kitchen", which is itself an echo of Skip James's 1931 recording "Devil Got My Woman". Gray suggests that "the gulping movements of the melodic phrases" derive from the melody of "Sitting on Top of the World", recorded by the Mississippi Sheiks in 1930. The couplet at the end of each verse expresses the theme: a pledge made to a prospective lover in hopes she "will come through, too". Besides Dylan's vocals and improvised harmonica breaks, the song's sound is defined by Robbie Robertson's guitar, Hargus "Pig" Robbins' blues piano and Ken Buttrey's snare drum rolls. The song was released in edited form as the B-side of "Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35" in March.
"Visions of Johanna"
Considered by many critics one of Dylan's masterpieces, "Visions of Johanna" proved difficult to capture on tape. Heylin places the writing in the fall of 1965, when Dylan was living in the Hotel Chelsea with his wife Sara. In the New York recording studio, on November 30, Dylan announced his epic composition: "This is called 'Freeze Out'." Gill notes that this working title captures the "air of nocturnal suspension in which the verse tableaux are sketched ... full of whispering and muttering." Wilentz relates how Dylan guided his backing musicians through 14 takes, trying to sketch out how he wanted it played, saying at one point, "it's not hard rock, The only thing in it that's hard is Robbie." Wilentz notes that, as Dylan quiets things down, he inches closer to what will appear on the album.
Ten weeks later, "Visions of Johanna" fell into place quickly in the Nashville studio. Kooper recalled that he and Robertson had become adept at responding to Dylan's vocal and also singled out Joe South's contribution of "this throbbing ... rhythmically amazing bass part". Gill comments that the song begins by contrasting two lovers, the carnal Louise and "the more spiritual but unattainable" Johanna. Ultimately, for Gill, the song seeks to convey how the artist is compelled to keep striving to pursue some elusive vision of perfection. For Heylin, the triumph of the song is in "the way Dylan manages to write about the most inchoate feelings in such a vivid, immediate way."
"One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)"
When Dylan arrived at the studio on January 25, 1966, he had yet to work out the lyrics and title for what was to become the closing track on Blonde on Blondes first side. With Dylan piecing together the song's sections, and the chorus that gives the song its title only emerging on take five, the session stretched through the night and into the next morning. Only on the 15th take was a full version recorded. Dylan and the band persisted until they recorded take 24, which closed the session and made it onto the album four months later. Critic Jonathan Singer credits Griffin's piano for binding the song together: "At the chorus, Griffin unleashes a symphony; hammering his way up and down the keyboard, half Gershwin, half gospel, all heart. The follow-up, a killer left hand figure that links the chorus to the verse, releases none of the song's tension."
"One of Us Must Know" is a straightforward account of a burned-out relationship. Dissecting what went wrong, the narrator takes a defensive attitude in a one-sided conversation with his former lover. As he presents his case in the opening verse, it appears he is incapable of acknowledging his part or limiting the abuse: "I didn't mean to treat you so bad. You don't have to take it so personal. I didn't mean to make you so sad. You just happened to be there, that's all." "One of Us Must Know" was the first recording completed for Blonde on Blonde and the only one selected from the New York sessions. The song was released as the first single from the album on February 14, the same day Dylan began to record in Nashville. It failed to appear on the American charts, but reached number 33 in the UK.
Side two
"I Want You"
Andy Gill notes that the song displays a tension between the very direct tone of the chorus, the repeated phrase "I want you", and a weird and complex cast of characters, "too numerous to inhabit the song's three minutes comfortably", including a guilty undertaker, a lonesome organ grinder, weeping fathers, mothers, sleeping saviors, the Queen of Spades, and the "dancing child with his Chinese suit". Analyzing the lyrics' evolution through successive drafts, Wilentz writes that there are numerous failures, "about deputies asking him his name ... lines about fathers going down hugging one another and about their daughters putting him down because he isn't their brother". Finally Dylan arrives at the right formula.
Heylin points out that the "gorgeous" tune illustrates what Dylan explained to a reporter in 1966: "It's not just pretty words to a tune or putting tunes to words ... [It's] the words and the music [together]—I can hear the sound of what I want to say." Al Kooper has said that of all the songs that Dylan outlined to him in his hotel, this was his favorite, so Dylan delayed recording it to the very end of the Nashville sessions, "just to bug him". Released as a single in June 1966, shortly before the album, "I Want You" reached number 20 in the US and number 16 in the UK.
"Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again"
Recorded at the third Nashville session, this song was the culmination of another epic of simultaneous writing and recording in the studio. Wilentz describes how the lyrics evolved through a surviving part-typed, part-handwritten manuscript page, "which begins 'honey but it's just too hard' (a line that had survived from the very first New York session with the Hawks). Then the words meander through random combinations and disconnected fragments and images ('people just get uglier'; 'banjo eyes'; 'he was carrying a 22 but it was only a single shot'), before, in Dylan's own hand, amid many crossings-out, there appears 'Oh MAMA you're here IN MOBILE ALABAMA with the Memphis blues again'."
Inside the studio, the song evolved through several musical revisions. Heylin writes, "It is the song's arrangement, and not its lyrics, that occupies the musicians through the wee small hours." On the fifth take, released in 2005 on the No Direction Home Soundtrack, midtake Dylan stumbles on the formula "Stuck inside of Mobile" on the fourth verse, and never goes back. The song contains two oft-quoted pieces of Dylan's philosophy: "Your debutante just knows what you need/ But I know what you want" and "here I sit so patiently/ Waiting to find out what price/ You have to pay to get out of/ Going through all these things twice".
"Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat"
"Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" is a satire of materialism, fashion and faddism. Done in Chicago-blues style, the song derives its melody and part of its lyrics from Lightnin' Hopkins's "Automobile (Blues)". Paul Williams writes that its caustic attitude is "moderated slightly when one realizes that jealous pique is the underlying emotion". The narrator observes his former lover in various situations wearing her "brand new leopard-skin pill-box hat", at one point finding his doctor with her and later spying her making love with a new boyfriend because she "forgot to close the garage door". In the closing lines, the narrator says he knows what her boyfriend really loves her for—her hat.
The song evolved over the course of six takes in New York, 13 in the first Nashville session, and then one on March 10, the take used for the album. Dylan, who gets credit on the liner notes as lead guitarist, opens the song playing lead (on the center-right stereo channel), but Robertson handles the solos with a "searing" performance (on the left stereo channel). A year after the recording, "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" became the fifth single released from Blonde on Blonde, making it to number 81 on the Billboard Hot 100.
"Just Like a Woman"
According to Wilentz's analysis of the session's tapes, Dylan felt his way into the lyrics of one of his most popular songs, singing "disconnected lines and semi-gibberish" during the earlier takes. He was unsure what the person described in the song does that is just like a woman, rejecting "shakes", "wakes", and "makes mistakes". This exploration of female wiles and feminine vulnerability was widely rumored—"not least by her acquaintances among Andy Warhol's Factory retinue"—to be about Edie Sedgwick. The reference to Baby's penchant for "fog ... amphetamine and ... pearls" suggests Sedgwick or a similar debutante, according to Heylin.
Discussing the lyrics, literary critic Christopher Ricks detects a "note of social exclusion" in the line "I was hungry and it was your world". In response to the accusation that Dylan's depiction of female strategies is misogynistic, Ricks asks, "Could there ever be any challenging art about men and women where the accusation just didn't arise?" The song reached number 33 in the US.
Side three
"Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine"
A bright blues "stomper" about lovers parting, "Most Likely You Go Your Way And I'll Go Mine" is one of the more literal songs Dylan recorded in 1965–66. The narrator has tired of carrying his lover and is going to let her "pass". As in "Just Like a Woman" and "Absolutely Sweet Marie", he waits until the end of each verse to deliver the punch line, which in this case comes from the title. "Most Likely You Go Your Way" was issued as a single a year later, in March 1967, on the B-side of "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat".
"Temporary Like Achilles"
This slow-moving blues number is highlighted by Hargus "Pig" Robbins's "dusky barrelhouse piano" and Dylan's "brief wheeze of harmonica". The narrator has been spurned by his lover, who has already taken up with her latest boyfriend. Calling his rival "Achilles", the narrator senses the new suitor may be discarded as quickly as he was. The refrain that ends each of the main verses—"Honey, why are you so hard?"—is a double entendre Dylan had been wanting to work into a song.
"Absolutely Sweet Marie"
This song, described as "up-tempo blues shuffle, pure Memphis" and an example of "obvious pop sensibility and compulsive melody", was recorded in four takes on March 7, 1966. Gill sees the lyrics as a series of sexual metaphors, including "beating on my trumpet" and keys to locked gates, many deriving from traditional blues. Nonetheless, the song contains what has been termed "one of the most oft-repeated of Dylan's life lessons", that "to live outside the law you must be honest", which was later invoked in many bohemian and countercultural contexts.
"4th Time Around"
When the Beatles released their sixth studio album, Rubber Soul, in December 1965, John Lennon's song "Norwegian Wood" attracted attention for the way Lennon disguised his account of an illicit affair in cryptic, Dylanesque language. Dylan sketched out a response to the song, also in 3/4 time, copying the tune and circular structure, but taking Lennon's tale in a darker direction. Wilentz describes the result as sounding "like Bob Dylan impersonating John Lennon impersonating Bob Dylan".
"Obviously 5 Believers"
"Obviously 5 Believers", Blonde on Blondes second-to-last track, is a roadhouse blues love song similar in melody and structure to Memphis Minnie's "Chauffeur Blues", and was described by Robert Shelton as "the best R&B song on the album". Recorded in the early morning hours of the March 9–10 Nashville session under the working title "Black Dog Blues", the song is driven by Robertson's guitar, Charlie McCoy's harmonica and Ken Buttrey's drumming. After an initial breakdown, Dylan complained to the band that the song was "very easy, man" and that he didn't want to spend much time on it. Within four takes, the recording was done.
Side four
"Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands"
Written in the CBS recording studio in Nashville over the space of eight hours on the night of February 15–16, "Sad Eyed Lady" eventually occupied all of side four of Blonde On Blonde. Critics have observed that "Lowlands" hints at "Lownds", and Dylan biographer Robert Shelton wrote that this was a "wedding song" for Sara Lownds, whom Dylan had married just three months earlier. In his paean to his wife, "Sara", written in 1975, Dylan amends history slightly to claim that he stayed "up for days in the Chelsea Hotel/ Writin' 'Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands' for you".
When Dylan played Shelton the song, shortly after recording it, he claimed, "This is the best song I've ever written." Around the same time, Dylan enthused to journalist Jules Siegel, "Just listen to that! That's old-time religious carnival music!" But in 1969, Dylan told Rolling Stone editor Jann Wenner, "I just sat down at a table and started writing ... And I just got carried away with the whole thing ... I just started writing and I couldn't stop. After a period of time, I forgot what it was all about, and I started trying to get back to the beginning [laughs]."
Heard by some listeners as a hymn to an otherworldly woman, for Shelton "her travails seem beyond endurance, yet she radiates an inner strength, an ability to be reborn. This is Dylan at his most romantic." Wilentz comments that Dylan's writing had shifted from the days when he asked questions and supplied answers. Like the verses of William Blake's "The Tyger", Dylan asks a series of questions about the "Sad Eyed Lady" but never supplies any answers.
Outtakes and The Cutting Edge
The following outtakes were recorded during the Blonde on Blonde sessions.
In 2015, Dylan released Volume 12 of his Bootleg Series, The Cutting Edge, in three different formats. The 18-disc Collector's Edition was described as including "every note recorded during the 1965–1966 sessions, every alternate take and alternate lyric." The 18 CDs contain every take of every song recorded in the studio during the Blonde on Blonde sessions, from October 5, 1965, to March 10, 1966.
The New York sessions comprise: two takes of "Medicine Sunday", one take of "Jet Pilot", twelve takes of "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?", seven takes of "I Wanna Be Your Lover", fourteen takes of "Visions of Johanna", sixteen takes of "She's Your Lover Now", four takes of "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat", twenty-four takes of "One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)", one take of "I'll Keep It with Mine", and one take of "Lunatic Princess".
The Nashville sessions comprise 20 takes of "Fourth Time Around", four of "Visions of Johanna", 14 of "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat", four of "Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands", 15 of "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again", three of "Absolutely Sweet Marie", 18 of "Just Like a Woman", three of "Pledging My Time", six of "Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I'll Go Mine)", four of "Temporary Like Achilles", four of "Obviously Five Believers", five of "I Want You", and one of "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35". The 18 CDs also contain brief recordings of guitar and keyboard inserts.
Describing the process of listening to all these alternative versions, Neil McCormick wrote: "The Cutting Edge allows fans to bear witness to perhaps the most astonishing explosion of language and sound in rock history, a new approach to song being forged before our very ears."
Cover photo
The cover photo of Blonde on Blonde shows a 12-by-12-inch close-up portrait of Dylan. The double album gatefold sleeve opens to form a 12-by-26-inch photo of the artist, at three quarter length. The artist's name and the album's title only appear on the spine. A sticker was applied to the shrink wrap to promote the release's two hit singles, "I Want You" and "Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35".
The cover shows Dylan in front of a brick building, wearing a suede jacket and a black and white checkered scarf. The jacket is the same one he wore on his next two albums, John Wesley Harding and Nashville Skyline. The photographer, Jerry Schatzberg, described how the photo was taken:
Research by rock historian Bob Egan suggests the location of the cover photo was at 375 West Street, at the extreme west of Greenwich Village. The original inside gatefold featured nine black-and-white photos, all taken by Schatzberg and selected for the sleeve by Dylan himself. A shot of actress Claudia Cardinale from Schatzberg's portfolio was included but later withdrawn because it had been used without her authorization and Cardinale's representatives threatened to sue, making the original record sleeve a collector's item. Dylan included a self-portrait by Schatzberg as a credit to the photographer. The photos, for Gill, added up to "a shadowy glimpse of [Dylan's] life, including an enigmatic posed shot of Dylan holding a small portrait of a woman in one hand and a pair of pliers in the other: they all contributed to the album's air of reclusive yet sybaritic genius."
Release and reception
Blonde on Blonde reached the Top 10 in both the US and UK album charts, and also spawned a number of hits that restored Dylan to the upper echelons of the singles charts. In August 1967, the album was certified as a gold disc.
A high-definition 5.1 surround sound edition of the album was released on SACD by Columbia in 2003.
The album received generally favorable reviews. Pete Johnson in the Los Angeles Times wrote, "Dylan is a superbly eloquent writer of pop and folk songs with an unmatched ability to press complex ideas and iconoclastic philosophy into brief poetic lines and startling images." The editor of Crawdaddy!, Paul Williams, reviewed Blonde on Blonde in July 1966: "It is a cache of emotion, a well handled package of excellent music and better poetry, blended and meshed and ready to become part of your reality. Here is a man who will speak to you, a 1960s bard with electric lyre and color slides, but a truthful man with x-ray eyes you can look through if you want. All you have to do is listen."
To accompany the songbook of Blonde on Blonde, Paul Nelson wrote an introduction stating, "The very title suggests the singularity and the duality we expect from Dylan. For Dylan's music of illusion and delusion—with the tramp as explorer and the clown as happy victim, where the greatest crimes are lifelessness and the inability to see oneself as a circus performer in the show of life—has always carried within it its own inherent tensions ... Dylan in the end truly UNDERSTANDS situations, and once one truly understands anything, there can no longer be anger, no longer be moralizing, but only humor and compassion, only pity." In May 1968 for Esquire, Robert Christgau said Dylan had "presented his work at its most involuted, neurotic, and pop—and exhilarating—in Blonde on Blonde."
Date discrepancy
May 16, 1966 was commonly noted as the album's official release date. Michael Gray, author of The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, contended that the release date was actually around late June or early July. This coincides with the album's promotion in Billboard, which carried a full-page Columbia advertisement on June 25, selected the album as a "New Action LP" on July 9, and ran a review and article on July 16. In 2017, after viewing a Sony database of album releases, Heylin found that the release date was in fact June 20, 1966. This is supported by the fact that an overdub on "Fourth Time Around" was recorded in June.
The album debuted on Billboards Top LP's chart on July 23 at number 101—just six days before Dylan's motorcycle accident in Woodstock removed him from public view. By contrast, another contemporary LP which has an official 1966 release date of May 16, Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys, entered the Billboard LP chart less than two weeks after release on May 28 at number 105.
Blonde on Blonde has been described as rock's first studio double LP by a major artist, released just one week before Freak Out!, the double album by the Mothers of Invention.
Reappraisal and legacy
Twelve years after its release, Dylan said: "The closest I ever got to the sound I hear in my mind was on individual bands in the Blonde on Blonde album. It's that thin, that wild mercury sound. It's metallic and bright gold, with whatever that conjures up." For critics, the double album was seen as the last installment in Dylan's trilogy of mid-1960s rock albums. As Janet Maslin wrote, "The three albums of this period—Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited both released in 1965, and Blonde on Blonde from 1966—used their electric instrumentation and rock arrangements to achieve a crashing exuberance Dylan hadn't approached before." Mike Marqusee has described Dylan's output between late 1964 and the summer of 1966, when he recorded these three albums, as "a body of work that remains unique in popular music." For Patrick Humphries, "Dylan's body of work during the 14-months period ... stands unequalled in rock's 30-year history. In substance, style, ambition and achievement, no one has even come close to matching Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde." Music journalist Gary Graff points to Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde, along with the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds (1966), as possible starting points to the album era, as they each constituted "a cohesive and conceptual body of work rather than just some hit singles ... with filler tracks."
Dylan scholar Michael Gray wrote: "To have followed up one masterpiece with another was Dylan's history making achievement here ... Where Highway 61 Revisited has Dylan exposing and confronting like a laser beam in surgery, descending from outside the sickness, Blonde on Blonde offers a persona awash inside the chaos ... We're tossed from song to song ... The feel and the music are on a grand scale, and the language and delivery are a unique mixture of the visionary and the colloquial." Critic Tim Riley wrote: "A sprawling abstraction of eccentric blues revisionism, Blonde on Blonde confirms Dylan's stature as the greatest American rock presence since Elvis Presley." Biographer Robert Shelton saw the album as "a hallmark collection that completes his first major rock cycle, which began with Bringing It All Back Home". Summing up the album's achievement, Shelton wrote that Blonde on Blonde "begins with a joke and ends with a hymn; in between wit alternates with a dominant theme of entrapment by circumstances, love, society, and unrealized hope ... There's a remarkable marriage of funky, bluesy rock expressionism, and Rimbaud-like visions of discontinuity, chaos, emptiness, loss, being 'stuck'."
That sense of crossing cultural boundaries was, for Al Kooper, at the heart of Blonde on Blonde: "[Bob Dylan] was the quintessential New York hipster—what was he doing in Nashville? It didn't make any sense whatsoever. But you take those two elements, pour them into a test tube, and it just exploded." For Mike Marqusee, Dylan had succeeded in combining traditional blues material with modernist literary techniques: "[Dylan] took inherited idioms and boosted them into a modernist stratosphere. 'Pledging My Time' and 'Obviously 5 Believers' adhered to blues patterns that were venerable when Dylan first encountered them in the mid-fifties (both begin with the ritual Delta invocation of "early in the mornin"). Yet like 'Visions of Johanna' or 'Memphis Blues Again', these songs are beyond category. They are allusive, repetitive, jaggedly abstract compositions that defy reduction."
Blonde on Blonde has been consistently ranked high in critics' polls of the greatest albums of all time. According to Acclaimed Music, it is the 9th most ranked album on all-time lists. In 1974, the writers of NME voted Blonde on Blonde the number-two album of all time. It was ranked second in the 1978 book Critic's Choice: Top 200 Albums and third in the 1987 edition. In 1997 the album was placed at number 16 in a "Music of the Millennium" poll conducted by HMV, Channel 4, The Guardian and Classic FM. In 2006, Time magazine included the record on their 100 All-Time Albums list. In 2003, the album was ranked number nine on Rolling Stone magazine's list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time", maintaining the rating in a 2012 revised list, while dropping to number 38 in 2020. In 2004, two songs from the album also appeared on the magazine's list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time": "Just Like a Woman" ranked number 230 and "Visions of Johanna" number 404. (When Rolling Stone updated this list in 2010, "Just Like a Woman" dropped to number 232 and "Visions of Johanna" to number 413. Then in 2021, "Visions of Johanna" was re-ranked at number 317.) The album was additionally included in Robert Christgau's "Basic Record Library" of 1950s and 1960s recordings—published in Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981)—and in critic Robert Dimery's book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.
It was voted number 33 in the third edition of Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums (2000). It was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999.
When Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016, Swedish Academy Secretary Sara Danius, when asked how to evaluate Dylan's literary merit, suggested listening first to "Blonde on Blonde."
Track listing
All songs are written by Bob Dylan.
Side one
"Rainy Day Women #12 & 35" – 4:36
"Pledging My Time" – 3:50
"Visions of Johanna" – 7:33
"One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)" – 4:54
Side two
"I Want You" – 3:07
"Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again" – 7:05
"Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" – 3:58
"Just Like a Woman" – 4:52
Side three
"Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine" – 3:30
"Temporary Like Achilles" – 5:02
"Absolutely Sweet Marie" – 4:57
"4th Time Around" – 4:35
"Obviously 5 Believers" – 3:35
Side four
"Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" – 11:23
Personnel
The personnel involved in making Blonde on Blonde is subject to some discrepancy:
Bob Dylan – vocals, guitar, harmonica, piano
Additional musicians
Bill Aikins – keyboards
Wayne Butler – trombone
Kenneth Buttrey – drums
Rick Danko – bass guitar (New York)
Bobby Gregg – drums (New York)
Paul Griffin – piano (New York)
Jerry Kennedy – guitar
Al Kooper – organ, guitar
Charlie McCoy – bass guitar, guitar, harmonica, trumpet
Wayne Moss – guitar, vocals
Hargus "Pig" Robbins – piano, keyboards
Robbie Robertson – guitar, vocals
Henry Strzelecki – bass guitar
Joe South – bass guitar, guitar
Technical
Bob Johnston – record producer
Jerry Schatzberg – cover photographer
Charts
Weekly charts
Singles
Certifications
See also
50 Years of Blonde on Blonde, a 2017 live album by Old Crow Medicine Show covering these songs
Notes
Footnotes
References
External links
Mystic Nights: The Making of Blonde on Blonde in Nashville by Sean Wilentz
Still on the Road: 1966 Blonde on Blonde recording sessions and world tour
1966 albums
Albums produced by Bob Johnston
Bob Dylan albums
Columbia Records albums
Grammy Hall of Fame Award recipients | true | [
"\"What Is and What Should Never Be\" is a song by English rock band Led Zeppelin. It was written by Jimmy Page and Robert Plant and was included as the second track on Led Zeppelin II (1969).\n\nComposition and recording\n\"What is and What Should Never Be\" was one of the first songs on which Page used his soon-to-become trademark Gibson Les Paul for recording. The production makes liberal use of stereo as the guitars pan back and forth between channels. Robert Plant's vocals were phased during the verses. Record producer Rick Rubin has remarked, \"The descending riff [of \"What Is and What Should Never Be\"] is amazing: It's like a bow is being drawn back, and then it releases. The rhythm of the vocals is almost like a rap. It's insane — one of their most psychedelic songs.\" \nThis was also one of the first songs recorded by the band for which Robert Plant received writing credit. According to rock journalist Stephen Davis, the author of the Led Zeppelin biography Hammer of the Gods: The Led Zeppelin Saga, the lyrics for this song reflect a romance Plant had with his wife's younger sister.\n\nLive performances\n\"What Is and What Should Never Be\" was performed live at Led Zeppelin concerts between 1969 and 1973. A live version taken from a performance at the Royal Albert Hall in 1970 can be seen on the Led Zeppelin DVD. Another was included on disc two of the live triple album How The West Was Won. Two more versions were included in BBC Sessions.\n\nPersonnel\n Robert Plant – vocals\n Jimmy Page – guitars, backing vocals\n John Paul Jones – bass guitar, backing vocals\n John Bonham – drums, gong\n\nCover versions\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\"What Is and What Should Never Be\" at ledzeppelin.com\n\nLed Zeppelin songs\n1969 songs\nSongs written by Jimmy Page\nSongs written by Robert Plant\nSong recordings produced by Jimmy Page",
"\"What You Know\" is a song by Southern hip hop recording artist T.I., released as the lead single from his fourth studio album King (2006). The song peaked at number three on the Billboard Hot 100 and was certified double platinum by the RIAA following shipment in excess of two million copies.\n\nBackground\nThe song is produced by T.I.'s frequent collaborator DJ Toomp, from Zone Boy Productions, with additional keys by Wonder Arillo. It utilizes an interpolation of Roberta Flack's version of The Impressions's \"Gone Away\" and of the song \"Hey Joe\", written by Billy Roberts but popularized by Jimi Hendrix.\n\nComposition \nThe song is in E minor.\n\nChart performance\n\"What You Know\" peaked at number three on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart. It also peaked at number one on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs and Hot Rap Songs charts. It spent a total of 20 weeks on the Hot 100 chart. On December 14, 2006, the song was certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for sales of over two million copies in the United States.\n\nRemixes\nAmerican rappers Juelz Santana and J.R Writer, of Dipset, recorded a remix of this song entitled \"What You Know (About That Crack)\". American rapper Papoose recorded a freestyle over the song entitled \"What You Know (About Pap)\". American rapper Lil Wayne also recorded a remix of \"What You Know\", which can be found on his mixtape Dedication 2.\n\nAccolades\n\"What You Know\" won for \"Best Rap Solo Performance\" and was nominated for \"Best Rap Song\" at the 49th Annual Grammy Awards.\n\"What You Know\" was performed at the 2006 MTV Video Music Awards, where its music video was nominated for two awards.\nVIBE named T.I.'s \"What You Know\" as the Top Song of 2006. It was also ranked fourth on a similar list by Rolling Stone , and was number 1 in Muchmusic's Top HipHop 2006 List.\nPitchfork Media ranked \"What You Know\" number 3 on their \"Top Tracks of 2006\" list, while T.I.'s collaboration on Justin Timberlake's song \"My Love\" was ranked number 1.\nThe song is one of the most critically acclaimed of 2006 (arguably T.I.'s most critically acclaimed song), and is one of T.I.'s most successful. It has garnered a 5-star rating from Pitchfork Media. The song peaked at number three on the Billboard Hot 100, and it also topped the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. It is ranked the 338th best song of all time, 8th of 2006, and 42nd of the 2000s decade by Acclaimedmusic.net.\nIn 2008, it was ranked number 68 on VH1's 100 Greatest Songs of Hip Hop.\nIn 2007, \"What You Know\" was named the second-best single of 2006 on The Village Voices Pazz & Jop annual critics' poll, after Gnarls Barkleys \"Crazy\".\n\nIn popular culture\nThe song was used in promotion of the film ATL, in which T.I. stars.\nJapanese professional wrestler KENTA used an instrumental of the song as his entrance theme.\nThe song was the at-bat music for MLB player Joe Mauer.\nThe song was used as the entrance song for Kendall Grove at UFC 101.\nThe song was used at Turner Field whenever Édgar Rentería came up to bat during the 2006 season.\nThe song is used at the beginning of Rich Turpin's \"Whatcha Know?\" segment on BT Sports Radio.\n\nCharts\n\nWeekly charts\n\nYear-end charts\n\nCertifications\n\nReferences\n\n2006 singles\nT.I. songs\nGrammy Award for Best Rap Solo Performance\nGrand Hustle Records singles\nAtlantic Records singles\nMusic videos directed by Chris Robinson (director)\nSongs written for films\nSong recordings produced by DJ Toomp\nSongs written by T.I.\nSongs written by Curtis Mayfield\nSongs written by DJ Toomp\nSongs written by Leroy Hutson\nSouthern hip hop songs\nTrap music songs\n2006 songs"
]
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"Blonde on Blonde",
"Recording sessions in Nashville",
"What happened on February 15?",
"two blocks of recording",
"When was Nashville's first session?",
"February 14-17",
"Did they remove the baffles?",
"I don't know.",
"what happened in 1966?",
"two blocks of recording",
"What was one of their songs?",
"Just Like a Woman\", and \"Pledging My Time\","
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| C_6ae80bc19e3e4910915f6ca02f15467e_0 | How many takes did it take to release their album? | 6 | How many takes did it take to release Blonde on Blonde's album? | Blonde on Blonde | Most accounts of recording Blonde on Blonde, including those by Dylan scholars Clinton Heylin and Michael Gray, agree that there were two blocks of recording sessions: February 14-17 and March 8-10, 1966. This chronology is based on the logs and files kept by Columbia Records. Dylan and the Hawks performed concerts in Ottawa, Montreal, and Philadelphia in February and March, and then Dylan resumed recording in Nashville on March 8. On that date, Dylan and the musicians recorded the take of "Absolutely Sweet Marie" that Dylan selected for the album. Historian Sean Wilentz observed that "with the sound of 'Sweet Marie', Blonde on Blonde entered fully and sublimely into what is now considered classic rock and roll". The same day saw the successful takes of "Just Like a Woman", and "Pledging My Time", the latter "driven by Robertson's screaming guitar". According to Wilentz the final recording session, on March 9-10, produced six songs in 13 hours of studio time. The first number to be recorded to Dylan's satisfaction was "Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine", when McCoy reinforced on trumpet a musical phrase Dylan played on his harmonica, changing the sound of the song radically. Dylan and his band then quickly recorded "Temporary Like Achilles". The session atmosphere began to "get giddy" around midnight when Dylan roughed out "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35" on the piano. Johnston recalled commenting; "That sounds like the damn Salvation Army band". Dylan replied; "Can you get one?" Johnston then telephoned trombonist Wayne Butler, the only additional musician required, and Dylan and the band, with McCoy again on trumpet, played a high-spirited version of the song. In quick succession Dylan and the musicians then recorded "Obviously 5 Believers" and a final take of "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" powered by Robertson's lead guitar. The session concluded with "I Want You" on which, as Wilentz notes, "Wayne Moss's rapid-fire sixteenth notes on the guitar" are an impressive element of the recording. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Blonde on Blonde is the seventh studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released as a double album on June 20, 1966, by Columbia Records. Recording sessions began in New York in October 1965 with numerous backing musicians, including members of Dylan's live backing band, the Hawks. Though sessions continued until January 1966, they yielded only one track that made it onto the final album—"One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)". At producer Bob Johnston's suggestion, Dylan, keyboardist Al Kooper, and guitarist Robbie Robertson moved to the CBS studios in Nashville, Tennessee. These sessions, augmented by some of Nashville's top session musicians, were more fruitful, and in February and March all the remaining songs for the album were recorded.
Blonde on Blonde completed the trilogy of rock albums that Dylan recorded in 1965 and 1966, starting with Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited. Critics often rank Blonde on Blonde as one of the greatest albums of all time. Combining the expertise of Nashville session musicians with a modernist literary sensibility, the album's songs have been described as operating on a grand scale musically, while featuring lyrics one critic called "a unique mixture of the visionary and the colloquial". It was one of the first double albums in rock music.
The album peaked at number nine on the Billboard 200 chart in the US, where it eventually was certified double platinum, and it reached number three in the UK. Blonde on Blonde spawned two singles that were top-twenty hits in the US: "Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35" and "I Want You". Two additional songs—"Just Like a Woman" and "Visions of Johanna"—have been named as among Dylan's greatest compositions and were featured in Rolling Stones 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list.
In 1999, the album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, and was ranked number 38 in Rolling Stones 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list in 2020.
Recording sessions
Background
After the release of Highway 61 Revisited in August 1965, Dylan set about hiring a touring band. Guitarist Mike Bloomfield and keyboard player Al Kooper had backed Dylan on the album and at Dylan's controversial electric debut at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. However, Bloomfield chose not to tour with Dylan, preferring to remain with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. After backing him at concerts in late August and early September, Kooper informed Dylan he did not wish to continue touring with him. Dylan's manager, Albert Grossman, was in the process of setting up a grueling concert schedule that would keep Dylan on the road for the next nine months, touring the U.S., Australia, and Europe. Dylan contacted a group who were performing as Levon and the Hawks, consisting of Levon Helm from Arkansas and four Canadian musicians: Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko, Richard Manuel and Garth Hudson. They had come together as a band in Canada, backing American rocker Ronnie Hawkins. Two people had strongly recommended the Hawks to Dylan: Mary Martin, the executive secretary of Grossman, and blues singer John Hammond, Jr., son of record producer John Hammond, who had signed Dylan to Columbia Records in 1961; the Hawks had backed the younger Hammond on his 1965 album So Many Roads.
Dylan rehearsed with the Hawks in Toronto on September 15, where they were playing a hometown residency at Friar's Club, and on September 24, they made their debut in Austin, Texas. Two weeks later, encouraged by the success of their Texas performance, Dylan took the Hawks into Studio A of Columbia Records in New York City. Their immediate task was to record a hit single as the follow-up to "Positively 4th Street", but Dylan was already shaping his next album, the third one that year backed by rock musicians.
New York sessions
Producer Bob Johnston, who had overseen the recording of Highway 61 Revisited, started work with Dylan and the Hawks at Columbia Studio A, 799 Seventh Avenue, New York, on October 5. They concentrated on a new arrangement of "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?", a song recorded during the Highway 61 Revisited sessions but not included on that album. Three further numbers were attempted, but none progressed into completed songs. Both the fragmentary "Jet Pilot" and "I Wanna Be Your Lover", a quasi-parody of the Beatles' "I Wanna Be Your Man", finally appeared on the 1985 box set retrospective, Biograph. Also attempted were two takes of "Medicine Sunday", a song that later evolved into "Temporary Like Achilles".
On November 30, the Hawks joined Dylan again at Studio A, but drummer Bobby Gregg replaced Levon Helm, who had tired of playing in a backing band and quit. They began work on a new composition, "Freeze Out", which was later retitled "Visions of Johanna", but Dylan wasn't satisfied with the results. One of the November 30 recordings was eventually released on The Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home: The Soundtrack in 2005. At this session, they completed "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?" The song was released as a single in December, but only reached number 58 on the American charts.
Dylan spent most of December in California, performing a dozen concerts with his band, and then took a break through the third week in January following the birth of his son Jesse. On January 21, 1966, he returned to Columbia's Studio A to record another long composition, "She's Your Lover Now", accompanied by the Hawks (this time with Sandy Konikoff on drums). Despite nineteen takes, the session failed to yield any complete recordings. Dylan did not attempt the song again, but one of the outtakes from the January 21 session finally appeared 25 years later on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961–1991. (Although the song breaks down at the start of the last verse, Columbia released it as the most complete take from the session.)
Around this time, Dylan became disillusioned about using the Hawks in the studio. He recorded more material at Studio A on January 25, backed by drummer Bobby Gregg, bassist Rick Danko (or Bill Lee), guitarist Robbie Robertson, pianist Paul Griffin, and organist Al Kooper. Two more new compositions were attempted: "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" and "One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)". Dylan was satisfied with "One of Us Must Know"; the January 25 take was released as a single a few weeks later and was subsequently selected for the album.
Another session took place on January 27, this time with Robertson, Danko, Kooper and Gregg. Dylan and his band recorded "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" and "One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)" again, but Dylan was not satisfied with the recorded performance of either song. Also at this session Dylan attempted a rough performance of "I'll Keep It with Mine", a song which he had already recorded twice as a demo. The musicians added some tentative backing in a rendering biographer Clinton Heylin described as "cursory". The recording was ultimately released on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 in 1991.
A shortage of new material and the slow progress of the sessions contributed to Dylan's decision to cancel three additional recording dates. Six weeks later Dylan confided to critic Robert Shelton, "Oh, I was really down. I mean, in ten recording sessions, man, we didn't get one song ... It was the band. But you see, I didn't know that. I didn't want to think that".
Move to Nashville
Recognizing Dylan's dissatisfaction with the progress of the recordings, producer Bob Johnston suggested that they move the sessions to Nashville. Johnston lived there and had extensive experience working with Nashville session musicians. He recalled how Dylan's manager, Albert Grossman, was hostile to the idea: "Grossman came up to me and said 'If you ever mention Nashville to Dylan again, you're gone.' I said, 'What do you mean?' He said, 'You heard me. We got a thing going here'". Despite Grossman's opposition, Dylan agreed to Johnston's suggestion, and preparations were made to record the album at Columbia's A Studio on Nashville's Music Row in February 1966.
In addition to Kooper and Robertson, who accompanied Dylan from New York, Johnston recruited harmonica player, guitarist and bassist Charlie McCoy, guitarist Wayne Moss, guitarist and bassist Joe South, and drummer Kenny Buttrey. At Dylan's request, Johnston removed the baffles—partitions separating the musicians so that there was "an ambience fit for an ensemble". Buttrey credited the distinctive sound of the album to Johnston's re-arrangement of the studio, "as if we were on a tight stage, as opposed to playing in a big hall where you're ninety miles apart". Dylan had a piano installed in his Nashville hotel room which Kooper would play to help Dylan write lyrics. Kooper would then teach the tunes to the musicians before Dylan arrived for the sessions.
On the first Nashville session, on February 14, Dylan successfully recorded "Visions of Johanna", which he had attempted several times in New York. Also recorded was a take of "4th Time Around" which made it onto the album and a take of "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" which did not.
On February 15 the session began at 6 p.m. but Dylan simply sat in the studio working on his lyrics while the musicians played cards, napped and chatted. Finally, at 4 am, Dylan called the musicians in and outlined the structure of the song. Dylan counted off and the musicians fell in, as he attempted his epic composition "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands". Kenny Buttrey recalled, "If you notice that record, that thing after like the second chorus starts building and building like crazy, and everybody's just peaking it up 'cause we thought, Man, this is it ... This is gonna be the last chorus and we've gotta put everything into it we can. And he played another harmonica solo and went back down to another verse and the dynamics had to drop back down to a verse kind of feel ... After about ten minutes of this thing we're cracking up at each other, at what we were doing. I mean, we peaked five minutes ago. Where do we go from here?" The finished song clocked in at 11 minutes, 23 seconds, and would occupy the entire fourth side of the album.
The next session began similarly—Dylan spent the afternoon writing lyrics, and the session continued into the early hours of February 17, when the musicians began to record "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again". After several musical revisions and false starts, the fourteenth take was the version selected for the album.
Recording sessions in Nashville
Most accounts of recording Blonde on Blonde, including those by Dylan scholars Clinton Heylin and Michael Gray, agree that there were two blocks of recording sessions: February 14–17 and March 8–10, 1966. This chronology is based on the logs and files kept by Columbia Records.
Dylan and the Hawks performed concerts in Ottawa, Montreal, and Philadelphia in February and March, and then Dylan resumed recording in Nashville on March 8. On that date, Dylan and the musicians recorded the take of "Absolutely Sweet Marie" that Dylan selected for the album. Historian Sean Wilentz observed that "with the sound of 'Sweet Marie', Blonde on Blonde entered fully and sublimely into what is now considered classic rock and roll". The same day saw the successful takes of "Just Like a Woman", and "Pledging My Time", the latter "driven by Robertson's screaming guitar".
According to Wilentz the final recording session, on March 9–10, produced six songs in 13 hours of studio time. The first number to be recorded to Dylan's satisfaction was "Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine", when McCoy reinforced on trumpet a musical phrase Dylan played on his harmonica, changing the sound of the song radically. Dylan and his band then quickly recorded "Temporary Like Achilles". The session atmosphere began to "get giddy" around midnight when Dylan roughed out "Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35" on the piano. Johnston recalled commenting; "That sounds like the damn Salvation Army band". Dylan replied; "Can you get one?" Johnston then telephoned trombonist Wayne Butler, the only additional musician required, and Dylan and the band, with McCoy again on trumpet, played a high-spirited version of the song.
In quick succession Dylan and the musicians then recorded "Obviously 5 Believers" and a final take of "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" powered by Robertson's lead guitar. The session concluded with "I Want You" on which, as Wilentz notes, "Wayne Moss's rapid-fire sixteenth notes on the guitar" are an impressive element of the recording.
Disagreement over Nashville recording dates
Al Kooper, who played keyboards on every track of Blonde on Blonde, has contested the conventional account that there were two blocks of recording sessions in Nashville. In comments on Michael Gray's website, Kooper wrote: "There was only ONE trip to Nashville for Robbie and I, and ALL THE TRACKS were cut in that one visit", stating that Dylan merely broke for an outstanding concert. Charlie McCoy agreed with Kooper's version. Wilentz analyzed the recording of Blonde on Blonde in his book Bob Dylan in America, concluding that the "official" documented version fits Dylan's known touring schedule, and notes that five of the eight songs first recorded after "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again", but none of those recorded earlier, include a middle-eight section—Dylan's first extensive foray as a writer into that conventional structure".
Mixing
Dylan mixed the album in Los Angeles in early April, before he departed on the Australian leg of his 1966 world tour. Wilentz writes that it was at this point it became "obvious that the riches of the Nashville sessions could not fit onto a single LP", and they had "produced enough solid material to demand an oddly configured double album, the first of its kind in contemporary popular music". According to producer Steve Berkowitz, who supervised the reissue of Dylan's LPs in mono as The Original Mono Recordings in 2010, Johnston told him that they carefully worked on the mono mix for about three or four days whereas the stereo mix was finished in about four hours.
Origin of album title
Al Kooper recalled that both the album title, Blonde on Blonde, and song titles arrived during the mixing sessions. "When they were mixing it, we were sitting around and Bob Johnston came in and said, 'What do you want to call this?' And [Bob] just like said them out one at a time ... Free association and silliness, I'm sure, played a big role." Another Dylan chronicler, Oliver Trager, notes that besides spelling out the initials of Dylan's first name, the album title is also a riff on Brecht on Brecht, a stage production based on works by German playwright Bertolt Brecht that had influenced his early songwriting. Dylan himself has said of the title: "Well, I don't even recall exactly how it came up, but I know it was all in good faith ... I don't know who thought of that. I certainly didn't."
Songs
Side one
"Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35"
According to author Andy Gill, by starting his new album with what sounded like "a demented marching-band ... staffed by crazy people out of their mind on loco-weed", Dylan delivered his biggest shock yet for his former folkie fans. The elaborate puns on getting stoned combine a sense of paranoiac persecution with "nudge-nudge wink-wink bohemian hedonism". Heylin points out that the Old Testament connotations of getting stoned made the Salvation Army-style musical backing seem like a good joke. The enigmatic title came about, Heylin suggests, because Dylan knew a song called "Everybody Must Get Stoned" would be kept off the airwaves. Heylin links the title to the Book of Proverbs, chapter 27, verse 15: "A continual dropping in a very rainy day and a contentious woman are alike." Released as a single on March 22, 1966, "Rainy Day Women" reached number two on the Billboard singles chart and number seven in the UK.
"Pledging My Time"
Following the good-time fun of "Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35", the Chicago blues-influenced "Pledging My Time" sets the album's somber tone. It draws on several traditional blues songs, including Elmore James's recording of "It Hurts Me Too". For critic Michael Gray, the lines "Somebody got lucky but it was an accident" echo the lines "Some joker got lucky, stole her back again" from Robert Johnson's "Come On in My Kitchen", which is itself an echo of Skip James's 1931 recording "Devil Got My Woman". Gray suggests that "the gulping movements of the melodic phrases" derive from the melody of "Sitting on Top of the World", recorded by the Mississippi Sheiks in 1930. The couplet at the end of each verse expresses the theme: a pledge made to a prospective lover in hopes she "will come through, too". Besides Dylan's vocals and improvised harmonica breaks, the song's sound is defined by Robbie Robertson's guitar, Hargus "Pig" Robbins' blues piano and Ken Buttrey's snare drum rolls. The song was released in edited form as the B-side of "Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35" in March.
"Visions of Johanna"
Considered by many critics one of Dylan's masterpieces, "Visions of Johanna" proved difficult to capture on tape. Heylin places the writing in the fall of 1965, when Dylan was living in the Hotel Chelsea with his wife Sara. In the New York recording studio, on November 30, Dylan announced his epic composition: "This is called 'Freeze Out'." Gill notes that this working title captures the "air of nocturnal suspension in which the verse tableaux are sketched ... full of whispering and muttering." Wilentz relates how Dylan guided his backing musicians through 14 takes, trying to sketch out how he wanted it played, saying at one point, "it's not hard rock, The only thing in it that's hard is Robbie." Wilentz notes that, as Dylan quiets things down, he inches closer to what will appear on the album.
Ten weeks later, "Visions of Johanna" fell into place quickly in the Nashville studio. Kooper recalled that he and Robertson had become adept at responding to Dylan's vocal and also singled out Joe South's contribution of "this throbbing ... rhythmically amazing bass part". Gill comments that the song begins by contrasting two lovers, the carnal Louise and "the more spiritual but unattainable" Johanna. Ultimately, for Gill, the song seeks to convey how the artist is compelled to keep striving to pursue some elusive vision of perfection. For Heylin, the triumph of the song is in "the way Dylan manages to write about the most inchoate feelings in such a vivid, immediate way."
"One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)"
When Dylan arrived at the studio on January 25, 1966, he had yet to work out the lyrics and title for what was to become the closing track on Blonde on Blondes first side. With Dylan piecing together the song's sections, and the chorus that gives the song its title only emerging on take five, the session stretched through the night and into the next morning. Only on the 15th take was a full version recorded. Dylan and the band persisted until they recorded take 24, which closed the session and made it onto the album four months later. Critic Jonathan Singer credits Griffin's piano for binding the song together: "At the chorus, Griffin unleashes a symphony; hammering his way up and down the keyboard, half Gershwin, half gospel, all heart. The follow-up, a killer left hand figure that links the chorus to the verse, releases none of the song's tension."
"One of Us Must Know" is a straightforward account of a burned-out relationship. Dissecting what went wrong, the narrator takes a defensive attitude in a one-sided conversation with his former lover. As he presents his case in the opening verse, it appears he is incapable of acknowledging his part or limiting the abuse: "I didn't mean to treat you so bad. You don't have to take it so personal. I didn't mean to make you so sad. You just happened to be there, that's all." "One of Us Must Know" was the first recording completed for Blonde on Blonde and the only one selected from the New York sessions. The song was released as the first single from the album on February 14, the same day Dylan began to record in Nashville. It failed to appear on the American charts, but reached number 33 in the UK.
Side two
"I Want You"
Andy Gill notes that the song displays a tension between the very direct tone of the chorus, the repeated phrase "I want you", and a weird and complex cast of characters, "too numerous to inhabit the song's three minutes comfortably", including a guilty undertaker, a lonesome organ grinder, weeping fathers, mothers, sleeping saviors, the Queen of Spades, and the "dancing child with his Chinese suit". Analyzing the lyrics' evolution through successive drafts, Wilentz writes that there are numerous failures, "about deputies asking him his name ... lines about fathers going down hugging one another and about their daughters putting him down because he isn't their brother". Finally Dylan arrives at the right formula.
Heylin points out that the "gorgeous" tune illustrates what Dylan explained to a reporter in 1966: "It's not just pretty words to a tune or putting tunes to words ... [It's] the words and the music [together]—I can hear the sound of what I want to say." Al Kooper has said that of all the songs that Dylan outlined to him in his hotel, this was his favorite, so Dylan delayed recording it to the very end of the Nashville sessions, "just to bug him". Released as a single in June 1966, shortly before the album, "I Want You" reached number 20 in the US and number 16 in the UK.
"Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again"
Recorded at the third Nashville session, this song was the culmination of another epic of simultaneous writing and recording in the studio. Wilentz describes how the lyrics evolved through a surviving part-typed, part-handwritten manuscript page, "which begins 'honey but it's just too hard' (a line that had survived from the very first New York session with the Hawks). Then the words meander through random combinations and disconnected fragments and images ('people just get uglier'; 'banjo eyes'; 'he was carrying a 22 but it was only a single shot'), before, in Dylan's own hand, amid many crossings-out, there appears 'Oh MAMA you're here IN MOBILE ALABAMA with the Memphis blues again'."
Inside the studio, the song evolved through several musical revisions. Heylin writes, "It is the song's arrangement, and not its lyrics, that occupies the musicians through the wee small hours." On the fifth take, released in 2005 on the No Direction Home Soundtrack, midtake Dylan stumbles on the formula "Stuck inside of Mobile" on the fourth verse, and never goes back. The song contains two oft-quoted pieces of Dylan's philosophy: "Your debutante just knows what you need/ But I know what you want" and "here I sit so patiently/ Waiting to find out what price/ You have to pay to get out of/ Going through all these things twice".
"Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat"
"Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" is a satire of materialism, fashion and faddism. Done in Chicago-blues style, the song derives its melody and part of its lyrics from Lightnin' Hopkins's "Automobile (Blues)". Paul Williams writes that its caustic attitude is "moderated slightly when one realizes that jealous pique is the underlying emotion". The narrator observes his former lover in various situations wearing her "brand new leopard-skin pill-box hat", at one point finding his doctor with her and later spying her making love with a new boyfriend because she "forgot to close the garage door". In the closing lines, the narrator says he knows what her boyfriend really loves her for—her hat.
The song evolved over the course of six takes in New York, 13 in the first Nashville session, and then one on March 10, the take used for the album. Dylan, who gets credit on the liner notes as lead guitarist, opens the song playing lead (on the center-right stereo channel), but Robertson handles the solos with a "searing" performance (on the left stereo channel). A year after the recording, "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" became the fifth single released from Blonde on Blonde, making it to number 81 on the Billboard Hot 100.
"Just Like a Woman"
According to Wilentz's analysis of the session's tapes, Dylan felt his way into the lyrics of one of his most popular songs, singing "disconnected lines and semi-gibberish" during the earlier takes. He was unsure what the person described in the song does that is just like a woman, rejecting "shakes", "wakes", and "makes mistakes". This exploration of female wiles and feminine vulnerability was widely rumored—"not least by her acquaintances among Andy Warhol's Factory retinue"—to be about Edie Sedgwick. The reference to Baby's penchant for "fog ... amphetamine and ... pearls" suggests Sedgwick or a similar debutante, according to Heylin.
Discussing the lyrics, literary critic Christopher Ricks detects a "note of social exclusion" in the line "I was hungry and it was your world". In response to the accusation that Dylan's depiction of female strategies is misogynistic, Ricks asks, "Could there ever be any challenging art about men and women where the accusation just didn't arise?" The song reached number 33 in the US.
Side three
"Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine"
A bright blues "stomper" about lovers parting, "Most Likely You Go Your Way And I'll Go Mine" is one of the more literal songs Dylan recorded in 1965–66. The narrator has tired of carrying his lover and is going to let her "pass". As in "Just Like a Woman" and "Absolutely Sweet Marie", he waits until the end of each verse to deliver the punch line, which in this case comes from the title. "Most Likely You Go Your Way" was issued as a single a year later, in March 1967, on the B-side of "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat".
"Temporary Like Achilles"
This slow-moving blues number is highlighted by Hargus "Pig" Robbins's "dusky barrelhouse piano" and Dylan's "brief wheeze of harmonica". The narrator has been spurned by his lover, who has already taken up with her latest boyfriend. Calling his rival "Achilles", the narrator senses the new suitor may be discarded as quickly as he was. The refrain that ends each of the main verses—"Honey, why are you so hard?"—is a double entendre Dylan had been wanting to work into a song.
"Absolutely Sweet Marie"
This song, described as "up-tempo blues shuffle, pure Memphis" and an example of "obvious pop sensibility and compulsive melody", was recorded in four takes on March 7, 1966. Gill sees the lyrics as a series of sexual metaphors, including "beating on my trumpet" and keys to locked gates, many deriving from traditional blues. Nonetheless, the song contains what has been termed "one of the most oft-repeated of Dylan's life lessons", that "to live outside the law you must be honest", which was later invoked in many bohemian and countercultural contexts.
"4th Time Around"
When the Beatles released their sixth studio album, Rubber Soul, in December 1965, John Lennon's song "Norwegian Wood" attracted attention for the way Lennon disguised his account of an illicit affair in cryptic, Dylanesque language. Dylan sketched out a response to the song, also in 3/4 time, copying the tune and circular structure, but taking Lennon's tale in a darker direction. Wilentz describes the result as sounding "like Bob Dylan impersonating John Lennon impersonating Bob Dylan".
"Obviously 5 Believers"
"Obviously 5 Believers", Blonde on Blondes second-to-last track, is a roadhouse blues love song similar in melody and structure to Memphis Minnie's "Chauffeur Blues", and was described by Robert Shelton as "the best R&B song on the album". Recorded in the early morning hours of the March 9–10 Nashville session under the working title "Black Dog Blues", the song is driven by Robertson's guitar, Charlie McCoy's harmonica and Ken Buttrey's drumming. After an initial breakdown, Dylan complained to the band that the song was "very easy, man" and that he didn't want to spend much time on it. Within four takes, the recording was done.
Side four
"Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands"
Written in the CBS recording studio in Nashville over the space of eight hours on the night of February 15–16, "Sad Eyed Lady" eventually occupied all of side four of Blonde On Blonde. Critics have observed that "Lowlands" hints at "Lownds", and Dylan biographer Robert Shelton wrote that this was a "wedding song" for Sara Lownds, whom Dylan had married just three months earlier. In his paean to his wife, "Sara", written in 1975, Dylan amends history slightly to claim that he stayed "up for days in the Chelsea Hotel/ Writin' 'Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands' for you".
When Dylan played Shelton the song, shortly after recording it, he claimed, "This is the best song I've ever written." Around the same time, Dylan enthused to journalist Jules Siegel, "Just listen to that! That's old-time religious carnival music!" But in 1969, Dylan told Rolling Stone editor Jann Wenner, "I just sat down at a table and started writing ... And I just got carried away with the whole thing ... I just started writing and I couldn't stop. After a period of time, I forgot what it was all about, and I started trying to get back to the beginning [laughs]."
Heard by some listeners as a hymn to an otherworldly woman, for Shelton "her travails seem beyond endurance, yet she radiates an inner strength, an ability to be reborn. This is Dylan at his most romantic." Wilentz comments that Dylan's writing had shifted from the days when he asked questions and supplied answers. Like the verses of William Blake's "The Tyger", Dylan asks a series of questions about the "Sad Eyed Lady" but never supplies any answers.
Outtakes and The Cutting Edge
The following outtakes were recorded during the Blonde on Blonde sessions.
In 2015, Dylan released Volume 12 of his Bootleg Series, The Cutting Edge, in three different formats. The 18-disc Collector's Edition was described as including "every note recorded during the 1965–1966 sessions, every alternate take and alternate lyric." The 18 CDs contain every take of every song recorded in the studio during the Blonde on Blonde sessions, from October 5, 1965, to March 10, 1966.
The New York sessions comprise: two takes of "Medicine Sunday", one take of "Jet Pilot", twelve takes of "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?", seven takes of "I Wanna Be Your Lover", fourteen takes of "Visions of Johanna", sixteen takes of "She's Your Lover Now", four takes of "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat", twenty-four takes of "One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)", one take of "I'll Keep It with Mine", and one take of "Lunatic Princess".
The Nashville sessions comprise 20 takes of "Fourth Time Around", four of "Visions of Johanna", 14 of "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat", four of "Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands", 15 of "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again", three of "Absolutely Sweet Marie", 18 of "Just Like a Woman", three of "Pledging My Time", six of "Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I'll Go Mine)", four of "Temporary Like Achilles", four of "Obviously Five Believers", five of "I Want You", and one of "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35". The 18 CDs also contain brief recordings of guitar and keyboard inserts.
Describing the process of listening to all these alternative versions, Neil McCormick wrote: "The Cutting Edge allows fans to bear witness to perhaps the most astonishing explosion of language and sound in rock history, a new approach to song being forged before our very ears."
Cover photo
The cover photo of Blonde on Blonde shows a 12-by-12-inch close-up portrait of Dylan. The double album gatefold sleeve opens to form a 12-by-26-inch photo of the artist, at three quarter length. The artist's name and the album's title only appear on the spine. A sticker was applied to the shrink wrap to promote the release's two hit singles, "I Want You" and "Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35".
The cover shows Dylan in front of a brick building, wearing a suede jacket and a black and white checkered scarf. The jacket is the same one he wore on his next two albums, John Wesley Harding and Nashville Skyline. The photographer, Jerry Schatzberg, described how the photo was taken:
Research by rock historian Bob Egan suggests the location of the cover photo was at 375 West Street, at the extreme west of Greenwich Village. The original inside gatefold featured nine black-and-white photos, all taken by Schatzberg and selected for the sleeve by Dylan himself. A shot of actress Claudia Cardinale from Schatzberg's portfolio was included but later withdrawn because it had been used without her authorization and Cardinale's representatives threatened to sue, making the original record sleeve a collector's item. Dylan included a self-portrait by Schatzberg as a credit to the photographer. The photos, for Gill, added up to "a shadowy glimpse of [Dylan's] life, including an enigmatic posed shot of Dylan holding a small portrait of a woman in one hand and a pair of pliers in the other: they all contributed to the album's air of reclusive yet sybaritic genius."
Release and reception
Blonde on Blonde reached the Top 10 in both the US and UK album charts, and also spawned a number of hits that restored Dylan to the upper echelons of the singles charts. In August 1967, the album was certified as a gold disc.
A high-definition 5.1 surround sound edition of the album was released on SACD by Columbia in 2003.
The album received generally favorable reviews. Pete Johnson in the Los Angeles Times wrote, "Dylan is a superbly eloquent writer of pop and folk songs with an unmatched ability to press complex ideas and iconoclastic philosophy into brief poetic lines and startling images." The editor of Crawdaddy!, Paul Williams, reviewed Blonde on Blonde in July 1966: "It is a cache of emotion, a well handled package of excellent music and better poetry, blended and meshed and ready to become part of your reality. Here is a man who will speak to you, a 1960s bard with electric lyre and color slides, but a truthful man with x-ray eyes you can look through if you want. All you have to do is listen."
To accompany the songbook of Blonde on Blonde, Paul Nelson wrote an introduction stating, "The very title suggests the singularity and the duality we expect from Dylan. For Dylan's music of illusion and delusion—with the tramp as explorer and the clown as happy victim, where the greatest crimes are lifelessness and the inability to see oneself as a circus performer in the show of life—has always carried within it its own inherent tensions ... Dylan in the end truly UNDERSTANDS situations, and once one truly understands anything, there can no longer be anger, no longer be moralizing, but only humor and compassion, only pity." In May 1968 for Esquire, Robert Christgau said Dylan had "presented his work at its most involuted, neurotic, and pop—and exhilarating—in Blonde on Blonde."
Date discrepancy
May 16, 1966 was commonly noted as the album's official release date. Michael Gray, author of The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, contended that the release date was actually around late June or early July. This coincides with the album's promotion in Billboard, which carried a full-page Columbia advertisement on June 25, selected the album as a "New Action LP" on July 9, and ran a review and article on July 16. In 2017, after viewing a Sony database of album releases, Heylin found that the release date was in fact June 20, 1966. This is supported by the fact that an overdub on "Fourth Time Around" was recorded in June.
The album debuted on Billboards Top LP's chart on July 23 at number 101—just six days before Dylan's motorcycle accident in Woodstock removed him from public view. By contrast, another contemporary LP which has an official 1966 release date of May 16, Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys, entered the Billboard LP chart less than two weeks after release on May 28 at number 105.
Blonde on Blonde has been described as rock's first studio double LP by a major artist, released just one week before Freak Out!, the double album by the Mothers of Invention.
Reappraisal and legacy
Twelve years after its release, Dylan said: "The closest I ever got to the sound I hear in my mind was on individual bands in the Blonde on Blonde album. It's that thin, that wild mercury sound. It's metallic and bright gold, with whatever that conjures up." For critics, the double album was seen as the last installment in Dylan's trilogy of mid-1960s rock albums. As Janet Maslin wrote, "The three albums of this period—Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited both released in 1965, and Blonde on Blonde from 1966—used their electric instrumentation and rock arrangements to achieve a crashing exuberance Dylan hadn't approached before." Mike Marqusee has described Dylan's output between late 1964 and the summer of 1966, when he recorded these three albums, as "a body of work that remains unique in popular music." For Patrick Humphries, "Dylan's body of work during the 14-months period ... stands unequalled in rock's 30-year history. In substance, style, ambition and achievement, no one has even come close to matching Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde." Music journalist Gary Graff points to Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde, along with the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds (1966), as possible starting points to the album era, as they each constituted "a cohesive and conceptual body of work rather than just some hit singles ... with filler tracks."
Dylan scholar Michael Gray wrote: "To have followed up one masterpiece with another was Dylan's history making achievement here ... Where Highway 61 Revisited has Dylan exposing and confronting like a laser beam in surgery, descending from outside the sickness, Blonde on Blonde offers a persona awash inside the chaos ... We're tossed from song to song ... The feel and the music are on a grand scale, and the language and delivery are a unique mixture of the visionary and the colloquial." Critic Tim Riley wrote: "A sprawling abstraction of eccentric blues revisionism, Blonde on Blonde confirms Dylan's stature as the greatest American rock presence since Elvis Presley." Biographer Robert Shelton saw the album as "a hallmark collection that completes his first major rock cycle, which began with Bringing It All Back Home". Summing up the album's achievement, Shelton wrote that Blonde on Blonde "begins with a joke and ends with a hymn; in between wit alternates with a dominant theme of entrapment by circumstances, love, society, and unrealized hope ... There's a remarkable marriage of funky, bluesy rock expressionism, and Rimbaud-like visions of discontinuity, chaos, emptiness, loss, being 'stuck'."
That sense of crossing cultural boundaries was, for Al Kooper, at the heart of Blonde on Blonde: "[Bob Dylan] was the quintessential New York hipster—what was he doing in Nashville? It didn't make any sense whatsoever. But you take those two elements, pour them into a test tube, and it just exploded." For Mike Marqusee, Dylan had succeeded in combining traditional blues material with modernist literary techniques: "[Dylan] took inherited idioms and boosted them into a modernist stratosphere. 'Pledging My Time' and 'Obviously 5 Believers' adhered to blues patterns that were venerable when Dylan first encountered them in the mid-fifties (both begin with the ritual Delta invocation of "early in the mornin"). Yet like 'Visions of Johanna' or 'Memphis Blues Again', these songs are beyond category. They are allusive, repetitive, jaggedly abstract compositions that defy reduction."
Blonde on Blonde has been consistently ranked high in critics' polls of the greatest albums of all time. According to Acclaimed Music, it is the 9th most ranked album on all-time lists. In 1974, the writers of NME voted Blonde on Blonde the number-two album of all time. It was ranked second in the 1978 book Critic's Choice: Top 200 Albums and third in the 1987 edition. In 1997 the album was placed at number 16 in a "Music of the Millennium" poll conducted by HMV, Channel 4, The Guardian and Classic FM. In 2006, Time magazine included the record on their 100 All-Time Albums list. In 2003, the album was ranked number nine on Rolling Stone magazine's list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time", maintaining the rating in a 2012 revised list, while dropping to number 38 in 2020. In 2004, two songs from the album also appeared on the magazine's list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time": "Just Like a Woman" ranked number 230 and "Visions of Johanna" number 404. (When Rolling Stone updated this list in 2010, "Just Like a Woman" dropped to number 232 and "Visions of Johanna" to number 413. Then in 2021, "Visions of Johanna" was re-ranked at number 317.) The album was additionally included in Robert Christgau's "Basic Record Library" of 1950s and 1960s recordings—published in Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981)—and in critic Robert Dimery's book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.
It was voted number 33 in the third edition of Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums (2000). It was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999.
When Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016, Swedish Academy Secretary Sara Danius, when asked how to evaluate Dylan's literary merit, suggested listening first to "Blonde on Blonde."
Track listing
All songs are written by Bob Dylan.
Side one
"Rainy Day Women #12 & 35" – 4:36
"Pledging My Time" – 3:50
"Visions of Johanna" – 7:33
"One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)" – 4:54
Side two
"I Want You" – 3:07
"Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again" – 7:05
"Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" – 3:58
"Just Like a Woman" – 4:52
Side three
"Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine" – 3:30
"Temporary Like Achilles" – 5:02
"Absolutely Sweet Marie" – 4:57
"4th Time Around" – 4:35
"Obviously 5 Believers" – 3:35
Side four
"Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" – 11:23
Personnel
The personnel involved in making Blonde on Blonde is subject to some discrepancy:
Bob Dylan – vocals, guitar, harmonica, piano
Additional musicians
Bill Aikins – keyboards
Wayne Butler – trombone
Kenneth Buttrey – drums
Rick Danko – bass guitar (New York)
Bobby Gregg – drums (New York)
Paul Griffin – piano (New York)
Jerry Kennedy – guitar
Al Kooper – organ, guitar
Charlie McCoy – bass guitar, guitar, harmonica, trumpet
Wayne Moss – guitar, vocals
Hargus "Pig" Robbins – piano, keyboards
Robbie Robertson – guitar, vocals
Henry Strzelecki – bass guitar
Joe South – bass guitar, guitar
Technical
Bob Johnston – record producer
Jerry Schatzberg – cover photographer
Charts
Weekly charts
Singles
Certifications
See also
50 Years of Blonde on Blonde, a 2017 live album by Old Crow Medicine Show covering these songs
Notes
Footnotes
References
External links
Mystic Nights: The Making of Blonde on Blonde in Nashville by Sean Wilentz
Still on the Road: 1966 Blonde on Blonde recording sessions and world tour
1966 albums
Albums produced by Bob Johnston
Bob Dylan albums
Columbia Records albums
Grammy Hall of Fame Award recipients | false | [
"Flight to Denmark is an album led pianist Duke Jordan recorded in 1973 and released on the Danish SteepleChase label.\n\nReception\n\nIn his review for AllMusic, Michael G. Nastos said \"This is Duke Jordan at his most magnificent, with the ever-able Vinding and expert Thigpen playing their professional roles perfectly, producing perhaps the second best effort (next to Flight to Jordan from 13 years hence) from the famed bop pianist\".\n\nTrack listing\nAll compositions by Duke Jordan except as indicated\n \"No Problem\" – 6:41\n \"Here's That Rainy Day\" (Jimmy Van Heusen, Johnny Burke) – 7:25\n \"Everything Happens To Me\" (Matt Dennis, Tom Adair) – 5:34\n \"Glad I Met Pat\" [Take 3] – 5:03 Bonus track on CD release\n \"Glad I Met Pat\" [Take 4] – 5:22\n \"How Deep Is the Ocean?\" (Irving Berlin) – 7:31\n \"On Green Dolphin Street\" (Bronisław Kaper, Ned Washington) – 8:15\n \"If I Did - Would You?\" [Take 1] – 3:41 Bonus track on CD release\n \"If I Did - Would You?\" [Take 2] – 3:50\n \"Flight to Denmark\" – 5:43\n \"No Problem\" – 7:09 Bonus track on CD release\n \"Jordu\" – 4:54 Bonus track on CD release\n\nPersonnel\nDuke Jordan – piano\nMads Vinding – bass \nEd Thigpen – drums\n\nReferences\n\n1974 albums\nDuke Jordan albums\nSteepleChase Records albums",
"The Greatest Day – Take That Present: The Circus Live is the ninth album by English pop band Take That. It is the first of their three live albums, and has to date been released only in the UK. It was accompanied by a similar DVD release.\n\nBackground and promotion\nThe album was released on 30 November 2009. No singles were released from the album, although \"Hold Up a Light\", the fifth single to be released from Take That's previous album, The Circus, encouraged fans to purchase the live album. The video for \"Hold Up a Light\" featured footage of the band live on the Wembley Leg of the tour, also promoting the album itself. To date, the album has only been released in the UK and Ireland.\n\nThe album became the fastest-selling live album since 1994, selling over 123,000 copies in its first week. This was Take That's last album as a four-piece before Robbie Williams returned to the group in 2010.\n\nA DVD, featuring footage of the concert itself, was released on 23 November 2009. This was followed by the audio recording a week later. The DVD topped the music DVD chart, with the audio recording placing #3 in the UK Albums Chart. The video of \"Hold Up a Light\" was premiered on The One Show on 12 November 2009.\n\nCritical reception\n\nThe album was received well, with positive reviews. BBC News said \"The album was a fresh burst of energy, keeping fans of Take That happy while a new album is being written.\" Digital Spy also reviewed it as 'almost perfect'.\n\nCommercial reception\nThe Greatest Day sold 98,000 copies on its first day of release. This was roughly 35,000 copies below the first-day sales of their previous album, The Circus. The album peaked at number three on the UK Albums Chart, and was certified Platinum in Ireland in December 2009. As of December 2011, the album had sold 514,403 copies in the UK.\n\nTrack listing\nDisc one The Circus – Live at Wembley\n \"Greatest Day\" – 4:18\n \"Hello\" – 3:49\n \"Pray\" – 4:00\n \"Back for Good\" – 4:01\n \"The Garden\" – 5:18\n \"Shine\" – 3:46\n \"Up All Night\" – 3:58\n \"How Did It Come to This\" – 4:07\n \"The Circus\" – 3:36\n \"What Is Love\" – 5:55\n \"Said It All\" – 4:07\n \"Never Forget\" – 5:28\n \"Patience\" – 3:20\n \"Relight My Fire\" – 4:34\n \"Hold Up a Light\" – 4:29\n \"Rule the World\" – 5:42\n\nDisc two In Session – At Abbey Road\n \"The Garden\" – 4:54\n \"How Did It Come to This\" – 2:42\n \"Greatest Day\" – 3:24\n \"Up All Night\" – 3:22\n \"Patience\" – 3:20\n \"What Is Love\" – 3:42\n \"The Circus\" – 3:47\n \"Shine\" – 3:42\n \"Rule the World\" – 3:54\n \"Julie\" – 3:54\n \"Said It All\" – 4:17\n\nCharts\n\nWeekly charts\n\nYear-end charts\n\nCertifications\n\nRelease history\n\nReferences\n\nTake That albums\n2009 live albums\nLive albums recorded at Wembley Stadium"
]
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[
"Blonde on Blonde",
"Recording sessions in Nashville",
"What happened on February 15?",
"two blocks of recording",
"When was Nashville's first session?",
"February 14-17",
"Did they remove the baffles?",
"I don't know.",
"what happened in 1966?",
"two blocks of recording",
"What was one of their songs?",
"Just Like a Woman\", and \"Pledging My Time\",",
"How many takes did it take to release their album?",
"I don't know."
]
| C_6ae80bc19e3e4910915f6ca02f15467e_0 | How long was one of their songs? | 7 | How long was one of Blonde on Blonde's songs? | Blonde on Blonde | Most accounts of recording Blonde on Blonde, including those by Dylan scholars Clinton Heylin and Michael Gray, agree that there were two blocks of recording sessions: February 14-17 and March 8-10, 1966. This chronology is based on the logs and files kept by Columbia Records. Dylan and the Hawks performed concerts in Ottawa, Montreal, and Philadelphia in February and March, and then Dylan resumed recording in Nashville on March 8. On that date, Dylan and the musicians recorded the take of "Absolutely Sweet Marie" that Dylan selected for the album. Historian Sean Wilentz observed that "with the sound of 'Sweet Marie', Blonde on Blonde entered fully and sublimely into what is now considered classic rock and roll". The same day saw the successful takes of "Just Like a Woman", and "Pledging My Time", the latter "driven by Robertson's screaming guitar". According to Wilentz the final recording session, on March 9-10, produced six songs in 13 hours of studio time. The first number to be recorded to Dylan's satisfaction was "Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine", when McCoy reinforced on trumpet a musical phrase Dylan played on his harmonica, changing the sound of the song radically. Dylan and his band then quickly recorded "Temporary Like Achilles". The session atmosphere began to "get giddy" around midnight when Dylan roughed out "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35" on the piano. Johnston recalled commenting; "That sounds like the damn Salvation Army band". Dylan replied; "Can you get one?" Johnston then telephoned trombonist Wayne Butler, the only additional musician required, and Dylan and the band, with McCoy again on trumpet, played a high-spirited version of the song. In quick succession Dylan and the musicians then recorded "Obviously 5 Believers" and a final take of "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" powered by Robertson's lead guitar. The session concluded with "I Want You" on which, as Wilentz notes, "Wayne Moss's rapid-fire sixteenth notes on the guitar" are an impressive element of the recording. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Blonde on Blonde is the seventh studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released as a double album on June 20, 1966, by Columbia Records. Recording sessions began in New York in October 1965 with numerous backing musicians, including members of Dylan's live backing band, the Hawks. Though sessions continued until January 1966, they yielded only one track that made it onto the final album—"One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)". At producer Bob Johnston's suggestion, Dylan, keyboardist Al Kooper, and guitarist Robbie Robertson moved to the CBS studios in Nashville, Tennessee. These sessions, augmented by some of Nashville's top session musicians, were more fruitful, and in February and March all the remaining songs for the album were recorded.
Blonde on Blonde completed the trilogy of rock albums that Dylan recorded in 1965 and 1966, starting with Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited. Critics often rank Blonde on Blonde as one of the greatest albums of all time. Combining the expertise of Nashville session musicians with a modernist literary sensibility, the album's songs have been described as operating on a grand scale musically, while featuring lyrics one critic called "a unique mixture of the visionary and the colloquial". It was one of the first double albums in rock music.
The album peaked at number nine on the Billboard 200 chart in the US, where it eventually was certified double platinum, and it reached number three in the UK. Blonde on Blonde spawned two singles that were top-twenty hits in the US: "Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35" and "I Want You". Two additional songs—"Just Like a Woman" and "Visions of Johanna"—have been named as among Dylan's greatest compositions and were featured in Rolling Stones 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list.
In 1999, the album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, and was ranked number 38 in Rolling Stones 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list in 2020.
Recording sessions
Background
After the release of Highway 61 Revisited in August 1965, Dylan set about hiring a touring band. Guitarist Mike Bloomfield and keyboard player Al Kooper had backed Dylan on the album and at Dylan's controversial electric debut at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. However, Bloomfield chose not to tour with Dylan, preferring to remain with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. After backing him at concerts in late August and early September, Kooper informed Dylan he did not wish to continue touring with him. Dylan's manager, Albert Grossman, was in the process of setting up a grueling concert schedule that would keep Dylan on the road for the next nine months, touring the U.S., Australia, and Europe. Dylan contacted a group who were performing as Levon and the Hawks, consisting of Levon Helm from Arkansas and four Canadian musicians: Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko, Richard Manuel and Garth Hudson. They had come together as a band in Canada, backing American rocker Ronnie Hawkins. Two people had strongly recommended the Hawks to Dylan: Mary Martin, the executive secretary of Grossman, and blues singer John Hammond, Jr., son of record producer John Hammond, who had signed Dylan to Columbia Records in 1961; the Hawks had backed the younger Hammond on his 1965 album So Many Roads.
Dylan rehearsed with the Hawks in Toronto on September 15, where they were playing a hometown residency at Friar's Club, and on September 24, they made their debut in Austin, Texas. Two weeks later, encouraged by the success of their Texas performance, Dylan took the Hawks into Studio A of Columbia Records in New York City. Their immediate task was to record a hit single as the follow-up to "Positively 4th Street", but Dylan was already shaping his next album, the third one that year backed by rock musicians.
New York sessions
Producer Bob Johnston, who had overseen the recording of Highway 61 Revisited, started work with Dylan and the Hawks at Columbia Studio A, 799 Seventh Avenue, New York, on October 5. They concentrated on a new arrangement of "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?", a song recorded during the Highway 61 Revisited sessions but not included on that album. Three further numbers were attempted, but none progressed into completed songs. Both the fragmentary "Jet Pilot" and "I Wanna Be Your Lover", a quasi-parody of the Beatles' "I Wanna Be Your Man", finally appeared on the 1985 box set retrospective, Biograph. Also attempted were two takes of "Medicine Sunday", a song that later evolved into "Temporary Like Achilles".
On November 30, the Hawks joined Dylan again at Studio A, but drummer Bobby Gregg replaced Levon Helm, who had tired of playing in a backing band and quit. They began work on a new composition, "Freeze Out", which was later retitled "Visions of Johanna", but Dylan wasn't satisfied with the results. One of the November 30 recordings was eventually released on The Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home: The Soundtrack in 2005. At this session, they completed "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?" The song was released as a single in December, but only reached number 58 on the American charts.
Dylan spent most of December in California, performing a dozen concerts with his band, and then took a break through the third week in January following the birth of his son Jesse. On January 21, 1966, he returned to Columbia's Studio A to record another long composition, "She's Your Lover Now", accompanied by the Hawks (this time with Sandy Konikoff on drums). Despite nineteen takes, the session failed to yield any complete recordings. Dylan did not attempt the song again, but one of the outtakes from the January 21 session finally appeared 25 years later on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961–1991. (Although the song breaks down at the start of the last verse, Columbia released it as the most complete take from the session.)
Around this time, Dylan became disillusioned about using the Hawks in the studio. He recorded more material at Studio A on January 25, backed by drummer Bobby Gregg, bassist Rick Danko (or Bill Lee), guitarist Robbie Robertson, pianist Paul Griffin, and organist Al Kooper. Two more new compositions were attempted: "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" and "One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)". Dylan was satisfied with "One of Us Must Know"; the January 25 take was released as a single a few weeks later and was subsequently selected for the album.
Another session took place on January 27, this time with Robertson, Danko, Kooper and Gregg. Dylan and his band recorded "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" and "One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)" again, but Dylan was not satisfied with the recorded performance of either song. Also at this session Dylan attempted a rough performance of "I'll Keep It with Mine", a song which he had already recorded twice as a demo. The musicians added some tentative backing in a rendering biographer Clinton Heylin described as "cursory". The recording was ultimately released on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 in 1991.
A shortage of new material and the slow progress of the sessions contributed to Dylan's decision to cancel three additional recording dates. Six weeks later Dylan confided to critic Robert Shelton, "Oh, I was really down. I mean, in ten recording sessions, man, we didn't get one song ... It was the band. But you see, I didn't know that. I didn't want to think that".
Move to Nashville
Recognizing Dylan's dissatisfaction with the progress of the recordings, producer Bob Johnston suggested that they move the sessions to Nashville. Johnston lived there and had extensive experience working with Nashville session musicians. He recalled how Dylan's manager, Albert Grossman, was hostile to the idea: "Grossman came up to me and said 'If you ever mention Nashville to Dylan again, you're gone.' I said, 'What do you mean?' He said, 'You heard me. We got a thing going here'". Despite Grossman's opposition, Dylan agreed to Johnston's suggestion, and preparations were made to record the album at Columbia's A Studio on Nashville's Music Row in February 1966.
In addition to Kooper and Robertson, who accompanied Dylan from New York, Johnston recruited harmonica player, guitarist and bassist Charlie McCoy, guitarist Wayne Moss, guitarist and bassist Joe South, and drummer Kenny Buttrey. At Dylan's request, Johnston removed the baffles—partitions separating the musicians so that there was "an ambience fit for an ensemble". Buttrey credited the distinctive sound of the album to Johnston's re-arrangement of the studio, "as if we were on a tight stage, as opposed to playing in a big hall where you're ninety miles apart". Dylan had a piano installed in his Nashville hotel room which Kooper would play to help Dylan write lyrics. Kooper would then teach the tunes to the musicians before Dylan arrived for the sessions.
On the first Nashville session, on February 14, Dylan successfully recorded "Visions of Johanna", which he had attempted several times in New York. Also recorded was a take of "4th Time Around" which made it onto the album and a take of "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" which did not.
On February 15 the session began at 6 p.m. but Dylan simply sat in the studio working on his lyrics while the musicians played cards, napped and chatted. Finally, at 4 am, Dylan called the musicians in and outlined the structure of the song. Dylan counted off and the musicians fell in, as he attempted his epic composition "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands". Kenny Buttrey recalled, "If you notice that record, that thing after like the second chorus starts building and building like crazy, and everybody's just peaking it up 'cause we thought, Man, this is it ... This is gonna be the last chorus and we've gotta put everything into it we can. And he played another harmonica solo and went back down to another verse and the dynamics had to drop back down to a verse kind of feel ... After about ten minutes of this thing we're cracking up at each other, at what we were doing. I mean, we peaked five minutes ago. Where do we go from here?" The finished song clocked in at 11 minutes, 23 seconds, and would occupy the entire fourth side of the album.
The next session began similarly—Dylan spent the afternoon writing lyrics, and the session continued into the early hours of February 17, when the musicians began to record "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again". After several musical revisions and false starts, the fourteenth take was the version selected for the album.
Recording sessions in Nashville
Most accounts of recording Blonde on Blonde, including those by Dylan scholars Clinton Heylin and Michael Gray, agree that there were two blocks of recording sessions: February 14–17 and March 8–10, 1966. This chronology is based on the logs and files kept by Columbia Records.
Dylan and the Hawks performed concerts in Ottawa, Montreal, and Philadelphia in February and March, and then Dylan resumed recording in Nashville on March 8. On that date, Dylan and the musicians recorded the take of "Absolutely Sweet Marie" that Dylan selected for the album. Historian Sean Wilentz observed that "with the sound of 'Sweet Marie', Blonde on Blonde entered fully and sublimely into what is now considered classic rock and roll". The same day saw the successful takes of "Just Like a Woman", and "Pledging My Time", the latter "driven by Robertson's screaming guitar".
According to Wilentz the final recording session, on March 9–10, produced six songs in 13 hours of studio time. The first number to be recorded to Dylan's satisfaction was "Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine", when McCoy reinforced on trumpet a musical phrase Dylan played on his harmonica, changing the sound of the song radically. Dylan and his band then quickly recorded "Temporary Like Achilles". The session atmosphere began to "get giddy" around midnight when Dylan roughed out "Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35" on the piano. Johnston recalled commenting; "That sounds like the damn Salvation Army band". Dylan replied; "Can you get one?" Johnston then telephoned trombonist Wayne Butler, the only additional musician required, and Dylan and the band, with McCoy again on trumpet, played a high-spirited version of the song.
In quick succession Dylan and the musicians then recorded "Obviously 5 Believers" and a final take of "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" powered by Robertson's lead guitar. The session concluded with "I Want You" on which, as Wilentz notes, "Wayne Moss's rapid-fire sixteenth notes on the guitar" are an impressive element of the recording.
Disagreement over Nashville recording dates
Al Kooper, who played keyboards on every track of Blonde on Blonde, has contested the conventional account that there were two blocks of recording sessions in Nashville. In comments on Michael Gray's website, Kooper wrote: "There was only ONE trip to Nashville for Robbie and I, and ALL THE TRACKS were cut in that one visit", stating that Dylan merely broke for an outstanding concert. Charlie McCoy agreed with Kooper's version. Wilentz analyzed the recording of Blonde on Blonde in his book Bob Dylan in America, concluding that the "official" documented version fits Dylan's known touring schedule, and notes that five of the eight songs first recorded after "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again", but none of those recorded earlier, include a middle-eight section—Dylan's first extensive foray as a writer into that conventional structure".
Mixing
Dylan mixed the album in Los Angeles in early April, before he departed on the Australian leg of his 1966 world tour. Wilentz writes that it was at this point it became "obvious that the riches of the Nashville sessions could not fit onto a single LP", and they had "produced enough solid material to demand an oddly configured double album, the first of its kind in contemporary popular music". According to producer Steve Berkowitz, who supervised the reissue of Dylan's LPs in mono as The Original Mono Recordings in 2010, Johnston told him that they carefully worked on the mono mix for about three or four days whereas the stereo mix was finished in about four hours.
Origin of album title
Al Kooper recalled that both the album title, Blonde on Blonde, and song titles arrived during the mixing sessions. "When they were mixing it, we were sitting around and Bob Johnston came in and said, 'What do you want to call this?' And [Bob] just like said them out one at a time ... Free association and silliness, I'm sure, played a big role." Another Dylan chronicler, Oliver Trager, notes that besides spelling out the initials of Dylan's first name, the album title is also a riff on Brecht on Brecht, a stage production based on works by German playwright Bertolt Brecht that had influenced his early songwriting. Dylan himself has said of the title: "Well, I don't even recall exactly how it came up, but I know it was all in good faith ... I don't know who thought of that. I certainly didn't."
Songs
Side one
"Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35"
According to author Andy Gill, by starting his new album with what sounded like "a demented marching-band ... staffed by crazy people out of their mind on loco-weed", Dylan delivered his biggest shock yet for his former folkie fans. The elaborate puns on getting stoned combine a sense of paranoiac persecution with "nudge-nudge wink-wink bohemian hedonism". Heylin points out that the Old Testament connotations of getting stoned made the Salvation Army-style musical backing seem like a good joke. The enigmatic title came about, Heylin suggests, because Dylan knew a song called "Everybody Must Get Stoned" would be kept off the airwaves. Heylin links the title to the Book of Proverbs, chapter 27, verse 15: "A continual dropping in a very rainy day and a contentious woman are alike." Released as a single on March 22, 1966, "Rainy Day Women" reached number two on the Billboard singles chart and number seven in the UK.
"Pledging My Time"
Following the good-time fun of "Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35", the Chicago blues-influenced "Pledging My Time" sets the album's somber tone. It draws on several traditional blues songs, including Elmore James's recording of "It Hurts Me Too". For critic Michael Gray, the lines "Somebody got lucky but it was an accident" echo the lines "Some joker got lucky, stole her back again" from Robert Johnson's "Come On in My Kitchen", which is itself an echo of Skip James's 1931 recording "Devil Got My Woman". Gray suggests that "the gulping movements of the melodic phrases" derive from the melody of "Sitting on Top of the World", recorded by the Mississippi Sheiks in 1930. The couplet at the end of each verse expresses the theme: a pledge made to a prospective lover in hopes she "will come through, too". Besides Dylan's vocals and improvised harmonica breaks, the song's sound is defined by Robbie Robertson's guitar, Hargus "Pig" Robbins' blues piano and Ken Buttrey's snare drum rolls. The song was released in edited form as the B-side of "Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35" in March.
"Visions of Johanna"
Considered by many critics one of Dylan's masterpieces, "Visions of Johanna" proved difficult to capture on tape. Heylin places the writing in the fall of 1965, when Dylan was living in the Hotel Chelsea with his wife Sara. In the New York recording studio, on November 30, Dylan announced his epic composition: "This is called 'Freeze Out'." Gill notes that this working title captures the "air of nocturnal suspension in which the verse tableaux are sketched ... full of whispering and muttering." Wilentz relates how Dylan guided his backing musicians through 14 takes, trying to sketch out how he wanted it played, saying at one point, "it's not hard rock, The only thing in it that's hard is Robbie." Wilentz notes that, as Dylan quiets things down, he inches closer to what will appear on the album.
Ten weeks later, "Visions of Johanna" fell into place quickly in the Nashville studio. Kooper recalled that he and Robertson had become adept at responding to Dylan's vocal and also singled out Joe South's contribution of "this throbbing ... rhythmically amazing bass part". Gill comments that the song begins by contrasting two lovers, the carnal Louise and "the more spiritual but unattainable" Johanna. Ultimately, for Gill, the song seeks to convey how the artist is compelled to keep striving to pursue some elusive vision of perfection. For Heylin, the triumph of the song is in "the way Dylan manages to write about the most inchoate feelings in such a vivid, immediate way."
"One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)"
When Dylan arrived at the studio on January 25, 1966, he had yet to work out the lyrics and title for what was to become the closing track on Blonde on Blondes first side. With Dylan piecing together the song's sections, and the chorus that gives the song its title only emerging on take five, the session stretched through the night and into the next morning. Only on the 15th take was a full version recorded. Dylan and the band persisted until they recorded take 24, which closed the session and made it onto the album four months later. Critic Jonathan Singer credits Griffin's piano for binding the song together: "At the chorus, Griffin unleashes a symphony; hammering his way up and down the keyboard, half Gershwin, half gospel, all heart. The follow-up, a killer left hand figure that links the chorus to the verse, releases none of the song's tension."
"One of Us Must Know" is a straightforward account of a burned-out relationship. Dissecting what went wrong, the narrator takes a defensive attitude in a one-sided conversation with his former lover. As he presents his case in the opening verse, it appears he is incapable of acknowledging his part or limiting the abuse: "I didn't mean to treat you so bad. You don't have to take it so personal. I didn't mean to make you so sad. You just happened to be there, that's all." "One of Us Must Know" was the first recording completed for Blonde on Blonde and the only one selected from the New York sessions. The song was released as the first single from the album on February 14, the same day Dylan began to record in Nashville. It failed to appear on the American charts, but reached number 33 in the UK.
Side two
"I Want You"
Andy Gill notes that the song displays a tension between the very direct tone of the chorus, the repeated phrase "I want you", and a weird and complex cast of characters, "too numerous to inhabit the song's three minutes comfortably", including a guilty undertaker, a lonesome organ grinder, weeping fathers, mothers, sleeping saviors, the Queen of Spades, and the "dancing child with his Chinese suit". Analyzing the lyrics' evolution through successive drafts, Wilentz writes that there are numerous failures, "about deputies asking him his name ... lines about fathers going down hugging one another and about their daughters putting him down because he isn't their brother". Finally Dylan arrives at the right formula.
Heylin points out that the "gorgeous" tune illustrates what Dylan explained to a reporter in 1966: "It's not just pretty words to a tune or putting tunes to words ... [It's] the words and the music [together]—I can hear the sound of what I want to say." Al Kooper has said that of all the songs that Dylan outlined to him in his hotel, this was his favorite, so Dylan delayed recording it to the very end of the Nashville sessions, "just to bug him". Released as a single in June 1966, shortly before the album, "I Want You" reached number 20 in the US and number 16 in the UK.
"Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again"
Recorded at the third Nashville session, this song was the culmination of another epic of simultaneous writing and recording in the studio. Wilentz describes how the lyrics evolved through a surviving part-typed, part-handwritten manuscript page, "which begins 'honey but it's just too hard' (a line that had survived from the very first New York session with the Hawks). Then the words meander through random combinations and disconnected fragments and images ('people just get uglier'; 'banjo eyes'; 'he was carrying a 22 but it was only a single shot'), before, in Dylan's own hand, amid many crossings-out, there appears 'Oh MAMA you're here IN MOBILE ALABAMA with the Memphis blues again'."
Inside the studio, the song evolved through several musical revisions. Heylin writes, "It is the song's arrangement, and not its lyrics, that occupies the musicians through the wee small hours." On the fifth take, released in 2005 on the No Direction Home Soundtrack, midtake Dylan stumbles on the formula "Stuck inside of Mobile" on the fourth verse, and never goes back. The song contains two oft-quoted pieces of Dylan's philosophy: "Your debutante just knows what you need/ But I know what you want" and "here I sit so patiently/ Waiting to find out what price/ You have to pay to get out of/ Going through all these things twice".
"Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat"
"Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" is a satire of materialism, fashion and faddism. Done in Chicago-blues style, the song derives its melody and part of its lyrics from Lightnin' Hopkins's "Automobile (Blues)". Paul Williams writes that its caustic attitude is "moderated slightly when one realizes that jealous pique is the underlying emotion". The narrator observes his former lover in various situations wearing her "brand new leopard-skin pill-box hat", at one point finding his doctor with her and later spying her making love with a new boyfriend because she "forgot to close the garage door". In the closing lines, the narrator says he knows what her boyfriend really loves her for—her hat.
The song evolved over the course of six takes in New York, 13 in the first Nashville session, and then one on March 10, the take used for the album. Dylan, who gets credit on the liner notes as lead guitarist, opens the song playing lead (on the center-right stereo channel), but Robertson handles the solos with a "searing" performance (on the left stereo channel). A year after the recording, "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" became the fifth single released from Blonde on Blonde, making it to number 81 on the Billboard Hot 100.
"Just Like a Woman"
According to Wilentz's analysis of the session's tapes, Dylan felt his way into the lyrics of one of his most popular songs, singing "disconnected lines and semi-gibberish" during the earlier takes. He was unsure what the person described in the song does that is just like a woman, rejecting "shakes", "wakes", and "makes mistakes". This exploration of female wiles and feminine vulnerability was widely rumored—"not least by her acquaintances among Andy Warhol's Factory retinue"—to be about Edie Sedgwick. The reference to Baby's penchant for "fog ... amphetamine and ... pearls" suggests Sedgwick or a similar debutante, according to Heylin.
Discussing the lyrics, literary critic Christopher Ricks detects a "note of social exclusion" in the line "I was hungry and it was your world". In response to the accusation that Dylan's depiction of female strategies is misogynistic, Ricks asks, "Could there ever be any challenging art about men and women where the accusation just didn't arise?" The song reached number 33 in the US.
Side three
"Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine"
A bright blues "stomper" about lovers parting, "Most Likely You Go Your Way And I'll Go Mine" is one of the more literal songs Dylan recorded in 1965–66. The narrator has tired of carrying his lover and is going to let her "pass". As in "Just Like a Woman" and "Absolutely Sweet Marie", he waits until the end of each verse to deliver the punch line, which in this case comes from the title. "Most Likely You Go Your Way" was issued as a single a year later, in March 1967, on the B-side of "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat".
"Temporary Like Achilles"
This slow-moving blues number is highlighted by Hargus "Pig" Robbins's "dusky barrelhouse piano" and Dylan's "brief wheeze of harmonica". The narrator has been spurned by his lover, who has already taken up with her latest boyfriend. Calling his rival "Achilles", the narrator senses the new suitor may be discarded as quickly as he was. The refrain that ends each of the main verses—"Honey, why are you so hard?"—is a double entendre Dylan had been wanting to work into a song.
"Absolutely Sweet Marie"
This song, described as "up-tempo blues shuffle, pure Memphis" and an example of "obvious pop sensibility and compulsive melody", was recorded in four takes on March 7, 1966. Gill sees the lyrics as a series of sexual metaphors, including "beating on my trumpet" and keys to locked gates, many deriving from traditional blues. Nonetheless, the song contains what has been termed "one of the most oft-repeated of Dylan's life lessons", that "to live outside the law you must be honest", which was later invoked in many bohemian and countercultural contexts.
"4th Time Around"
When the Beatles released their sixth studio album, Rubber Soul, in December 1965, John Lennon's song "Norwegian Wood" attracted attention for the way Lennon disguised his account of an illicit affair in cryptic, Dylanesque language. Dylan sketched out a response to the song, also in 3/4 time, copying the tune and circular structure, but taking Lennon's tale in a darker direction. Wilentz describes the result as sounding "like Bob Dylan impersonating John Lennon impersonating Bob Dylan".
"Obviously 5 Believers"
"Obviously 5 Believers", Blonde on Blondes second-to-last track, is a roadhouse blues love song similar in melody and structure to Memphis Minnie's "Chauffeur Blues", and was described by Robert Shelton as "the best R&B song on the album". Recorded in the early morning hours of the March 9–10 Nashville session under the working title "Black Dog Blues", the song is driven by Robertson's guitar, Charlie McCoy's harmonica and Ken Buttrey's drumming. After an initial breakdown, Dylan complained to the band that the song was "very easy, man" and that he didn't want to spend much time on it. Within four takes, the recording was done.
Side four
"Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands"
Written in the CBS recording studio in Nashville over the space of eight hours on the night of February 15–16, "Sad Eyed Lady" eventually occupied all of side four of Blonde On Blonde. Critics have observed that "Lowlands" hints at "Lownds", and Dylan biographer Robert Shelton wrote that this was a "wedding song" for Sara Lownds, whom Dylan had married just three months earlier. In his paean to his wife, "Sara", written in 1975, Dylan amends history slightly to claim that he stayed "up for days in the Chelsea Hotel/ Writin' 'Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands' for you".
When Dylan played Shelton the song, shortly after recording it, he claimed, "This is the best song I've ever written." Around the same time, Dylan enthused to journalist Jules Siegel, "Just listen to that! That's old-time religious carnival music!" But in 1969, Dylan told Rolling Stone editor Jann Wenner, "I just sat down at a table and started writing ... And I just got carried away with the whole thing ... I just started writing and I couldn't stop. After a period of time, I forgot what it was all about, and I started trying to get back to the beginning [laughs]."
Heard by some listeners as a hymn to an otherworldly woman, for Shelton "her travails seem beyond endurance, yet she radiates an inner strength, an ability to be reborn. This is Dylan at his most romantic." Wilentz comments that Dylan's writing had shifted from the days when he asked questions and supplied answers. Like the verses of William Blake's "The Tyger", Dylan asks a series of questions about the "Sad Eyed Lady" but never supplies any answers.
Outtakes and The Cutting Edge
The following outtakes were recorded during the Blonde on Blonde sessions.
In 2015, Dylan released Volume 12 of his Bootleg Series, The Cutting Edge, in three different formats. The 18-disc Collector's Edition was described as including "every note recorded during the 1965–1966 sessions, every alternate take and alternate lyric." The 18 CDs contain every take of every song recorded in the studio during the Blonde on Blonde sessions, from October 5, 1965, to March 10, 1966.
The New York sessions comprise: two takes of "Medicine Sunday", one take of "Jet Pilot", twelve takes of "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?", seven takes of "I Wanna Be Your Lover", fourteen takes of "Visions of Johanna", sixteen takes of "She's Your Lover Now", four takes of "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat", twenty-four takes of "One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)", one take of "I'll Keep It with Mine", and one take of "Lunatic Princess".
The Nashville sessions comprise 20 takes of "Fourth Time Around", four of "Visions of Johanna", 14 of "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat", four of "Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands", 15 of "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again", three of "Absolutely Sweet Marie", 18 of "Just Like a Woman", three of "Pledging My Time", six of "Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I'll Go Mine)", four of "Temporary Like Achilles", four of "Obviously Five Believers", five of "I Want You", and one of "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35". The 18 CDs also contain brief recordings of guitar and keyboard inserts.
Describing the process of listening to all these alternative versions, Neil McCormick wrote: "The Cutting Edge allows fans to bear witness to perhaps the most astonishing explosion of language and sound in rock history, a new approach to song being forged before our very ears."
Cover photo
The cover photo of Blonde on Blonde shows a 12-by-12-inch close-up portrait of Dylan. The double album gatefold sleeve opens to form a 12-by-26-inch photo of the artist, at three quarter length. The artist's name and the album's title only appear on the spine. A sticker was applied to the shrink wrap to promote the release's two hit singles, "I Want You" and "Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35".
The cover shows Dylan in front of a brick building, wearing a suede jacket and a black and white checkered scarf. The jacket is the same one he wore on his next two albums, John Wesley Harding and Nashville Skyline. The photographer, Jerry Schatzberg, described how the photo was taken:
Research by rock historian Bob Egan suggests the location of the cover photo was at 375 West Street, at the extreme west of Greenwich Village. The original inside gatefold featured nine black-and-white photos, all taken by Schatzberg and selected for the sleeve by Dylan himself. A shot of actress Claudia Cardinale from Schatzberg's portfolio was included but later withdrawn because it had been used without her authorization and Cardinale's representatives threatened to sue, making the original record sleeve a collector's item. Dylan included a self-portrait by Schatzberg as a credit to the photographer. The photos, for Gill, added up to "a shadowy glimpse of [Dylan's] life, including an enigmatic posed shot of Dylan holding a small portrait of a woman in one hand and a pair of pliers in the other: they all contributed to the album's air of reclusive yet sybaritic genius."
Release and reception
Blonde on Blonde reached the Top 10 in both the US and UK album charts, and also spawned a number of hits that restored Dylan to the upper echelons of the singles charts. In August 1967, the album was certified as a gold disc.
A high-definition 5.1 surround sound edition of the album was released on SACD by Columbia in 2003.
The album received generally favorable reviews. Pete Johnson in the Los Angeles Times wrote, "Dylan is a superbly eloquent writer of pop and folk songs with an unmatched ability to press complex ideas and iconoclastic philosophy into brief poetic lines and startling images." The editor of Crawdaddy!, Paul Williams, reviewed Blonde on Blonde in July 1966: "It is a cache of emotion, a well handled package of excellent music and better poetry, blended and meshed and ready to become part of your reality. Here is a man who will speak to you, a 1960s bard with electric lyre and color slides, but a truthful man with x-ray eyes you can look through if you want. All you have to do is listen."
To accompany the songbook of Blonde on Blonde, Paul Nelson wrote an introduction stating, "The very title suggests the singularity and the duality we expect from Dylan. For Dylan's music of illusion and delusion—with the tramp as explorer and the clown as happy victim, where the greatest crimes are lifelessness and the inability to see oneself as a circus performer in the show of life—has always carried within it its own inherent tensions ... Dylan in the end truly UNDERSTANDS situations, and once one truly understands anything, there can no longer be anger, no longer be moralizing, but only humor and compassion, only pity." In May 1968 for Esquire, Robert Christgau said Dylan had "presented his work at its most involuted, neurotic, and pop—and exhilarating—in Blonde on Blonde."
Date discrepancy
May 16, 1966 was commonly noted as the album's official release date. Michael Gray, author of The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, contended that the release date was actually around late June or early July. This coincides with the album's promotion in Billboard, which carried a full-page Columbia advertisement on June 25, selected the album as a "New Action LP" on July 9, and ran a review and article on July 16. In 2017, after viewing a Sony database of album releases, Heylin found that the release date was in fact June 20, 1966. This is supported by the fact that an overdub on "Fourth Time Around" was recorded in June.
The album debuted on Billboards Top LP's chart on July 23 at number 101—just six days before Dylan's motorcycle accident in Woodstock removed him from public view. By contrast, another contemporary LP which has an official 1966 release date of May 16, Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys, entered the Billboard LP chart less than two weeks after release on May 28 at number 105.
Blonde on Blonde has been described as rock's first studio double LP by a major artist, released just one week before Freak Out!, the double album by the Mothers of Invention.
Reappraisal and legacy
Twelve years after its release, Dylan said: "The closest I ever got to the sound I hear in my mind was on individual bands in the Blonde on Blonde album. It's that thin, that wild mercury sound. It's metallic and bright gold, with whatever that conjures up." For critics, the double album was seen as the last installment in Dylan's trilogy of mid-1960s rock albums. As Janet Maslin wrote, "The three albums of this period—Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited both released in 1965, and Blonde on Blonde from 1966—used their electric instrumentation and rock arrangements to achieve a crashing exuberance Dylan hadn't approached before." Mike Marqusee has described Dylan's output between late 1964 and the summer of 1966, when he recorded these three albums, as "a body of work that remains unique in popular music." For Patrick Humphries, "Dylan's body of work during the 14-months period ... stands unequalled in rock's 30-year history. In substance, style, ambition and achievement, no one has even come close to matching Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde." Music journalist Gary Graff points to Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde, along with the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds (1966), as possible starting points to the album era, as they each constituted "a cohesive and conceptual body of work rather than just some hit singles ... with filler tracks."
Dylan scholar Michael Gray wrote: "To have followed up one masterpiece with another was Dylan's history making achievement here ... Where Highway 61 Revisited has Dylan exposing and confronting like a laser beam in surgery, descending from outside the sickness, Blonde on Blonde offers a persona awash inside the chaos ... We're tossed from song to song ... The feel and the music are on a grand scale, and the language and delivery are a unique mixture of the visionary and the colloquial." Critic Tim Riley wrote: "A sprawling abstraction of eccentric blues revisionism, Blonde on Blonde confirms Dylan's stature as the greatest American rock presence since Elvis Presley." Biographer Robert Shelton saw the album as "a hallmark collection that completes his first major rock cycle, which began with Bringing It All Back Home". Summing up the album's achievement, Shelton wrote that Blonde on Blonde "begins with a joke and ends with a hymn; in between wit alternates with a dominant theme of entrapment by circumstances, love, society, and unrealized hope ... There's a remarkable marriage of funky, bluesy rock expressionism, and Rimbaud-like visions of discontinuity, chaos, emptiness, loss, being 'stuck'."
That sense of crossing cultural boundaries was, for Al Kooper, at the heart of Blonde on Blonde: "[Bob Dylan] was the quintessential New York hipster—what was he doing in Nashville? It didn't make any sense whatsoever. But you take those two elements, pour them into a test tube, and it just exploded." For Mike Marqusee, Dylan had succeeded in combining traditional blues material with modernist literary techniques: "[Dylan] took inherited idioms and boosted them into a modernist stratosphere. 'Pledging My Time' and 'Obviously 5 Believers' adhered to blues patterns that were venerable when Dylan first encountered them in the mid-fifties (both begin with the ritual Delta invocation of "early in the mornin"). Yet like 'Visions of Johanna' or 'Memphis Blues Again', these songs are beyond category. They are allusive, repetitive, jaggedly abstract compositions that defy reduction."
Blonde on Blonde has been consistently ranked high in critics' polls of the greatest albums of all time. According to Acclaimed Music, it is the 9th most ranked album on all-time lists. In 1974, the writers of NME voted Blonde on Blonde the number-two album of all time. It was ranked second in the 1978 book Critic's Choice: Top 200 Albums and third in the 1987 edition. In 1997 the album was placed at number 16 in a "Music of the Millennium" poll conducted by HMV, Channel 4, The Guardian and Classic FM. In 2006, Time magazine included the record on their 100 All-Time Albums list. In 2003, the album was ranked number nine on Rolling Stone magazine's list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time", maintaining the rating in a 2012 revised list, while dropping to number 38 in 2020. In 2004, two songs from the album also appeared on the magazine's list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time": "Just Like a Woman" ranked number 230 and "Visions of Johanna" number 404. (When Rolling Stone updated this list in 2010, "Just Like a Woman" dropped to number 232 and "Visions of Johanna" to number 413. Then in 2021, "Visions of Johanna" was re-ranked at number 317.) The album was additionally included in Robert Christgau's "Basic Record Library" of 1950s and 1960s recordings—published in Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981)—and in critic Robert Dimery's book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.
It was voted number 33 in the third edition of Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums (2000). It was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999.
When Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016, Swedish Academy Secretary Sara Danius, when asked how to evaluate Dylan's literary merit, suggested listening first to "Blonde on Blonde."
Track listing
All songs are written by Bob Dylan.
Side one
"Rainy Day Women #12 & 35" – 4:36
"Pledging My Time" – 3:50
"Visions of Johanna" – 7:33
"One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)" – 4:54
Side two
"I Want You" – 3:07
"Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again" – 7:05
"Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" – 3:58
"Just Like a Woman" – 4:52
Side three
"Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine" – 3:30
"Temporary Like Achilles" – 5:02
"Absolutely Sweet Marie" – 4:57
"4th Time Around" – 4:35
"Obviously 5 Believers" – 3:35
Side four
"Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" – 11:23
Personnel
The personnel involved in making Blonde on Blonde is subject to some discrepancy:
Bob Dylan – vocals, guitar, harmonica, piano
Additional musicians
Bill Aikins – keyboards
Wayne Butler – trombone
Kenneth Buttrey – drums
Rick Danko – bass guitar (New York)
Bobby Gregg – drums (New York)
Paul Griffin – piano (New York)
Jerry Kennedy – guitar
Al Kooper – organ, guitar
Charlie McCoy – bass guitar, guitar, harmonica, trumpet
Wayne Moss – guitar, vocals
Hargus "Pig" Robbins – piano, keyboards
Robbie Robertson – guitar, vocals
Henry Strzelecki – bass guitar
Joe South – bass guitar, guitar
Technical
Bob Johnston – record producer
Jerry Schatzberg – cover photographer
Charts
Weekly charts
Singles
Certifications
See also
50 Years of Blonde on Blonde, a 2017 live album by Old Crow Medicine Show covering these songs
Notes
Footnotes
References
External links
Mystic Nights: The Making of Blonde on Blonde in Nashville by Sean Wilentz
Still on the Road: 1966 Blonde on Blonde recording sessions and world tour
1966 albums
Albums produced by Bob Johnston
Bob Dylan albums
Columbia Records albums
Grammy Hall of Fame Award recipients | false | [
"\"How Long, How Long Blues\" (also known as \"How Long Blues\" or \"How Long How Long\") is a blues song recorded by the American blues duo Leroy Carr and Scrapper Blackwell in 1928. It became an early blues standard and its melody inspired many later songs.\n\nOriginal song\n\"How Long, How Long Blues\" is based on \"How Long Daddy\", recorded in 1925 by Ida Cox with Papa Charlie Jackson. On June 19, 1928, Leroy Carr, who sang and played piano, and guitarist Scrapper Blackwell recorded the song in Indianapolis, Indiana, for Vocalion Records, shortly after they began performing together. It is a moderately slow-tempo blues with an eight-bar structure. Carr is credited with the lyrics and music for the song, which uses a departed train as a metaphor for a lover who has left:\n\nCarr's and Blackwell's songs reflected a more urban and sophisticated blues, in contrast to the music of rural bluesmen of the time. Carr's blues were \"expressive and evocative\", although his vocals have also been described as emotionally detached, high-pitched and smooth, with clear diction.\n\n\"How Long, How Long Blues\" was Carr and Scrapwell's biggest hit. They subsequently recorded six more versions of the song (two of them, unissued at the time), as \"How Long, How Long Blues, Part 2\", \"Part 3\", \"How Long Has That Evening Train Been Gone\", \"The New How Long, How Long Blues\", etc. There are considerable variations in the lyrics, but most versions begin with the lyric \"How long, how long, has that evening train been gone?\"\n\nLegacy\n\"How Long, How Long Blues\" became an early blues standard and \"its lilting melody inspired hundreds of later compositions\", including the Mississippi Sheiks' \"Sitting on Top of the World\" and Robert Johnson's \"Come On in My Kitchen\". Although his later style would not suggest it, Muddy Waters recalled that it was the first song he learned to play \"off the Leroy Carr record\".\n\nIn 1988, Carr's \"How Long, How Long Blues\" was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in the category \"Classics of Blues Recordings – Singles or Album Tracks\". Blues historian Jim O'Neal commented in the induction statement, \"'How Long, How Long Blues' was a massive hit in the prewar blues era, a song that every blues singer and piano player had to know, and one that has continued to inspire dozens of cover versions.\" In 2012, the song received a Grammy Hall of Fame Award, which \"honor[s] recordings of lasting qualitative or historical significance\".\n\nSee also\nList of train songs\n\nReferences\n\nBlues songs\n1928 songs\nGrammy Hall of Fame Award recipients\nVocalion Records singles\nSongs about trains",
"\"How Long\" is a song by American singer-songwriter J. D. Souther. Written in 1971 it was originally recorded by Souther for his 1972 debut solo album, John David Souther. It was given a limited release as a promotional 7-inch 45 rpm single in 1972 with Souther's \"The Fast One\" on the B-side.\n\nThe Eagles, longtime friends and collaborators with Souther, frequently performed \"How Long\" in concert during the early and mid-1970s. In 2007, the band covered the song for their album Long Road Out of Eden, the group's first full studio album since 1979. A year later, their version of the song won the Grammy Award for Best Country Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal. It was the band's first Grammy since 1979.\n\nPeak positions\n\nWeekly charts\n\nYear-end charts\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \n\n1972 songs\n2007 singles\nAnti-war songs\nEagles (band) songs\nJ. D. Souther songs\nSongs written by J. D. Souther\nLost Highway Records singles\nSong recordings produced by Bill Szymczyk"
]
|
[
"Marmalade (band)",
"1975-1978"
]
| C_e51d4ce1cf404d7ab520229526e3bcf7_0 | What was the band doing in 1975 | 1 | What was the band Marmalade doing in 1975? | Marmalade (band) | In 1975, Knight linked up with former drummer Alan Whitehead to form 'Vintage Marmalade' with Sandy Newman (vocals, guitar, keyboards) and Charlie Smith (guitar). They were reunited with their old manager, Peter Walsh, to play all the hits on stage and had a full date sheet. Later in 1975, after Ford and the remaining members called it quits, Knight and Whitehead took over the name Marmalade with the new line-up, fronted by Newman. They signed a deal with Tony Macaulay's Target Records and in 1976, had what turned out to be their final Top 10 hit with the ominously entitled, Macaulay penned song, "Falling Apart at The Seams". The song also reached the easy listening charts in the U.S. and made the Top 50 of the Billboard Hot 100, becoming the group's last charting single on the U.S charts. Subsequent singles failed to chart. One of these was "Talking In Your Sleep", produced by Roger Greenaway and released in January 1978, six months ahead of the Crystal Gayle version of the same song, which became well known worldwide. Sandy Newman (ex-The Chris McClure Section, 1968-1970) has continued to front Marmalade since 1975, releasing a further eleven singles in the UK (excluding re-releases), seven of which were via Target Records, none of which have charted in the UK or US, and today they continue to tour the nostalgia circuit performing the band's full hit repertoire. Charlie Smith departed in 1977 to join Nicholson in Blue, and Garth Watt-Roy came in briefly for Marmalade's Only Light On My Horizon Now album, before leaving for the Q-Tips in 1978. He was replaced by guitarist Ian Withington, who appeared alongside Knight, Newman and new drummer Stu Williamson for the next album Doing It All For You (1979). Alan Whitehead left the band in 1978 to manage other pop groups and singers, which he has continued to do. He also appeared in the 2010 TV series Take Me Out and ran a lap dancing club. CANNOTANSWER | In 1975, Knight linked up with former drummer Alan Whitehead to form 'Vintage Marmalade' with Sandy Newman (vocals, guitar, keyboards) and Charlie Smith (guitar). | Marmalade are a Scottish pop rock band originating from the east end of Glasgow, originally formed in 1961 as The Gaylords, and then later billed as Dean Ford and The Gaylords, recording four singles for Columbia (EMI). In 1966 they changed the band's name to The Marmalade, and were credited as such on all of their subsequent recorded releases with CBS Records and Decca Records until 1972. Their greatest chart success was between 1968 and 1972, placing ten songs on the UK Singles Chart, and many overseas territories, including international hits "Reflections of My Life", which reached #10 on the US Billboard Hot 100 Chart and #3 on the UK Chart in January 1970, and "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da", which topped the UK chart in January 1969, the group becoming the first-ever Scottish group to top that chart.
The original members began to drift away in the early 1970s, resulting in the band departing Decca in 1972.
In 1973 the first evolved line up of the band rejoined EMI Records and with their first record release became known simply as Marmalade. All subsequent record releases are credited similarly.
Graham Knight (an ongoing member from the pre-Marmalade "Dean Ford and The Gaylords" lineup) remained until September 2010.
The band still exists, with many additional further evolved lineups including vocalist Sandy Newman, a member since 1975, touring the nostalgia circuit.
History
The Gaylords
The Gaylords (named after the notorious post war Chicago Gaylords street gang) were originally formed by Pat Fairley and Billy Johnston in Baillieston, a suburb east of Glasgow, in 1961. Their initial line-up included Tommy Frew on drums and lead guitarist Pat McGovern, fronted by vocalist Wattie Rodgers. William Junior Campbell joined on his fourteenth birthday on 31 May 1961 replacing McGovern, and Rodgers was then himself replaced, initially by two new lead vocalists, Billy Reid and Tommy Scott, although Reid soon departed leaving Scott as the sole frontman. Bill Irving, from local Baillieston group the Cadillacs, then took over from Johnston on bass.
The group began gathering notice and in 1963 Fairley and Campbell spotted Thomas McAleese, singer with local group the Monarchs, at the Barrowland Ballroom in Glasgow, and it was not long before he replaced Scott as lead singer. McAleese then adopted the stage moniker Dean Ford, and they then became known as Dean Ford and The Gaylords. Raymond Duffy, from Glasgow group the Escorts, then came in on drums after Frew departed. For a few months, they had an organist, Davey Hunter. By early 1965, Graham Knight, from the local group the Vampires, had displaced Irving on bass.
Becoming popular in Scotland, and under the management of Billy Grainger, in early 1964 they were championed by Scottish music journalist Gordon Reid, which led to them being signed to EMI's Columbia label by Norrie Paramor after auditions at Glasgow's Locarno Ballroom. They went on to record four singles, including a cover of the 1963 Chubby Checker US hit "Twenty Miles", which was a big seller locally but failed to chart nationally. The Columbia releases, although uncredited, were all produced by Bob Barratt, EMI staff producer, with Norrie Paramor as executive. Paramor played the celesta on "What's The Matter With Me"; the b-side of "Twenty Miles". In 1965, they played a long stint in Germany at the Storyville in Cologne and also in Duisburg. By this time The Gaylords had attained status as one of the top groups in Scotland, borne out in music poll results, but were ambitious, and so on their return from Germany to London in early 1965, they decided to try for success in the UK as a whole, and remained in London, where they changed management and agency representation, as Billy Grainger wished to remain in Glasgow.
Name change and the CBS era
On the recommendation of the Tremeloes, who had played with them in Glasgow, the Gaylords were invited to join the London-based agency Starlite Artistes, owned and managed by Peter Walsh. They then began to build up a club reputation as a tight, close harmony band and in 1966, finding themselves in the middle of the 1960s swinging London scene, they decided to update their image and instrumentation. On the advice of their new manager, they changed the band name to "The Marmalade". Unusually, they now had two bass players, Knight on four-string and Fairley on six-string (Fairley having dropped the standard rhythm guitar normally associated with rock groups of the early 1960s).
With their EMI Columbia contract at an end, Walsh, with the help of John Salter, Walsh's booking agent, was successful in signing the band to CBS Records with producer Mike Smith, who was having great success with the Tremeloes, now their agency stablemates. But their first few CBS singles also failed to chart in the UK.
Drummer Ray Duffy (who later played with Matthews Southern Comfort and Gallagher and Lyle and also on Campbell's later solo recordings), decided to leave in 1966 to return to Scotland to get married just after their first CBS release, "Its All Leading up to Saturday Night". The band then placed adverts in the New Musical Express and Melody Maker, and after various auditions, former postman Alan Whitehead ex member of London outfit the Loose Ends became their new drummer, debuting on their next single, "Can't Stop Now", which failed to sell despite the group's performing it on a TV play, The Fantasist, written by Alun Owen, for the BBC Two Theatre 625 series.
Their third CBS single, the self penned "I See the Rain", written by Campbell and Ford, was praised by Jimi Hendrix as the "best cut of 1967". It became a chart-topper in the Netherlands the same year. Graham Nash of the Hollies contributed to the session, but it too flopped in the UK, although the track, with its distinct 1960s feel, has since attained a cult following and been resurrected recently by artists such as Susanna Hoffs of the Bangles and Matthew Sweet. (see Under the Covers, Vol. 1)
19 January 1967 proved to be a turning point in the band's progress when they made their debut at London's Marquee Club where they supported Pink Floyd. Two weeks later, on 3 February, they supported the Action. After that, they never supported anyone again at the Marquee and on 16 March 1967 they began a long residency which carried through to the autumn of the following year, building a reputation and following, including touring with the Who, Joe Cocker, Traffic, Gene Pitney and the Tremeloes. This culminated with summer appearances at the Windsor Jazz and Rock Festival, directly preceding Jerry Lee Lewis, and Festival of the Flower Children Woburn Abbey.
CBS, concerned at Marmalade's lack of commercial success, threatened to drop them if they did not have a hit. So after the failure of another self-penned single later that year, "Man in a Shop", they were urged to record more chart-orientated material. Mike Smith offered the band "Everlasting Love", but they declined as they preferred to continue to record group based material rather than with large orchestral accompaniment. The song was then given to Love Affair, arranged by Keith Mansfield, which became a No. 1 for them. They later gave in to pressure and recorded "Lovin' Things" written by Artie Schroeck and Jet Loring in 1967, and arranged by Keith using a similar orchestral formula (Keith already knew the band and had previously arranged earlier cuts including their last single Man In A Shop) It reached No. 6 in the UK Singles Chart in the summer of 1968. This was covered by the Grass Roots in the US in 1969, using virtually the same arrangement. Marmalade's debut album, There's A Lot Of It About, featured a mix of some of their singles and cover versions of current popular tunes, and was released in 1968.
Marmalade made a cameo appearance on the big screen in the film Subterfuge that year.
After a lesser hit with their follow-up single "Wait For Me Mary-Anne" (written by Alan Blaikley and Ken Howard), which made No. 30, they enjoyed their biggest UK success with their cover of the Beatles' "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da", which topped the UK chart in January 1969, the group becoming the first ever Scottish group to top that chart. Their version of "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" sold around half a million in the UK, and a million copies globally by April 1969. This was followed by further success with "Baby Make It Soon" (written by Tony Macaulay), which reached No. 9 in the summer of 1969.
In February 1969 the band appeared on the BBC's flagship program Colour Me Pop, (precursor to The Old Grey Whistle Test) performing a halfhour slot. They also appeared on the BBC's review of the 1960s music scene, Pop Go The Sixties, performing "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" live on the broadcast on BBC 1 on New Year's Eve 1969.
Decca era
In November 1969 the band was signed to Decca Records by Decca head of A&R, Dick Rowe under a highly lucrative advance deal, allowing the band to write and produce their own songs, with no studio time restraints, and in their very first Decca recording session, they recorded "Reflections of My Life", which would become their biggest worldwide hit, rewarding Decca's and Dick Rowe's faith in the band. Topping the charts in Europe (also Top 10 in United States and No. 1 in most of South America), it was written by Campbell and Ford, and featured a "backwards" (backmasking) guitar solo by Campbell.
"Reflections of My Life" has recorded over two million sales, and the writers were awarded a Special Citation of Achievement in 1998 by BMI in attaining radio broadcast performances in excess of one million in the US alone.
Other UK hits for Decca included "Rainbow" (UK No. 3 and US No. 51) and "My Little One" (UK No. 15)., "Cousin Norman" and "Radancer" (both reaching UK No. 6).
Their manager, Peter Walsh, was a 1960s and 1970s pop entrepreneur whose portfolio also included the Tremeloes, Bay City Rollers, the Move, Billy Ocean, the Troggs and Blue Mink.
Their first Decca album, Reflections Of The Marmalade was released in the US as Reflections Of My Life on Decca's London Records subsidiary. Their US singles during this era likewise came out on London. But their manager, Walsh, turned down an offer to tour the US opening for Three Dog Night, thus blowing an opportunity for further exposure there. To be fair to Walsh, he did not much care for the fact that Marmalade would have had to pay a substantial dollar premium to do so, a practice common in the US but totally alien to Walsh's traditional UK management and agency style.
After Campbell, who co-wrote most of the group's original material with Ford, left the band in March 1971 for a solo career, and to study orchestration and composition at the Royal College of Music, they began a series of line-up changes, including the loss of drummer Whitehead.
Marmalade recruited guitarist Hugh Nicholson, an ex-member of the Poets, to replace Campbell, and after the first post Campbell release, "Cousin Norman", it was Nicholson who insisted on them sacking Whitehead and recruiting his friend and colleague from the Poets, Dougie Henderson. This caused Marmalade to suffer adverse publicity from the UK's News of the World after an embittered Whitehead gave them stories of the band's experiences with groupies.
Marmalade released Songs in November 1971, with Nicholson taking over most song compositions, which met with limited success. However, Nicholson penned two of their last hits, "Cousin Norman" (brass arranged by Campbell) and "Radancer", as well as the lesser hit "Back on the Road", on which he sang lead vocal.
Fairley quit the band circa 1972 to run the group's music publishing company, then Nicholson, who was discouraged over the failure of their Songs album, also left in 1973 to form Blue (not to be confused with a later boy band of the same name). Ford, Knight and Henderson carried on with Marmalade. Nicholson was eventually replaced by Mike Japp, a rock guitarist from the Welsh band, Thank You.
The group returned to EMI and released a new single, "Wishing Well", credited simply as Marmalade (dropping the "The"). But Knight left during the recording of their next album, Our House Is Rocking (which showcased a heavier rock sound and was delayed until the autumn of 1974) and the group was briefly a trio before Joe Breen (ex-Dream Police) came in on bass. Refusing to play most of the band's old hit records on stage, the group slowly came to a standstill.
1975–1978
In 1975 Knight linked up with former drummer Alan Whitehead to form 'Vintage Marmalade' with Sandy Newman (vocals, guitar, keyboards) and Charlie Smith (guitar). They were reunited with their old manager, Peter Walsh, to play all the hits on stage and had a full date sheet.
Later in 1975, after Ford and the remaining members called it quits, Knight and Whitehead took over the name Marmalade with the new line-up, fronted by Newman. They signed a deal with Tony Macaulay's Target Records and in 1976, had what turned out to be their final Top 10 hit with the ominously entitled, Macaulay penned song, "Falling Apart at the Seams". The song also reached the easy listening charts in the U.S. and made the Top 50 of the Billboard Hot 100, becoming the group's last charting single on the U.S charts. Subsequent singles failed to chart. One of these was "Talking In Your Sleep", produced by Roger Greenaway and released in January 1978, six months ahead of the Crystal Gayle version of the same song, which became well known worldwide.
Newman (ex-Chris McClure Section, 1968–1970) has continued to front Marmalade since 1975, releasing a further eleven singles in the UK (excluding re-releases), seven of which were via Target Records, none of which have charted in the UK or US, and today they continue to tour the nostalgia circuit performing the band's full hit repertoire.
Smith departed in 1977 to join Nicholson in Blue and Garth Watt-Roy came in briefly for Marmalade's Only Light On My Horizon Now album, before leaving for the Q-Tips in 1978. He was replaced by guitarist Ian Withington, who appeared alongside Knight, Newman and new drummer Stu Williamson for the next album Doing It All For You (1979).
Whitehead left the band in 1978 to manage other pop groups and singers, which he has continued to do. He also appeared in the 2010 TV series Take Me Out and ran a lap dancing club.
Subsequent years
Charlie Smith returned in 1980, as the band's drummer this time. Alan Holmes (vocals, guitars, keyboards), a former member of the Bristol-based band Federation, succeeded Withington. A 1980 US only album, Marmalade, on G&P Records, featured a re-recorded mix of their Decca, EMI and Target material, alongside some Junior Campbell-penned tracks. Another unsuccessful album, Heartbreaker, came out in the UK in 1982 on the Spectra label.
Graham Knight remained as the sole original band member touring the nostalgia circuit with Newman, Smith and Alan Holmes. In 1982, Glenn Taylor replaced Smith on drums, though Smith returned from 1989 to around 1998, before Taylor took over permanently.
Dave Dee began appearing as guest singer for Marmalade in 1987 and recorded a single with the band, "Scirocco", in 1989. He continued to make live guest appearances with them until his death in 2009.
In September 2010, Graham Knight, the last remaining member of the original band, departed. Drummer Taylor also left to join the Fortunes. The new players were drummer Damon Sawyer and bassist Mike Steed. In 2011, guitarist and vocalist John James Newman joined, making the band a quintet once again.
2013 saw the current Marmalade line-up release their first new studio album since 1979. Entitled Penultimate and released in CD and vinyl formats, it featured six new compositions, together with re-recordings of many Marmalade songs. The album was launched on 4 October 2013 to coincide with the start of a 52-date UK tour.
In 2015 Jan Robinson (vocals, bass) and Chris North (drums, percussion) were brought in as the new rhythm section, in place of Steed and Sawyer.
Original band members — evolved history
2011 saw the release of Fine Cuts–The Best Of Marmalade on the Union Square Music BMG Salvo label (SALVOMDCD26), a double album containing all of the Marmalade original studio recordings between 1966 and 1972, including all of their chart hits. The complete catalogue was also made available via digital download.
Ford was one of many lead vocalists contributing to the Alan Parsons Project. Although for some years he withdrew from the music industry and battled alcoholism, settling in Los Angeles (after a brief spell in New York ), he became active in music again and released a single of his own composition "Glasgow Road" with Joe Tansin (ex-Badfinger) in 2012. He later recorded a version of "Reflections Of My Life" in 2015 and in 2016 released a PledgeMusic album entitled Feel My Heartbeat, available for digital download.
Ford died on 31 December 2018 at the age of 73 at his home in Los Angeles of complications from Parkinson's disease. His final album, a two-disc collection called This Scottish Heart, was released just weeks before his death.
Fairley also moved to Los Angeles in the late 1970s having worked in music publishing for the RSO Group Robert Stigwood and for the band Yes. He retired from the music business many years ago and set up a bar and music venue called The Scotland Yard Pub, in Los Angeles in the early 1980s. He sold the successful business in March 2018 and retired. He died at his home in Los Angeles on 11 August 2020, at the age of 76.
Whitehead continues in artist management and can be seen reviewing the Onyx range of tuned sports cars on the Together TV programme "Rock 'N' Roll Cars" (he also provides the voice-over for this show, which features pop acts such as Go West and Tony Hadley talking about their motoring history).
Knight has retired and has homes in Sussex and Spain.
Campbell became a successful solo recording artist, songwriter, television and film composer, record producer and music arranger, and lives in Sussex. He continues to oversee all of the master rights to the original band recordings on behalf of the whole band, which they retain, and also their publishing rights.
Members
Original band
Graham Knight – vocals, bass (1966–1973, 1975–2010)
Dean Ford – lead vocals, guitar, harmonica (1966–1975; died 2018)
Patrick Fairley – vocals, six string bass/rhythm guitars (1966–1972; died 2020)
William Junior Campbell – vocals, guitars, keyboards (1966–1971)
Raymond Duffy – drums (1966)
Further members
Alan Whitehead – drums (1966–1971, 1975–1978)
Dougie Henderson – drums (1971–1975)
Hugh Nicholson – vocals, guitars (1971–1973)
Joe Breen – vocals, bass (1973–1975)
Mike Japp – vocals, guitars (1973–1975; died 2012)
Charlie Smith – vocals, guitar (1975–1977; drums 1980–1982 and 1989–1998)
Garth Watt-Roy – vocals, keyboards (1977–1978)
Ian Withington – vocals, guitar (1978–1980)
Stu Williamson – drums (1978–1980)
Glenn Taylor – drums (1982–1989; 1998–2010)
Dave Dee – vocals (1987–2009; died 2009)
Damon Sawyer – drums (2010-2015)
Mike Steed – vocals, bass (2010-2015)
Gaylords members
Patrick Fairley (1961–1966)
William Junior Campbell (1961–1966)
Bill Irving – bass (1961–1964)
Tommy Frew – drums (1961–1963)
Tommy Scott – vocals (1961–1963)
Billy Johnston – bass (1961)
Wattie Rodgers (Dunlop) – vocals (1961)
Pat McGovern – lead guitars (1961)
Billy Reid – vocals (1961)
Dean Ford (1963–1966)
Raymond Duffy (1963–1966)
Davey Hunter – organ (1963)
Graham Knight (1965–1966)
Current members
Sandy Newman – lead vocals, lead guitar, keyboards (1975–present)
Alan Holmes – vocals, acoustic/electric guitar, keyboards (1980–present)
John James Newman – vocals, acoustic guitar (2011–present)
Jan S Robinson – vocals, bass (2015–present)
Chris North – drums, percussion (2015–present)
Timeline
Discography
Dean Ford and The Gaylords singles
Singles as The Marmalade
Singles as Marmalade
Marmalade studio albums
Original band
There's a Lot of It About (December 1968) CBS
Best Of (1969) CBS
Reflections of the Marmalade (1970) Decca Records
Songs (1971) Decca Records
Additional/ later line-ups
Our House Is Rocking (1974)
The Only Light on My Horizon Now (1977)
Hello Baby (1978)
... Doing It All for You (1978)
Heavens Above (1979)
Marmalade (US only) (1980)
Heartbreaker (1982)
Penultimate (2013)
The Full Spread (2019)
See also
List of bands from Glasgow
List of Scottish musicians
References
Sources
Info sourced from liner notes, including those by band members on:
1992 Decca Records (Deram) 820 562-2 Reflections of The Marmalade
1996 Castle CD CCSCD436; The Marmalade – The Definitive Collection
1998 Castle CD CCSCD825 Marmalade – The Definitive Collection
2000 Castle – Sequel NEECD 335 Rainbow: The Decca Years
2004 Sanctuary CMOCD 940 The Marmalade – BBC Sessions
2005 Sanctuary SMETD 182 Marmalade – The Ultimate Collection
2011 Union Square Music – Salvo SALVOMDCD26 "Fine Cuts: The Best Of Marmalade"
External links
Marmalade at "Rockingscots"
[ Marmalade biography at AllMusic]
Current official website
Marmalade feature in German
Marquee Club Calendar – 1967
Official Facebook for former Marmalade lead singer Dean Ford
1966 establishments in Scotland
Baillieston
Musical groups established in 1966
Beat groups
Decca Records artists
Columbia Records artists
Columbia Graphophone Company artists
London Records artists
Musical groups from Glasgow
Scottish psychedelic rock music groups
Scottish pop music groups
Psychedelic pop music groups | false | [
"Keep Doing What You're Doing is the second studio album by Floridian emo band, You Blew It! The album was released through Topshelf Records on January 14, 2014. It was the band's first album to chart, charting on the Billboard 200, Independent Albums and Top Heatseekers. In April and May, the group supported The Early November on their tour of the UK and Europe. In September and October, the band supported Citizen on their headlining US tour. In October and November 2015, the group supported The Wonder Years on their headlining US tour.\n\nCritical reception\n\nKeep Doing What You're Doing has received positive reviews from music critics.\n\nTrack listing\n\nChart positions\n\nAccolades\n\nReferences \n\n2014 albums\nYou Blew It! albums\nTopshelf Records albums",
"\"What You're Doing\" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles from their album Beatles for Sale, released in December 1964. It was written by Paul McCartney, although credited to Lennon–McCartney. The song was one of eight original compositions on Beatles for Sale. In North America, where Capitol Records typically altered the content of the band's albums, \"What You're Doing\" instead appeared on the 1965 US release Beatles VI.\n\nComposition\n\"What You're Doing\" was written by McCartney in Atlantic City on 30 August 1964, shortly following the end of the Beatles' 1964 world tour. Throughout the song, McCartney adds to the rhyme scheme by combining a single, two-syllable word with two one-syllable words (i.e. \"Look what you're doing, I'm feeling blue and lonely... You got me runnin''', and there's no fun in it\"). He used the same technique on \"She's a Woman\", which was also recorded during the Beatles for Sale sessions. Inspired by his often turbulent relationship with girlfriend Jane Asher, McCartney has gone on record as not liking \"What You're Doing\", regarding it as \"filler\".\n\nThe track features a guitar riff played by George Harrison on his Rickenbacker 12-string electric guitar. The sound was influential on the Byrds, who crafted their sound partly on the Beatles' use of the Rickenbacker, and Harrison in turn adopted influences from the Byrds in his 1965 song \"If I Needed Someone\".\n\nRecording\nThe Beatles attempted to record the song on 29 September 1964, but only the basic rhythm track was taped over seven takes (with take seven being deemed the best). A day later, after finishing the recording of \"Every Little Thing\", the group recorded five more takes, with take 11 being deemed the \"best;\" Lewisohn notes that at this point, the song differed from the final version in that \"its breaks between choruses were less tight, the middle eight instrumental break was performed an octave above the vocals and it had a 1 & 1/2 second pause preceding a reprise instrumental coda.\" The group remade the song into its final form on 26 October, immediately after completing work on the Carl Perkins-cover \"Honey Don't\". It was the last song to be completed for Beatles for Sale.\n\nSampling\nThe song was sampled to create a medley, along with \"Drive My Car\" and \"The Word\", on the band's 2006 remix album Love''. \"What You're Doing\" shares a number of characteristics with (the also predominantly McCartney-written) \"Drive My Car\", particularly the home key (D major), meter (4/4), and chord progression (alternating between B minor and G major).\n\nPersonnel\nAccording to Ian MacDonald:\n\nPaul McCartneylead vocal, bass\nJohn Lennonharmony vocal, acoustic rhythm guitar\nGeorge Harrisonharmony vocal, twelve-string lead guitar\nRingo Starrdrums\nGeorge Martinpiano\n\nReferences\n\nSources\n\nExternal links\n \n\n1964 songs\nThe Beatles songs\nSongs written by Lennon–McCartney\nSong recordings produced by George Martin\nSongs published by Northern Songs\nJangle pop songs"
]
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"Marmalade (band)",
"1975-1978",
"What was the band doing in 1975",
"In 1975, Knight linked up with former drummer Alan Whitehead to form 'Vintage Marmalade' with Sandy Newman (vocals, guitar, keyboards) and Charlie Smith (guitar)."
]
| C_e51d4ce1cf404d7ab520229526e3bcf7_0 | Did any of the band members receive formal education | 2 | Did any of the band Marmalade's members receive formal education? | Marmalade (band) | In 1975, Knight linked up with former drummer Alan Whitehead to form 'Vintage Marmalade' with Sandy Newman (vocals, guitar, keyboards) and Charlie Smith (guitar). They were reunited with their old manager, Peter Walsh, to play all the hits on stage and had a full date sheet. Later in 1975, after Ford and the remaining members called it quits, Knight and Whitehead took over the name Marmalade with the new line-up, fronted by Newman. They signed a deal with Tony Macaulay's Target Records and in 1976, had what turned out to be their final Top 10 hit with the ominously entitled, Macaulay penned song, "Falling Apart at The Seams". The song also reached the easy listening charts in the U.S. and made the Top 50 of the Billboard Hot 100, becoming the group's last charting single on the U.S charts. Subsequent singles failed to chart. One of these was "Talking In Your Sleep", produced by Roger Greenaway and released in January 1978, six months ahead of the Crystal Gayle version of the same song, which became well known worldwide. Sandy Newman (ex-The Chris McClure Section, 1968-1970) has continued to front Marmalade since 1975, releasing a further eleven singles in the UK (excluding re-releases), seven of which were via Target Records, none of which have charted in the UK or US, and today they continue to tour the nostalgia circuit performing the band's full hit repertoire. Charlie Smith departed in 1977 to join Nicholson in Blue, and Garth Watt-Roy came in briefly for Marmalade's Only Light On My Horizon Now album, before leaving for the Q-Tips in 1978. He was replaced by guitarist Ian Withington, who appeared alongside Knight, Newman and new drummer Stu Williamson for the next album Doing It All For You (1979). Alan Whitehead left the band in 1978 to manage other pop groups and singers, which he has continued to do. He also appeared in the 2010 TV series Take Me Out and ran a lap dancing club. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Marmalade are a Scottish pop rock band originating from the east end of Glasgow, originally formed in 1961 as The Gaylords, and then later billed as Dean Ford and The Gaylords, recording four singles for Columbia (EMI). In 1966 they changed the band's name to The Marmalade, and were credited as such on all of their subsequent recorded releases with CBS Records and Decca Records until 1972. Their greatest chart success was between 1968 and 1972, placing ten songs on the UK Singles Chart, and many overseas territories, including international hits "Reflections of My Life", which reached #10 on the US Billboard Hot 100 Chart and #3 on the UK Chart in January 1970, and "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da", which topped the UK chart in January 1969, the group becoming the first-ever Scottish group to top that chart.
The original members began to drift away in the early 1970s, resulting in the band departing Decca in 1972.
In 1973 the first evolved line up of the band rejoined EMI Records and with their first record release became known simply as Marmalade. All subsequent record releases are credited similarly.
Graham Knight (an ongoing member from the pre-Marmalade "Dean Ford and The Gaylords" lineup) remained until September 2010.
The band still exists, with many additional further evolved lineups including vocalist Sandy Newman, a member since 1975, touring the nostalgia circuit.
History
The Gaylords
The Gaylords (named after the notorious post war Chicago Gaylords street gang) were originally formed by Pat Fairley and Billy Johnston in Baillieston, a suburb east of Glasgow, in 1961. Their initial line-up included Tommy Frew on drums and lead guitarist Pat McGovern, fronted by vocalist Wattie Rodgers. William Junior Campbell joined on his fourteenth birthday on 31 May 1961 replacing McGovern, and Rodgers was then himself replaced, initially by two new lead vocalists, Billy Reid and Tommy Scott, although Reid soon departed leaving Scott as the sole frontman. Bill Irving, from local Baillieston group the Cadillacs, then took over from Johnston on bass.
The group began gathering notice and in 1963 Fairley and Campbell spotted Thomas McAleese, singer with local group the Monarchs, at the Barrowland Ballroom in Glasgow, and it was not long before he replaced Scott as lead singer. McAleese then adopted the stage moniker Dean Ford, and they then became known as Dean Ford and The Gaylords. Raymond Duffy, from Glasgow group the Escorts, then came in on drums after Frew departed. For a few months, they had an organist, Davey Hunter. By early 1965, Graham Knight, from the local group the Vampires, had displaced Irving on bass.
Becoming popular in Scotland, and under the management of Billy Grainger, in early 1964 they were championed by Scottish music journalist Gordon Reid, which led to them being signed to EMI's Columbia label by Norrie Paramor after auditions at Glasgow's Locarno Ballroom. They went on to record four singles, including a cover of the 1963 Chubby Checker US hit "Twenty Miles", which was a big seller locally but failed to chart nationally. The Columbia releases, although uncredited, were all produced by Bob Barratt, EMI staff producer, with Norrie Paramor as executive. Paramor played the celesta on "What's The Matter With Me"; the b-side of "Twenty Miles". In 1965, they played a long stint in Germany at the Storyville in Cologne and also in Duisburg. By this time The Gaylords had attained status as one of the top groups in Scotland, borne out in music poll results, but were ambitious, and so on their return from Germany to London in early 1965, they decided to try for success in the UK as a whole, and remained in London, where they changed management and agency representation, as Billy Grainger wished to remain in Glasgow.
Name change and the CBS era
On the recommendation of the Tremeloes, who had played with them in Glasgow, the Gaylords were invited to join the London-based agency Starlite Artistes, owned and managed by Peter Walsh. They then began to build up a club reputation as a tight, close harmony band and in 1966, finding themselves in the middle of the 1960s swinging London scene, they decided to update their image and instrumentation. On the advice of their new manager, they changed the band name to "The Marmalade". Unusually, they now had two bass players, Knight on four-string and Fairley on six-string (Fairley having dropped the standard rhythm guitar normally associated with rock groups of the early 1960s).
With their EMI Columbia contract at an end, Walsh, with the help of John Salter, Walsh's booking agent, was successful in signing the band to CBS Records with producer Mike Smith, who was having great success with the Tremeloes, now their agency stablemates. But their first few CBS singles also failed to chart in the UK.
Drummer Ray Duffy (who later played with Matthews Southern Comfort and Gallagher and Lyle and also on Campbell's later solo recordings), decided to leave in 1966 to return to Scotland to get married just after their first CBS release, "Its All Leading up to Saturday Night". The band then placed adverts in the New Musical Express and Melody Maker, and after various auditions, former postman Alan Whitehead ex member of London outfit the Loose Ends became their new drummer, debuting on their next single, "Can't Stop Now", which failed to sell despite the group's performing it on a TV play, The Fantasist, written by Alun Owen, for the BBC Two Theatre 625 series.
Their third CBS single, the self penned "I See the Rain", written by Campbell and Ford, was praised by Jimi Hendrix as the "best cut of 1967". It became a chart-topper in the Netherlands the same year. Graham Nash of the Hollies contributed to the session, but it too flopped in the UK, although the track, with its distinct 1960s feel, has since attained a cult following and been resurrected recently by artists such as Susanna Hoffs of the Bangles and Matthew Sweet. (see Under the Covers, Vol. 1)
19 January 1967 proved to be a turning point in the band's progress when they made their debut at London's Marquee Club where they supported Pink Floyd. Two weeks later, on 3 February, they supported the Action. After that, they never supported anyone again at the Marquee and on 16 March 1967 they began a long residency which carried through to the autumn of the following year, building a reputation and following, including touring with the Who, Joe Cocker, Traffic, Gene Pitney and the Tremeloes. This culminated with summer appearances at the Windsor Jazz and Rock Festival, directly preceding Jerry Lee Lewis, and Festival of the Flower Children Woburn Abbey.
CBS, concerned at Marmalade's lack of commercial success, threatened to drop them if they did not have a hit. So after the failure of another self-penned single later that year, "Man in a Shop", they were urged to record more chart-orientated material. Mike Smith offered the band "Everlasting Love", but they declined as they preferred to continue to record group based material rather than with large orchestral accompaniment. The song was then given to Love Affair, arranged by Keith Mansfield, which became a No. 1 for them. They later gave in to pressure and recorded "Lovin' Things" written by Artie Schroeck and Jet Loring in 1967, and arranged by Keith using a similar orchestral formula (Keith already knew the band and had previously arranged earlier cuts including their last single Man In A Shop) It reached No. 6 in the UK Singles Chart in the summer of 1968. This was covered by the Grass Roots in the US in 1969, using virtually the same arrangement. Marmalade's debut album, There's A Lot Of It About, featured a mix of some of their singles and cover versions of current popular tunes, and was released in 1968.
Marmalade made a cameo appearance on the big screen in the film Subterfuge that year.
After a lesser hit with their follow-up single "Wait For Me Mary-Anne" (written by Alan Blaikley and Ken Howard), which made No. 30, they enjoyed their biggest UK success with their cover of the Beatles' "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da", which topped the UK chart in January 1969, the group becoming the first ever Scottish group to top that chart. Their version of "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" sold around half a million in the UK, and a million copies globally by April 1969. This was followed by further success with "Baby Make It Soon" (written by Tony Macaulay), which reached No. 9 in the summer of 1969.
In February 1969 the band appeared on the BBC's flagship program Colour Me Pop, (precursor to The Old Grey Whistle Test) performing a halfhour slot. They also appeared on the BBC's review of the 1960s music scene, Pop Go The Sixties, performing "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" live on the broadcast on BBC 1 on New Year's Eve 1969.
Decca era
In November 1969 the band was signed to Decca Records by Decca head of A&R, Dick Rowe under a highly lucrative advance deal, allowing the band to write and produce their own songs, with no studio time restraints, and in their very first Decca recording session, they recorded "Reflections of My Life", which would become their biggest worldwide hit, rewarding Decca's and Dick Rowe's faith in the band. Topping the charts in Europe (also Top 10 in United States and No. 1 in most of South America), it was written by Campbell and Ford, and featured a "backwards" (backmasking) guitar solo by Campbell.
"Reflections of My Life" has recorded over two million sales, and the writers were awarded a Special Citation of Achievement in 1998 by BMI in attaining radio broadcast performances in excess of one million in the US alone.
Other UK hits for Decca included "Rainbow" (UK No. 3 and US No. 51) and "My Little One" (UK No. 15)., "Cousin Norman" and "Radancer" (both reaching UK No. 6).
Their manager, Peter Walsh, was a 1960s and 1970s pop entrepreneur whose portfolio also included the Tremeloes, Bay City Rollers, the Move, Billy Ocean, the Troggs and Blue Mink.
Their first Decca album, Reflections Of The Marmalade was released in the US as Reflections Of My Life on Decca's London Records subsidiary. Their US singles during this era likewise came out on London. But their manager, Walsh, turned down an offer to tour the US opening for Three Dog Night, thus blowing an opportunity for further exposure there. To be fair to Walsh, he did not much care for the fact that Marmalade would have had to pay a substantial dollar premium to do so, a practice common in the US but totally alien to Walsh's traditional UK management and agency style.
After Campbell, who co-wrote most of the group's original material with Ford, left the band in March 1971 for a solo career, and to study orchestration and composition at the Royal College of Music, they began a series of line-up changes, including the loss of drummer Whitehead.
Marmalade recruited guitarist Hugh Nicholson, an ex-member of the Poets, to replace Campbell, and after the first post Campbell release, "Cousin Norman", it was Nicholson who insisted on them sacking Whitehead and recruiting his friend and colleague from the Poets, Dougie Henderson. This caused Marmalade to suffer adverse publicity from the UK's News of the World after an embittered Whitehead gave them stories of the band's experiences with groupies.
Marmalade released Songs in November 1971, with Nicholson taking over most song compositions, which met with limited success. However, Nicholson penned two of their last hits, "Cousin Norman" (brass arranged by Campbell) and "Radancer", as well as the lesser hit "Back on the Road", on which he sang lead vocal.
Fairley quit the band circa 1972 to run the group's music publishing company, then Nicholson, who was discouraged over the failure of their Songs album, also left in 1973 to form Blue (not to be confused with a later boy band of the same name). Ford, Knight and Henderson carried on with Marmalade. Nicholson was eventually replaced by Mike Japp, a rock guitarist from the Welsh band, Thank You.
The group returned to EMI and released a new single, "Wishing Well", credited simply as Marmalade (dropping the "The"). But Knight left during the recording of their next album, Our House Is Rocking (which showcased a heavier rock sound and was delayed until the autumn of 1974) and the group was briefly a trio before Joe Breen (ex-Dream Police) came in on bass. Refusing to play most of the band's old hit records on stage, the group slowly came to a standstill.
1975–1978
In 1975 Knight linked up with former drummer Alan Whitehead to form 'Vintage Marmalade' with Sandy Newman (vocals, guitar, keyboards) and Charlie Smith (guitar). They were reunited with their old manager, Peter Walsh, to play all the hits on stage and had a full date sheet.
Later in 1975, after Ford and the remaining members called it quits, Knight and Whitehead took over the name Marmalade with the new line-up, fronted by Newman. They signed a deal with Tony Macaulay's Target Records and in 1976, had what turned out to be their final Top 10 hit with the ominously entitled, Macaulay penned song, "Falling Apart at the Seams". The song also reached the easy listening charts in the U.S. and made the Top 50 of the Billboard Hot 100, becoming the group's last charting single on the U.S charts. Subsequent singles failed to chart. One of these was "Talking In Your Sleep", produced by Roger Greenaway and released in January 1978, six months ahead of the Crystal Gayle version of the same song, which became well known worldwide.
Newman (ex-Chris McClure Section, 1968–1970) has continued to front Marmalade since 1975, releasing a further eleven singles in the UK (excluding re-releases), seven of which were via Target Records, none of which have charted in the UK or US, and today they continue to tour the nostalgia circuit performing the band's full hit repertoire.
Smith departed in 1977 to join Nicholson in Blue and Garth Watt-Roy came in briefly for Marmalade's Only Light On My Horizon Now album, before leaving for the Q-Tips in 1978. He was replaced by guitarist Ian Withington, who appeared alongside Knight, Newman and new drummer Stu Williamson for the next album Doing It All For You (1979).
Whitehead left the band in 1978 to manage other pop groups and singers, which he has continued to do. He also appeared in the 2010 TV series Take Me Out and ran a lap dancing club.
Subsequent years
Charlie Smith returned in 1980, as the band's drummer this time. Alan Holmes (vocals, guitars, keyboards), a former member of the Bristol-based band Federation, succeeded Withington. A 1980 US only album, Marmalade, on G&P Records, featured a re-recorded mix of their Decca, EMI and Target material, alongside some Junior Campbell-penned tracks. Another unsuccessful album, Heartbreaker, came out in the UK in 1982 on the Spectra label.
Graham Knight remained as the sole original band member touring the nostalgia circuit with Newman, Smith and Alan Holmes. In 1982, Glenn Taylor replaced Smith on drums, though Smith returned from 1989 to around 1998, before Taylor took over permanently.
Dave Dee began appearing as guest singer for Marmalade in 1987 and recorded a single with the band, "Scirocco", in 1989. He continued to make live guest appearances with them until his death in 2009.
In September 2010, Graham Knight, the last remaining member of the original band, departed. Drummer Taylor also left to join the Fortunes. The new players were drummer Damon Sawyer and bassist Mike Steed. In 2011, guitarist and vocalist John James Newman joined, making the band a quintet once again.
2013 saw the current Marmalade line-up release their first new studio album since 1979. Entitled Penultimate and released in CD and vinyl formats, it featured six new compositions, together with re-recordings of many Marmalade songs. The album was launched on 4 October 2013 to coincide with the start of a 52-date UK tour.
In 2015 Jan Robinson (vocals, bass) and Chris North (drums, percussion) were brought in as the new rhythm section, in place of Steed and Sawyer.
Original band members — evolved history
2011 saw the release of Fine Cuts–The Best Of Marmalade on the Union Square Music BMG Salvo label (SALVOMDCD26), a double album containing all of the Marmalade original studio recordings between 1966 and 1972, including all of their chart hits. The complete catalogue was also made available via digital download.
Ford was one of many lead vocalists contributing to the Alan Parsons Project. Although for some years he withdrew from the music industry and battled alcoholism, settling in Los Angeles (after a brief spell in New York ), he became active in music again and released a single of his own composition "Glasgow Road" with Joe Tansin (ex-Badfinger) in 2012. He later recorded a version of "Reflections Of My Life" in 2015 and in 2016 released a PledgeMusic album entitled Feel My Heartbeat, available for digital download.
Ford died on 31 December 2018 at the age of 73 at his home in Los Angeles of complications from Parkinson's disease. His final album, a two-disc collection called This Scottish Heart, was released just weeks before his death.
Fairley also moved to Los Angeles in the late 1970s having worked in music publishing for the RSO Group Robert Stigwood and for the band Yes. He retired from the music business many years ago and set up a bar and music venue called The Scotland Yard Pub, in Los Angeles in the early 1980s. He sold the successful business in March 2018 and retired. He died at his home in Los Angeles on 11 August 2020, at the age of 76.
Whitehead continues in artist management and can be seen reviewing the Onyx range of tuned sports cars on the Together TV programme "Rock 'N' Roll Cars" (he also provides the voice-over for this show, which features pop acts such as Go West and Tony Hadley talking about their motoring history).
Knight has retired and has homes in Sussex and Spain.
Campbell became a successful solo recording artist, songwriter, television and film composer, record producer and music arranger, and lives in Sussex. He continues to oversee all of the master rights to the original band recordings on behalf of the whole band, which they retain, and also their publishing rights.
Members
Original band
Graham Knight – vocals, bass (1966–1973, 1975–2010)
Dean Ford – lead vocals, guitar, harmonica (1966–1975; died 2018)
Patrick Fairley – vocals, six string bass/rhythm guitars (1966–1972; died 2020)
William Junior Campbell – vocals, guitars, keyboards (1966–1971)
Raymond Duffy – drums (1966)
Further members
Alan Whitehead – drums (1966–1971, 1975–1978)
Dougie Henderson – drums (1971–1975)
Hugh Nicholson – vocals, guitars (1971–1973)
Joe Breen – vocals, bass (1973–1975)
Mike Japp – vocals, guitars (1973–1975; died 2012)
Charlie Smith – vocals, guitar (1975–1977; drums 1980–1982 and 1989–1998)
Garth Watt-Roy – vocals, keyboards (1977–1978)
Ian Withington – vocals, guitar (1978–1980)
Stu Williamson – drums (1978–1980)
Glenn Taylor – drums (1982–1989; 1998–2010)
Dave Dee – vocals (1987–2009; died 2009)
Damon Sawyer – drums (2010-2015)
Mike Steed – vocals, bass (2010-2015)
Gaylords members
Patrick Fairley (1961–1966)
William Junior Campbell (1961–1966)
Bill Irving – bass (1961–1964)
Tommy Frew – drums (1961–1963)
Tommy Scott – vocals (1961–1963)
Billy Johnston – bass (1961)
Wattie Rodgers (Dunlop) – vocals (1961)
Pat McGovern – lead guitars (1961)
Billy Reid – vocals (1961)
Dean Ford (1963–1966)
Raymond Duffy (1963–1966)
Davey Hunter – organ (1963)
Graham Knight (1965–1966)
Current members
Sandy Newman – lead vocals, lead guitar, keyboards (1975–present)
Alan Holmes – vocals, acoustic/electric guitar, keyboards (1980–present)
John James Newman – vocals, acoustic guitar (2011–present)
Jan S Robinson – vocals, bass (2015–present)
Chris North – drums, percussion (2015–present)
Timeline
Discography
Dean Ford and The Gaylords singles
Singles as The Marmalade
Singles as Marmalade
Marmalade studio albums
Original band
There's a Lot of It About (December 1968) CBS
Best Of (1969) CBS
Reflections of the Marmalade (1970) Decca Records
Songs (1971) Decca Records
Additional/ later line-ups
Our House Is Rocking (1974)
The Only Light on My Horizon Now (1977)
Hello Baby (1978)
... Doing It All for You (1978)
Heavens Above (1979)
Marmalade (US only) (1980)
Heartbreaker (1982)
Penultimate (2013)
The Full Spread (2019)
See also
List of bands from Glasgow
List of Scottish musicians
References
Sources
Info sourced from liner notes, including those by band members on:
1992 Decca Records (Deram) 820 562-2 Reflections of The Marmalade
1996 Castle CD CCSCD436; The Marmalade – The Definitive Collection
1998 Castle CD CCSCD825 Marmalade – The Definitive Collection
2000 Castle – Sequel NEECD 335 Rainbow: The Decca Years
2004 Sanctuary CMOCD 940 The Marmalade – BBC Sessions
2005 Sanctuary SMETD 182 Marmalade – The Ultimate Collection
2011 Union Square Music – Salvo SALVOMDCD26 "Fine Cuts: The Best Of Marmalade"
External links
Marmalade at "Rockingscots"
[ Marmalade biography at AllMusic]
Current official website
Marmalade feature in German
Marquee Club Calendar – 1967
Official Facebook for former Marmalade lead singer Dean Ford
1966 establishments in Scotland
Baillieston
Musical groups established in 1966
Beat groups
Decca Records artists
Columbia Records artists
Columbia Graphophone Company artists
London Records artists
Musical groups from Glasgow
Scottish psychedelic rock music groups
Scottish pop music groups
Psychedelic pop music groups | false | [
"Lomasontfo Martha Dludlu (died 10 January 2011) was a Swazi politician. In 1993 she became the first woman elected to Parliament in the country.\n\nBiography\nDludlu grew up in a rural area did not receive a formal education. She worked as a community motivator and looked after disabled residents and orphans.\n\nDespite being illiterate, she contested the 1993 general elections in Maphalaleni and was elected to the House of Assembly, defeating eight men and one other woman, becoming the first woman elected to the House. She remained a member until 1998.\n\nShe suffered a stroke in 2008 and died at her home on 10 January 2011 aged 64.\n\nReferences\n\nSwazi women in politics\nMembers of the House of Assembly of Eswatini\n2011 deaths",
"Thomas Glassey (26 February 1844 – 28 September 1936) was an Irish-born Australian politician.\n\nBorn in Markethill, County Armagh, he received no formal education, working as a mill-worker and miner in Scotland and England. He migrated to Australia around 1885, when he became a miner at Bundamba, and was Secretary of the Bundamba Miners Association. He was a founding member of the Australian Labor Party in Queensland, and was the first Labor member of any Australian parliament when he was elected to the Legislative Assembly of Queensland in 1888 as the member for Bundamba.\n\nDefeated in 1893, he was subsequently member for Burke from 1894 to 1896 and Bundaberg from 1896 to 1900. He left the Labor Party in 1899 over the party's socialist objective. In 1901, he was elected to the Australian Senate for Queensland, unofficially as a Protectionist (though there was no protectionist organisation in Queensland at the time). In 1903, the National Liberal Union endorsed non-Labor candidates, and Glassey, as a Deakinite, did not receive endorsement. He contested the Senate as an independent protectionist and received 25.6% of the vote, but was not elected.\n\nGlassey died in 1936 and was buried in Toowong Cemetery.\n\nGallery\n\nWorks\n\nReferences\n\n Glassey, Thomas (1844 - 1936) — Australian Dictionary of Biography\n\nAustralian Labor Party members of the Parliament of Queensland\nProtectionist Party members of the Parliament of Australia\nMembers of the Australian Senate for Queensland\nMembers of the Australian Senate\n1844 births\n1936 deaths\nBurials at Toowong Cemetery\nLeaders of the Opposition in Queensland\nIndependent members of the Parliament of Australia\n20th-century Australian politicians"
]
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"Marmalade (band)",
"1975-1978",
"What was the band doing in 1975",
"In 1975, Knight linked up with former drummer Alan Whitehead to form 'Vintage Marmalade' with Sandy Newman (vocals, guitar, keyboards) and Charlie Smith (guitar).",
"Did any of the band members receive formal education",
"I don't know."
]
| C_e51d4ce1cf404d7ab520229526e3bcf7_0 | What happened in the year 1978 | 3 | What happened in the year 1978 with the band Marmalade? | Marmalade (band) | In 1975, Knight linked up with former drummer Alan Whitehead to form 'Vintage Marmalade' with Sandy Newman (vocals, guitar, keyboards) and Charlie Smith (guitar). They were reunited with their old manager, Peter Walsh, to play all the hits on stage and had a full date sheet. Later in 1975, after Ford and the remaining members called it quits, Knight and Whitehead took over the name Marmalade with the new line-up, fronted by Newman. They signed a deal with Tony Macaulay's Target Records and in 1976, had what turned out to be their final Top 10 hit with the ominously entitled, Macaulay penned song, "Falling Apart at The Seams". The song also reached the easy listening charts in the U.S. and made the Top 50 of the Billboard Hot 100, becoming the group's last charting single on the U.S charts. Subsequent singles failed to chart. One of these was "Talking In Your Sleep", produced by Roger Greenaway and released in January 1978, six months ahead of the Crystal Gayle version of the same song, which became well known worldwide. Sandy Newman (ex-The Chris McClure Section, 1968-1970) has continued to front Marmalade since 1975, releasing a further eleven singles in the UK (excluding re-releases), seven of which were via Target Records, none of which have charted in the UK or US, and today they continue to tour the nostalgia circuit performing the band's full hit repertoire. Charlie Smith departed in 1977 to join Nicholson in Blue, and Garth Watt-Roy came in briefly for Marmalade's Only Light On My Horizon Now album, before leaving for the Q-Tips in 1978. He was replaced by guitarist Ian Withington, who appeared alongside Knight, Newman and new drummer Stu Williamson for the next album Doing It All For You (1979). Alan Whitehead left the band in 1978 to manage other pop groups and singers, which he has continued to do. He also appeared in the 2010 TV series Take Me Out and ran a lap dancing club. CANNOTANSWER | Alan Whitehead left the band in 1978 to manage other pop groups and singers, which he has continued to do. | Marmalade are a Scottish pop rock band originating from the east end of Glasgow, originally formed in 1961 as The Gaylords, and then later billed as Dean Ford and The Gaylords, recording four singles for Columbia (EMI). In 1966 they changed the band's name to The Marmalade, and were credited as such on all of their subsequent recorded releases with CBS Records and Decca Records until 1972. Their greatest chart success was between 1968 and 1972, placing ten songs on the UK Singles Chart, and many overseas territories, including international hits "Reflections of My Life", which reached #10 on the US Billboard Hot 100 Chart and #3 on the UK Chart in January 1970, and "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da", which topped the UK chart in January 1969, the group becoming the first-ever Scottish group to top that chart.
The original members began to drift away in the early 1970s, resulting in the band departing Decca in 1972.
In 1973 the first evolved line up of the band rejoined EMI Records and with their first record release became known simply as Marmalade. All subsequent record releases are credited similarly.
Graham Knight (an ongoing member from the pre-Marmalade "Dean Ford and The Gaylords" lineup) remained until September 2010.
The band still exists, with many additional further evolved lineups including vocalist Sandy Newman, a member since 1975, touring the nostalgia circuit.
History
The Gaylords
The Gaylords (named after the notorious post war Chicago Gaylords street gang) were originally formed by Pat Fairley and Billy Johnston in Baillieston, a suburb east of Glasgow, in 1961. Their initial line-up included Tommy Frew on drums and lead guitarist Pat McGovern, fronted by vocalist Wattie Rodgers. William Junior Campbell joined on his fourteenth birthday on 31 May 1961 replacing McGovern, and Rodgers was then himself replaced, initially by two new lead vocalists, Billy Reid and Tommy Scott, although Reid soon departed leaving Scott as the sole frontman. Bill Irving, from local Baillieston group the Cadillacs, then took over from Johnston on bass.
The group began gathering notice and in 1963 Fairley and Campbell spotted Thomas McAleese, singer with local group the Monarchs, at the Barrowland Ballroom in Glasgow, and it was not long before he replaced Scott as lead singer. McAleese then adopted the stage moniker Dean Ford, and they then became known as Dean Ford and The Gaylords. Raymond Duffy, from Glasgow group the Escorts, then came in on drums after Frew departed. For a few months, they had an organist, Davey Hunter. By early 1965, Graham Knight, from the local group the Vampires, had displaced Irving on bass.
Becoming popular in Scotland, and under the management of Billy Grainger, in early 1964 they were championed by Scottish music journalist Gordon Reid, which led to them being signed to EMI's Columbia label by Norrie Paramor after auditions at Glasgow's Locarno Ballroom. They went on to record four singles, including a cover of the 1963 Chubby Checker US hit "Twenty Miles", which was a big seller locally but failed to chart nationally. The Columbia releases, although uncredited, were all produced by Bob Barratt, EMI staff producer, with Norrie Paramor as executive. Paramor played the celesta on "What's The Matter With Me"; the b-side of "Twenty Miles". In 1965, they played a long stint in Germany at the Storyville in Cologne and also in Duisburg. By this time The Gaylords had attained status as one of the top groups in Scotland, borne out in music poll results, but were ambitious, and so on their return from Germany to London in early 1965, they decided to try for success in the UK as a whole, and remained in London, where they changed management and agency representation, as Billy Grainger wished to remain in Glasgow.
Name change and the CBS era
On the recommendation of the Tremeloes, who had played with them in Glasgow, the Gaylords were invited to join the London-based agency Starlite Artistes, owned and managed by Peter Walsh. They then began to build up a club reputation as a tight, close harmony band and in 1966, finding themselves in the middle of the 1960s swinging London scene, they decided to update their image and instrumentation. On the advice of their new manager, they changed the band name to "The Marmalade". Unusually, they now had two bass players, Knight on four-string and Fairley on six-string (Fairley having dropped the standard rhythm guitar normally associated with rock groups of the early 1960s).
With their EMI Columbia contract at an end, Walsh, with the help of John Salter, Walsh's booking agent, was successful in signing the band to CBS Records with producer Mike Smith, who was having great success with the Tremeloes, now their agency stablemates. But their first few CBS singles also failed to chart in the UK.
Drummer Ray Duffy (who later played with Matthews Southern Comfort and Gallagher and Lyle and also on Campbell's later solo recordings), decided to leave in 1966 to return to Scotland to get married just after their first CBS release, "Its All Leading up to Saturday Night". The band then placed adverts in the New Musical Express and Melody Maker, and after various auditions, former postman Alan Whitehead ex member of London outfit the Loose Ends became their new drummer, debuting on their next single, "Can't Stop Now", which failed to sell despite the group's performing it on a TV play, The Fantasist, written by Alun Owen, for the BBC Two Theatre 625 series.
Their third CBS single, the self penned "I See the Rain", written by Campbell and Ford, was praised by Jimi Hendrix as the "best cut of 1967". It became a chart-topper in the Netherlands the same year. Graham Nash of the Hollies contributed to the session, but it too flopped in the UK, although the track, with its distinct 1960s feel, has since attained a cult following and been resurrected recently by artists such as Susanna Hoffs of the Bangles and Matthew Sweet. (see Under the Covers, Vol. 1)
19 January 1967 proved to be a turning point in the band's progress when they made their debut at London's Marquee Club where they supported Pink Floyd. Two weeks later, on 3 February, they supported the Action. After that, they never supported anyone again at the Marquee and on 16 March 1967 they began a long residency which carried through to the autumn of the following year, building a reputation and following, including touring with the Who, Joe Cocker, Traffic, Gene Pitney and the Tremeloes. This culminated with summer appearances at the Windsor Jazz and Rock Festival, directly preceding Jerry Lee Lewis, and Festival of the Flower Children Woburn Abbey.
CBS, concerned at Marmalade's lack of commercial success, threatened to drop them if they did not have a hit. So after the failure of another self-penned single later that year, "Man in a Shop", they were urged to record more chart-orientated material. Mike Smith offered the band "Everlasting Love", but they declined as they preferred to continue to record group based material rather than with large orchestral accompaniment. The song was then given to Love Affair, arranged by Keith Mansfield, which became a No. 1 for them. They later gave in to pressure and recorded "Lovin' Things" written by Artie Schroeck and Jet Loring in 1967, and arranged by Keith using a similar orchestral formula (Keith already knew the band and had previously arranged earlier cuts including their last single Man In A Shop) It reached No. 6 in the UK Singles Chart in the summer of 1968. This was covered by the Grass Roots in the US in 1969, using virtually the same arrangement. Marmalade's debut album, There's A Lot Of It About, featured a mix of some of their singles and cover versions of current popular tunes, and was released in 1968.
Marmalade made a cameo appearance on the big screen in the film Subterfuge that year.
After a lesser hit with their follow-up single "Wait For Me Mary-Anne" (written by Alan Blaikley and Ken Howard), which made No. 30, they enjoyed their biggest UK success with their cover of the Beatles' "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da", which topped the UK chart in January 1969, the group becoming the first ever Scottish group to top that chart. Their version of "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" sold around half a million in the UK, and a million copies globally by April 1969. This was followed by further success with "Baby Make It Soon" (written by Tony Macaulay), which reached No. 9 in the summer of 1969.
In February 1969 the band appeared on the BBC's flagship program Colour Me Pop, (precursor to The Old Grey Whistle Test) performing a halfhour slot. They also appeared on the BBC's review of the 1960s music scene, Pop Go The Sixties, performing "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" live on the broadcast on BBC 1 on New Year's Eve 1969.
Decca era
In November 1969 the band was signed to Decca Records by Decca head of A&R, Dick Rowe under a highly lucrative advance deal, allowing the band to write and produce their own songs, with no studio time restraints, and in their very first Decca recording session, they recorded "Reflections of My Life", which would become their biggest worldwide hit, rewarding Decca's and Dick Rowe's faith in the band. Topping the charts in Europe (also Top 10 in United States and No. 1 in most of South America), it was written by Campbell and Ford, and featured a "backwards" (backmasking) guitar solo by Campbell.
"Reflections of My Life" has recorded over two million sales, and the writers were awarded a Special Citation of Achievement in 1998 by BMI in attaining radio broadcast performances in excess of one million in the US alone.
Other UK hits for Decca included "Rainbow" (UK No. 3 and US No. 51) and "My Little One" (UK No. 15)., "Cousin Norman" and "Radancer" (both reaching UK No. 6).
Their manager, Peter Walsh, was a 1960s and 1970s pop entrepreneur whose portfolio also included the Tremeloes, Bay City Rollers, the Move, Billy Ocean, the Troggs and Blue Mink.
Their first Decca album, Reflections Of The Marmalade was released in the US as Reflections Of My Life on Decca's London Records subsidiary. Their US singles during this era likewise came out on London. But their manager, Walsh, turned down an offer to tour the US opening for Three Dog Night, thus blowing an opportunity for further exposure there. To be fair to Walsh, he did not much care for the fact that Marmalade would have had to pay a substantial dollar premium to do so, a practice common in the US but totally alien to Walsh's traditional UK management and agency style.
After Campbell, who co-wrote most of the group's original material with Ford, left the band in March 1971 for a solo career, and to study orchestration and composition at the Royal College of Music, they began a series of line-up changes, including the loss of drummer Whitehead.
Marmalade recruited guitarist Hugh Nicholson, an ex-member of the Poets, to replace Campbell, and after the first post Campbell release, "Cousin Norman", it was Nicholson who insisted on them sacking Whitehead and recruiting his friend and colleague from the Poets, Dougie Henderson. This caused Marmalade to suffer adverse publicity from the UK's News of the World after an embittered Whitehead gave them stories of the band's experiences with groupies.
Marmalade released Songs in November 1971, with Nicholson taking over most song compositions, which met with limited success. However, Nicholson penned two of their last hits, "Cousin Norman" (brass arranged by Campbell) and "Radancer", as well as the lesser hit "Back on the Road", on which he sang lead vocal.
Fairley quit the band circa 1972 to run the group's music publishing company, then Nicholson, who was discouraged over the failure of their Songs album, also left in 1973 to form Blue (not to be confused with a later boy band of the same name). Ford, Knight and Henderson carried on with Marmalade. Nicholson was eventually replaced by Mike Japp, a rock guitarist from the Welsh band, Thank You.
The group returned to EMI and released a new single, "Wishing Well", credited simply as Marmalade (dropping the "The"). But Knight left during the recording of their next album, Our House Is Rocking (which showcased a heavier rock sound and was delayed until the autumn of 1974) and the group was briefly a trio before Joe Breen (ex-Dream Police) came in on bass. Refusing to play most of the band's old hit records on stage, the group slowly came to a standstill.
1975–1978
In 1975 Knight linked up with former drummer Alan Whitehead to form 'Vintage Marmalade' with Sandy Newman (vocals, guitar, keyboards) and Charlie Smith (guitar). They were reunited with their old manager, Peter Walsh, to play all the hits on stage and had a full date sheet.
Later in 1975, after Ford and the remaining members called it quits, Knight and Whitehead took over the name Marmalade with the new line-up, fronted by Newman. They signed a deal with Tony Macaulay's Target Records and in 1976, had what turned out to be their final Top 10 hit with the ominously entitled, Macaulay penned song, "Falling Apart at the Seams". The song also reached the easy listening charts in the U.S. and made the Top 50 of the Billboard Hot 100, becoming the group's last charting single on the U.S charts. Subsequent singles failed to chart. One of these was "Talking In Your Sleep", produced by Roger Greenaway and released in January 1978, six months ahead of the Crystal Gayle version of the same song, which became well known worldwide.
Newman (ex-Chris McClure Section, 1968–1970) has continued to front Marmalade since 1975, releasing a further eleven singles in the UK (excluding re-releases), seven of which were via Target Records, none of which have charted in the UK or US, and today they continue to tour the nostalgia circuit performing the band's full hit repertoire.
Smith departed in 1977 to join Nicholson in Blue and Garth Watt-Roy came in briefly for Marmalade's Only Light On My Horizon Now album, before leaving for the Q-Tips in 1978. He was replaced by guitarist Ian Withington, who appeared alongside Knight, Newman and new drummer Stu Williamson for the next album Doing It All For You (1979).
Whitehead left the band in 1978 to manage other pop groups and singers, which he has continued to do. He also appeared in the 2010 TV series Take Me Out and ran a lap dancing club.
Subsequent years
Charlie Smith returned in 1980, as the band's drummer this time. Alan Holmes (vocals, guitars, keyboards), a former member of the Bristol-based band Federation, succeeded Withington. A 1980 US only album, Marmalade, on G&P Records, featured a re-recorded mix of their Decca, EMI and Target material, alongside some Junior Campbell-penned tracks. Another unsuccessful album, Heartbreaker, came out in the UK in 1982 on the Spectra label.
Graham Knight remained as the sole original band member touring the nostalgia circuit with Newman, Smith and Alan Holmes. In 1982, Glenn Taylor replaced Smith on drums, though Smith returned from 1989 to around 1998, before Taylor took over permanently.
Dave Dee began appearing as guest singer for Marmalade in 1987 and recorded a single with the band, "Scirocco", in 1989. He continued to make live guest appearances with them until his death in 2009.
In September 2010, Graham Knight, the last remaining member of the original band, departed. Drummer Taylor also left to join the Fortunes. The new players were drummer Damon Sawyer and bassist Mike Steed. In 2011, guitarist and vocalist John James Newman joined, making the band a quintet once again.
2013 saw the current Marmalade line-up release their first new studio album since 1979. Entitled Penultimate and released in CD and vinyl formats, it featured six new compositions, together with re-recordings of many Marmalade songs. The album was launched on 4 October 2013 to coincide with the start of a 52-date UK tour.
In 2015 Jan Robinson (vocals, bass) and Chris North (drums, percussion) were brought in as the new rhythm section, in place of Steed and Sawyer.
Original band members — evolved history
2011 saw the release of Fine Cuts–The Best Of Marmalade on the Union Square Music BMG Salvo label (SALVOMDCD26), a double album containing all of the Marmalade original studio recordings between 1966 and 1972, including all of their chart hits. The complete catalogue was also made available via digital download.
Ford was one of many lead vocalists contributing to the Alan Parsons Project. Although for some years he withdrew from the music industry and battled alcoholism, settling in Los Angeles (after a brief spell in New York ), he became active in music again and released a single of his own composition "Glasgow Road" with Joe Tansin (ex-Badfinger) in 2012. He later recorded a version of "Reflections Of My Life" in 2015 and in 2016 released a PledgeMusic album entitled Feel My Heartbeat, available for digital download.
Ford died on 31 December 2018 at the age of 73 at his home in Los Angeles of complications from Parkinson's disease. His final album, a two-disc collection called This Scottish Heart, was released just weeks before his death.
Fairley also moved to Los Angeles in the late 1970s having worked in music publishing for the RSO Group Robert Stigwood and for the band Yes. He retired from the music business many years ago and set up a bar and music venue called The Scotland Yard Pub, in Los Angeles in the early 1980s. He sold the successful business in March 2018 and retired. He died at his home in Los Angeles on 11 August 2020, at the age of 76.
Whitehead continues in artist management and can be seen reviewing the Onyx range of tuned sports cars on the Together TV programme "Rock 'N' Roll Cars" (he also provides the voice-over for this show, which features pop acts such as Go West and Tony Hadley talking about their motoring history).
Knight has retired and has homes in Sussex and Spain.
Campbell became a successful solo recording artist, songwriter, television and film composer, record producer and music arranger, and lives in Sussex. He continues to oversee all of the master rights to the original band recordings on behalf of the whole band, which they retain, and also their publishing rights.
Members
Original band
Graham Knight – vocals, bass (1966–1973, 1975–2010)
Dean Ford – lead vocals, guitar, harmonica (1966–1975; died 2018)
Patrick Fairley – vocals, six string bass/rhythm guitars (1966–1972; died 2020)
William Junior Campbell – vocals, guitars, keyboards (1966–1971)
Raymond Duffy – drums (1966)
Further members
Alan Whitehead – drums (1966–1971, 1975–1978)
Dougie Henderson – drums (1971–1975)
Hugh Nicholson – vocals, guitars (1971–1973)
Joe Breen – vocals, bass (1973–1975)
Mike Japp – vocals, guitars (1973–1975; died 2012)
Charlie Smith – vocals, guitar (1975–1977; drums 1980–1982 and 1989–1998)
Garth Watt-Roy – vocals, keyboards (1977–1978)
Ian Withington – vocals, guitar (1978–1980)
Stu Williamson – drums (1978–1980)
Glenn Taylor – drums (1982–1989; 1998–2010)
Dave Dee – vocals (1987–2009; died 2009)
Damon Sawyer – drums (2010-2015)
Mike Steed – vocals, bass (2010-2015)
Gaylords members
Patrick Fairley (1961–1966)
William Junior Campbell (1961–1966)
Bill Irving – bass (1961–1964)
Tommy Frew – drums (1961–1963)
Tommy Scott – vocals (1961–1963)
Billy Johnston – bass (1961)
Wattie Rodgers (Dunlop) – vocals (1961)
Pat McGovern – lead guitars (1961)
Billy Reid – vocals (1961)
Dean Ford (1963–1966)
Raymond Duffy (1963–1966)
Davey Hunter – organ (1963)
Graham Knight (1965–1966)
Current members
Sandy Newman – lead vocals, lead guitar, keyboards (1975–present)
Alan Holmes – vocals, acoustic/electric guitar, keyboards (1980–present)
John James Newman – vocals, acoustic guitar (2011–present)
Jan S Robinson – vocals, bass (2015–present)
Chris North – drums, percussion (2015–present)
Timeline
Discography
Dean Ford and The Gaylords singles
Singles as The Marmalade
Singles as Marmalade
Marmalade studio albums
Original band
There's a Lot of It About (December 1968) CBS
Best Of (1969) CBS
Reflections of the Marmalade (1970) Decca Records
Songs (1971) Decca Records
Additional/ later line-ups
Our House Is Rocking (1974)
The Only Light on My Horizon Now (1977)
Hello Baby (1978)
... Doing It All for You (1978)
Heavens Above (1979)
Marmalade (US only) (1980)
Heartbreaker (1982)
Penultimate (2013)
The Full Spread (2019)
See also
List of bands from Glasgow
List of Scottish musicians
References
Sources
Info sourced from liner notes, including those by band members on:
1992 Decca Records (Deram) 820 562-2 Reflections of The Marmalade
1996 Castle CD CCSCD436; The Marmalade – The Definitive Collection
1998 Castle CD CCSCD825 Marmalade – The Definitive Collection
2000 Castle – Sequel NEECD 335 Rainbow: The Decca Years
2004 Sanctuary CMOCD 940 The Marmalade – BBC Sessions
2005 Sanctuary SMETD 182 Marmalade – The Ultimate Collection
2011 Union Square Music – Salvo SALVOMDCD26 "Fine Cuts: The Best Of Marmalade"
External links
Marmalade at "Rockingscots"
[ Marmalade biography at AllMusic]
Current official website
Marmalade feature in German
Marquee Club Calendar – 1967
Official Facebook for former Marmalade lead singer Dean Ford
1966 establishments in Scotland
Baillieston
Musical groups established in 1966
Beat groups
Decca Records artists
Columbia Records artists
Columbia Graphophone Company artists
London Records artists
Musical groups from Glasgow
Scottish psychedelic rock music groups
Scottish pop music groups
Psychedelic pop music groups | false | [
"Don Juan Manuel's Tales of Count Lucanor, in Spanish Libro de los ejemplos del conde Lucanor y de Patronio (Book of the Examples of Count Lucanor and of Patronio), also commonly known as El Conde Lucanor, Libro de Patronio, or Libro de los ejemplos (original Old Castilian: Libro de los enxiemplos del Conde Lucanor et de Patronio), is one of the earliest works of prose in Castilian Spanish. It was first written in 1335.\n\nThe book is divided into four parts. The first and most well-known part is a series of 51 short stories (some no more than a page or two) drawn from various sources, such as Aesop and other classical writers, and Arabic folktales.\n\nTales of Count Lucanor was first printed in 1575 when it was published at Seville under the auspices of Argote de Molina. It was again printed at Madrid in 1642, after which it lay forgotten for nearly two centuries.\n\nPurpose and structure\n\nA didactic, moralistic purpose, which would color so much of the Spanish literature to follow (see Novela picaresca), is the mark of this book. Count Lucanor engages in conversation with his advisor Patronio, putting to him a problem (\"Some man has made me a proposition...\" or \"I fear that such and such person intends to...\") and asking for advice. Patronio responds always with the greatest humility, claiming not to wish to offer advice to so illustrious a person as the Count, but offering to tell him a story of which the Count's problem reminds him. (Thus, the stories are \"examples\" [ejemplos] of wise action.) At the end he advises the Count to do as the protagonist of his story did.\n\nEach chapter ends in more or less the same way, with slight variations on: \"And this pleased the Count greatly and he did just so, and found it well. And Don Johán (Juan) saw that this example was very good, and had it written in this book, and composed the following verses.\" A rhymed couplet closes, giving the moral of the story.\n\nOrigin of stories and influence on later literature\nMany of the stories written in the book are the first examples written in a modern European language of various stories, which many other writers would use in the proceeding centuries. Many of the stories he included were themselves derived from other stories, coming from western and Arab sources.\n\nShakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew has the basic elements of Tale 35, \"What Happened to a Young Man Who Married a Strong and Ill-tempered Woman\".\n\nTale 32, \"What Happened to the King and the Tricksters Who Made Cloth\" tells the story that Hans Christian Andersen made popular as The Emperor's New Clothes.\n\nStory 7, \"What Happened to a Woman Named Truhana\", a version of Aesop's The Milkmaid and Her Pail, was claimed by Max Müller to originate in the Hindu cycle Panchatantra.\n\nTale 2, \"What happened to a good Man and his Son, leading a beast to market,\" is the familiar fable The miller, his son and the donkey.\n\nIn 2016, Baroque Decay released a game under the name \"The Count Lucanor\". As well as some protagonists' names, certain events from the books inspired past events in the game.\n\nThe stories\n\nThe book opens with a prologue which introduces the characters of the Count and Patronio. The titles in the following list are those given in Keller and Keating's 1977 translation into English. James York's 1868 translation into English gives a significantly different ordering of the stories and omits the fifty-first.\n\n What Happened to a King and His Favorite \n What Happened to a Good Man and His Son \n How King Richard of England Leapt into the Sea against the Moors\n What a Genoese Said to His Soul When He Was about to Die \n What Happened to a Fox and a Crow Who Had a Piece of Cheese in His Beak\n How the Swallow Warned the Other Birds When She Saw Flax Being Sown \n What Happened to a Woman Named Truhana \n What Happened to a Man Whose Liver Had to Be Washed \n What Happened to Two Horses Which Were Thrown to the Lion \n What Happened to a Man Who on Account of Poverty and Lack of Other Food Was Eating Bitter Lentils \n What Happened to a Dean of Santiago de Compostela and Don Yllán, the Grand Master of Toledo\n What Happened to the Fox and the Rooster \n What Happened to a Man Who Was Hunting Partridges \n The Miracle of Saint Dominick When He Preached against the Usurer \n What Happened to Lorenzo Suárez at the Siege of Seville \n The Reply that count Fernán González Gave to His Relative Núño Laynes \n What Happened to a Very Hungry Man Who Was Half-heartedly Invited to Dinner \n What Happened to Pero Meléndez de Valdés When He Broke His Leg \n What Happened to the Crows and the Owls \n What Happened to a King for Whom a Man Promised to Perform Alchemy \n What Happened to a Young King and a Philosopher to Whom his Father Commended Him \n What Happened to the Lion and the Bull \n How the Ants Provide for Themselves \n What Happened to the King Who Wanted to Test His Three Sons \n What Happened to the Count of Provence and How He Was Freed from Prison by the Advice of Saladin\n What Happened to the Tree of Lies \n What Happened to an Emperor and to Don Alvarfáñez Minaya and Their Wives \n What Happened in Granada to Don Lorenzo Suárez Gallinato When He Beheaded the Renegade Chaplain \n What Happened to a Fox Who Lay down in the Street to Play Dead \n What Happened to King Abenabet of Seville and Ramayquía His Wife \n How a Cardinal Judged between the Canons of Paris and the Friars Minor \n What Happened to the King and the Tricksters Who Made Cloth \n What Happened to Don Juan Manuel's Saker Falcon and an Eagle and a Heron \n What Happened to a Blind Man Who Was Leading Another \n What Happened to a Young Man Who Married a Strong and Ill-tempered Woman\n What Happened to a Merchant When He Found His Son and His Wife Sleeping Together \n What Happened to Count Fernán González with His Men after He Had Won the Battle of Hacinas \n What Happened to a Man Who Was Loaded down with Precious Stones and Drowned in the River \n What Happened to a Man and a Swallow and a Sparrow \n Why the Seneschal of Carcassonne Lost His Soul \n What Happened to a King of Córdova Named Al-Haquem \n What Happened to a Woman of Sham Piety \n What Happened to Good and Evil and the Wise Man and the Madman \n What Happened to Don Pero Núñez the Loyal, to Don Ruy González de Zavallos, and to Don Gutier Roiz de Blaguiello with Don Rodrigo the Generous \n What Happened to a Man Who Became the Devil's Friend and Vassal \n What Happened to a Philosopher who by Accident Went down a Street Where Prostitutes Lived \n What Befell a Moor and His Sister Who Pretended That She Was Timid \n What Happened to a Man Who Tested His Friends \n What Happened to the Man Whom They Cast out Naked on an Island When They Took away from Him the Kingdom He Ruled \n What Happened to Saladin and a Lady, the Wife of a Knight Who Was His Vassal \n What Happened to a Christian King Who Was Very Powerful and Haughty\n\nReferences\n\nNotes\n\nBibliography\n\n Sturm, Harlan\n\n Wacks, David\n\nExternal links\n\nThe Internet Archive provides free access to the 1868 translation by James York.\nJSTOR has the to the 1977 translation by Keller and Keating.\nSelections in English and Spanish (pedagogical edition) with introduction, notes, and bibliography in Open Iberia/América (open access teaching anthology)\n\n14th-century books\nSpanish literature\n1335 books",
"\"What Happened to Us\" is a song by Australian recording artist Jessica Mauboy, featuring English recording artist Jay Sean. It was written by Sean, Josh Alexander, Billy Steinberg, Jeremy Skaller, Rob Larow, Khaled Rohaim and Israel Cruz. \"What Happened to Us\" was leaked online in October 2010, and was released on 10 March 2011, as the third single from Mauboy's second studio album, Get 'Em Girls (2010). The song received positive reviews from critics.\n\nA remix of \"What Happened to Us\" made by production team OFM, was released on 11 April 2011. A different version of the song which features Stan Walker, was released on 29 May 2011. \"What Happened to Us\" charted on the ARIA Singles Chart at number 14 and was certified platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA). An accompanying music video was directed by Mark Alston, and reminisces on a former relationship between Mauboy and Sean.\n\nProduction and release\n\n\"What Happened to Us\" was written by Josh Alexander, Billy Steinberg, Jeremy Skaller, Rob Larow, Khaled Rohaim, Israel Cruz and Jay Sean. It was produced by Skaller, Cruz, Rohaim and Bobby Bass. The song uses C, D, and B minor chords in the chorus. \"What Happened to Us\" was sent to contemporary hit radio in Australia on 14 February 2011. The cover art for the song was revealed on 22 February on Mauboy's official Facebook page. A CD release was available for purchase via her official website on 10 March, for one week only. It was released digitally the following day.\n\nReception\nMajhid Heath from ABC Online Indigenous called the song a \"Jordin Sparks-esque duet\", and wrote that it \"has a nice innocence to it that rings true to the experience of losing a first love.\" Chris Urankar from Nine to Five wrote that it as a \"mid-tempo duet ballad\" which signifies Mauboy's strength as a global player. On 21 March 2011, \"What Happened to Us\" debuted at number 30 on the ARIA Singles Chart, and peaked at number 14 the following week. The song was certified platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA), for selling 70,000 copies. \"What Happened to Us\" spent a total of ten weeks in the ARIA top fifty.\n\nMusic video\n\nBackground\nThe music video for the song was shot in the Elizabeth Bay House in Sydney on 26 November 2010. The video was shot during Sean's visit to Australia for the Summerbeatz tour. During an interview with The Daily Telegraph while on the set of the video, Sean said \"the song is sick! ... Jessica's voice is amazing and we're shooting [the video] in this ridiculously beautiful mansion overlooking the harbour.\" The video was directed by Mark Alston, who had previously directed the video for Mauboy's single \"Let Me Be Me\" (2009). It premiered on YouTube on 10 February 2011.\n\nSynopsis and reception\nThe video begins showing Mauboy who appears to be sitting on a yellow antique couch in a mansion, wearing a purple dress. As the video progresses, scenes of memories are displayed of Mauboy and her love interest, played by Sean, spending time there previously. It then cuts to the scenes where Sean appears in the main entrance room of the mansion. The final scene shows Mauboy outdoors in a gold dress, surrounded by green grass and trees. She is later joined by Sean who appears in a black suit and a white shirt, and together they sing the chorus of the song to each other. David Lim of Feed Limmy wrote that the video is \"easily the best thing our R&B princess has committed to film – ever\" and praised the \"mansion and wondrous interior décor\". He also commended Mauboy for choosing Australian talent to direct the video instead of American directors, which she had used for her previous two music videos. Since its release, the video has received over two million views on Vevo.\n\nLive performances\nMauboy performed \"What Happened to Us\" live for the first time during her YouTube Live Sessions program on 4 December 2010. She also appeared on Adam Hills in Gordon Street Tonight on 23 February 2011 for an interview and later performed the song. On 15 March 2011, Mauboy performed \"What Happened to Us\" on Sunrise. She also performed the song with Stan Walker during the Australian leg of Chris Brown's F.A.M.E. Tour in April 2011. Mauboy and Walker later performed \"What Happened to Us\" on Dancing with the Stars Australia on 29 May 2011. From November 2013 to February 2014, \"What Happened to Us\" was part of the set list of the To the End of the Earth Tour, Mauboy's second headlining tour of Australia, with Nathaniel Willemse singing Sean's part.\n\nTrack listing\n\nDigital download\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean – 3:19\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean (Sgt Slick Remix) – 6:33\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean (Just Witness Remix) – 3:45\n\nCD single\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean (Album Version) – 3:19\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean (Sgt Slick Remix) – 6:33\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean (OFM Remix) – 3:39\n\nDigital download – Remix\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean (OFM Remix) – 3:38\n\nDigital download\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Stan Walker – 3:20\n\nPersonnel\nSongwriting – Josh Alexander, Billy Steinberg, Jeremy Skaller, Rob Larow, Khaled Rohaim, Israel Cruz, Jay Sean\nProduction – Jeremy Skaller, Bobby Bass\nAdditional production – Israel Cruz, Khaled Rohaim\nLead vocals – Jessica Mauboy, Jay Sean\nMixing – Phil Tan\nAdditional mixing – Damien Lewis\nMastering – Tom Coyne \nSource:\n\nCharts\n\nWeekly chart\n\nYear-end chart\n\nCertification\n\nRadio dates and release history\n\nReferences\n\n2010 songs\n2011 singles\nJessica Mauboy songs\nJay Sean songs\nSongs written by Billy Steinberg\nSongs written by Jay Sean\nSongs written by Josh Alexander\nSongs written by Israel Cruz\nVocal duets\nSony Music Australia singles\nSongs written by Khaled Rohaim"
]
|
[
"Marmalade (band)",
"1975-1978",
"What was the band doing in 1975",
"In 1975, Knight linked up with former drummer Alan Whitehead to form 'Vintage Marmalade' with Sandy Newman (vocals, guitar, keyboards) and Charlie Smith (guitar).",
"Did any of the band members receive formal education",
"I don't know.",
"What happened in the year 1978",
"Alan Whitehead left the band in 1978 to manage other pop groups and singers, which he has continued to do."
]
| C_e51d4ce1cf404d7ab520229526e3bcf7_0 | Who managed them after that | 4 | Who managed the band Marmalade after Alan Whitehead left the band in 1978? | Marmalade (band) | In 1975, Knight linked up with former drummer Alan Whitehead to form 'Vintage Marmalade' with Sandy Newman (vocals, guitar, keyboards) and Charlie Smith (guitar). They were reunited with their old manager, Peter Walsh, to play all the hits on stage and had a full date sheet. Later in 1975, after Ford and the remaining members called it quits, Knight and Whitehead took over the name Marmalade with the new line-up, fronted by Newman. They signed a deal with Tony Macaulay's Target Records and in 1976, had what turned out to be their final Top 10 hit with the ominously entitled, Macaulay penned song, "Falling Apart at The Seams". The song also reached the easy listening charts in the U.S. and made the Top 50 of the Billboard Hot 100, becoming the group's last charting single on the U.S charts. Subsequent singles failed to chart. One of these was "Talking In Your Sleep", produced by Roger Greenaway and released in January 1978, six months ahead of the Crystal Gayle version of the same song, which became well known worldwide. Sandy Newman (ex-The Chris McClure Section, 1968-1970) has continued to front Marmalade since 1975, releasing a further eleven singles in the UK (excluding re-releases), seven of which were via Target Records, none of which have charted in the UK or US, and today they continue to tour the nostalgia circuit performing the band's full hit repertoire. Charlie Smith departed in 1977 to join Nicholson in Blue, and Garth Watt-Roy came in briefly for Marmalade's Only Light On My Horizon Now album, before leaving for the Q-Tips in 1978. He was replaced by guitarist Ian Withington, who appeared alongside Knight, Newman and new drummer Stu Williamson for the next album Doing It All For You (1979). Alan Whitehead left the band in 1978 to manage other pop groups and singers, which he has continued to do. He also appeared in the 2010 TV series Take Me Out and ran a lap dancing club. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Marmalade are a Scottish pop rock band originating from the east end of Glasgow, originally formed in 1961 as The Gaylords, and then later billed as Dean Ford and The Gaylords, recording four singles for Columbia (EMI). In 1966 they changed the band's name to The Marmalade, and were credited as such on all of their subsequent recorded releases with CBS Records and Decca Records until 1972. Their greatest chart success was between 1968 and 1972, placing ten songs on the UK Singles Chart, and many overseas territories, including international hits "Reflections of My Life", which reached #10 on the US Billboard Hot 100 Chart and #3 on the UK Chart in January 1970, and "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da", which topped the UK chart in January 1969, the group becoming the first-ever Scottish group to top that chart.
The original members began to drift away in the early 1970s, resulting in the band departing Decca in 1972.
In 1973 the first evolved line up of the band rejoined EMI Records and with their first record release became known simply as Marmalade. All subsequent record releases are credited similarly.
Graham Knight (an ongoing member from the pre-Marmalade "Dean Ford and The Gaylords" lineup) remained until September 2010.
The band still exists, with many additional further evolved lineups including vocalist Sandy Newman, a member since 1975, touring the nostalgia circuit.
History
The Gaylords
The Gaylords (named after the notorious post war Chicago Gaylords street gang) were originally formed by Pat Fairley and Billy Johnston in Baillieston, a suburb east of Glasgow, in 1961. Their initial line-up included Tommy Frew on drums and lead guitarist Pat McGovern, fronted by vocalist Wattie Rodgers. William Junior Campbell joined on his fourteenth birthday on 31 May 1961 replacing McGovern, and Rodgers was then himself replaced, initially by two new lead vocalists, Billy Reid and Tommy Scott, although Reid soon departed leaving Scott as the sole frontman. Bill Irving, from local Baillieston group the Cadillacs, then took over from Johnston on bass.
The group began gathering notice and in 1963 Fairley and Campbell spotted Thomas McAleese, singer with local group the Monarchs, at the Barrowland Ballroom in Glasgow, and it was not long before he replaced Scott as lead singer. McAleese then adopted the stage moniker Dean Ford, and they then became known as Dean Ford and The Gaylords. Raymond Duffy, from Glasgow group the Escorts, then came in on drums after Frew departed. For a few months, they had an organist, Davey Hunter. By early 1965, Graham Knight, from the local group the Vampires, had displaced Irving on bass.
Becoming popular in Scotland, and under the management of Billy Grainger, in early 1964 they were championed by Scottish music journalist Gordon Reid, which led to them being signed to EMI's Columbia label by Norrie Paramor after auditions at Glasgow's Locarno Ballroom. They went on to record four singles, including a cover of the 1963 Chubby Checker US hit "Twenty Miles", which was a big seller locally but failed to chart nationally. The Columbia releases, although uncredited, were all produced by Bob Barratt, EMI staff producer, with Norrie Paramor as executive. Paramor played the celesta on "What's The Matter With Me"; the b-side of "Twenty Miles". In 1965, they played a long stint in Germany at the Storyville in Cologne and also in Duisburg. By this time The Gaylords had attained status as one of the top groups in Scotland, borne out in music poll results, but were ambitious, and so on their return from Germany to London in early 1965, they decided to try for success in the UK as a whole, and remained in London, where they changed management and agency representation, as Billy Grainger wished to remain in Glasgow.
Name change and the CBS era
On the recommendation of the Tremeloes, who had played with them in Glasgow, the Gaylords were invited to join the London-based agency Starlite Artistes, owned and managed by Peter Walsh. They then began to build up a club reputation as a tight, close harmony band and in 1966, finding themselves in the middle of the 1960s swinging London scene, they decided to update their image and instrumentation. On the advice of their new manager, they changed the band name to "The Marmalade". Unusually, they now had two bass players, Knight on four-string and Fairley on six-string (Fairley having dropped the standard rhythm guitar normally associated with rock groups of the early 1960s).
With their EMI Columbia contract at an end, Walsh, with the help of John Salter, Walsh's booking agent, was successful in signing the band to CBS Records with producer Mike Smith, who was having great success with the Tremeloes, now their agency stablemates. But their first few CBS singles also failed to chart in the UK.
Drummer Ray Duffy (who later played with Matthews Southern Comfort and Gallagher and Lyle and also on Campbell's later solo recordings), decided to leave in 1966 to return to Scotland to get married just after their first CBS release, "Its All Leading up to Saturday Night". The band then placed adverts in the New Musical Express and Melody Maker, and after various auditions, former postman Alan Whitehead ex member of London outfit the Loose Ends became their new drummer, debuting on their next single, "Can't Stop Now", which failed to sell despite the group's performing it on a TV play, The Fantasist, written by Alun Owen, for the BBC Two Theatre 625 series.
Their third CBS single, the self penned "I See the Rain", written by Campbell and Ford, was praised by Jimi Hendrix as the "best cut of 1967". It became a chart-topper in the Netherlands the same year. Graham Nash of the Hollies contributed to the session, but it too flopped in the UK, although the track, with its distinct 1960s feel, has since attained a cult following and been resurrected recently by artists such as Susanna Hoffs of the Bangles and Matthew Sweet. (see Under the Covers, Vol. 1)
19 January 1967 proved to be a turning point in the band's progress when they made their debut at London's Marquee Club where they supported Pink Floyd. Two weeks later, on 3 February, they supported the Action. After that, they never supported anyone again at the Marquee and on 16 March 1967 they began a long residency which carried through to the autumn of the following year, building a reputation and following, including touring with the Who, Joe Cocker, Traffic, Gene Pitney and the Tremeloes. This culminated with summer appearances at the Windsor Jazz and Rock Festival, directly preceding Jerry Lee Lewis, and Festival of the Flower Children Woburn Abbey.
CBS, concerned at Marmalade's lack of commercial success, threatened to drop them if they did not have a hit. So after the failure of another self-penned single later that year, "Man in a Shop", they were urged to record more chart-orientated material. Mike Smith offered the band "Everlasting Love", but they declined as they preferred to continue to record group based material rather than with large orchestral accompaniment. The song was then given to Love Affair, arranged by Keith Mansfield, which became a No. 1 for them. They later gave in to pressure and recorded "Lovin' Things" written by Artie Schroeck and Jet Loring in 1967, and arranged by Keith using a similar orchestral formula (Keith already knew the band and had previously arranged earlier cuts including their last single Man In A Shop) It reached No. 6 in the UK Singles Chart in the summer of 1968. This was covered by the Grass Roots in the US in 1969, using virtually the same arrangement. Marmalade's debut album, There's A Lot Of It About, featured a mix of some of their singles and cover versions of current popular tunes, and was released in 1968.
Marmalade made a cameo appearance on the big screen in the film Subterfuge that year.
After a lesser hit with their follow-up single "Wait For Me Mary-Anne" (written by Alan Blaikley and Ken Howard), which made No. 30, they enjoyed their biggest UK success with their cover of the Beatles' "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da", which topped the UK chart in January 1969, the group becoming the first ever Scottish group to top that chart. Their version of "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" sold around half a million in the UK, and a million copies globally by April 1969. This was followed by further success with "Baby Make It Soon" (written by Tony Macaulay), which reached No. 9 in the summer of 1969.
In February 1969 the band appeared on the BBC's flagship program Colour Me Pop, (precursor to The Old Grey Whistle Test) performing a halfhour slot. They also appeared on the BBC's review of the 1960s music scene, Pop Go The Sixties, performing "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" live on the broadcast on BBC 1 on New Year's Eve 1969.
Decca era
In November 1969 the band was signed to Decca Records by Decca head of A&R, Dick Rowe under a highly lucrative advance deal, allowing the band to write and produce their own songs, with no studio time restraints, and in their very first Decca recording session, they recorded "Reflections of My Life", which would become their biggest worldwide hit, rewarding Decca's and Dick Rowe's faith in the band. Topping the charts in Europe (also Top 10 in United States and No. 1 in most of South America), it was written by Campbell and Ford, and featured a "backwards" (backmasking) guitar solo by Campbell.
"Reflections of My Life" has recorded over two million sales, and the writers were awarded a Special Citation of Achievement in 1998 by BMI in attaining radio broadcast performances in excess of one million in the US alone.
Other UK hits for Decca included "Rainbow" (UK No. 3 and US No. 51) and "My Little One" (UK No. 15)., "Cousin Norman" and "Radancer" (both reaching UK No. 6).
Their manager, Peter Walsh, was a 1960s and 1970s pop entrepreneur whose portfolio also included the Tremeloes, Bay City Rollers, the Move, Billy Ocean, the Troggs and Blue Mink.
Their first Decca album, Reflections Of The Marmalade was released in the US as Reflections Of My Life on Decca's London Records subsidiary. Their US singles during this era likewise came out on London. But their manager, Walsh, turned down an offer to tour the US opening for Three Dog Night, thus blowing an opportunity for further exposure there. To be fair to Walsh, he did not much care for the fact that Marmalade would have had to pay a substantial dollar premium to do so, a practice common in the US but totally alien to Walsh's traditional UK management and agency style.
After Campbell, who co-wrote most of the group's original material with Ford, left the band in March 1971 for a solo career, and to study orchestration and composition at the Royal College of Music, they began a series of line-up changes, including the loss of drummer Whitehead.
Marmalade recruited guitarist Hugh Nicholson, an ex-member of the Poets, to replace Campbell, and after the first post Campbell release, "Cousin Norman", it was Nicholson who insisted on them sacking Whitehead and recruiting his friend and colleague from the Poets, Dougie Henderson. This caused Marmalade to suffer adverse publicity from the UK's News of the World after an embittered Whitehead gave them stories of the band's experiences with groupies.
Marmalade released Songs in November 1971, with Nicholson taking over most song compositions, which met with limited success. However, Nicholson penned two of their last hits, "Cousin Norman" (brass arranged by Campbell) and "Radancer", as well as the lesser hit "Back on the Road", on which he sang lead vocal.
Fairley quit the band circa 1972 to run the group's music publishing company, then Nicholson, who was discouraged over the failure of their Songs album, also left in 1973 to form Blue (not to be confused with a later boy band of the same name). Ford, Knight and Henderson carried on with Marmalade. Nicholson was eventually replaced by Mike Japp, a rock guitarist from the Welsh band, Thank You.
The group returned to EMI and released a new single, "Wishing Well", credited simply as Marmalade (dropping the "The"). But Knight left during the recording of their next album, Our House Is Rocking (which showcased a heavier rock sound and was delayed until the autumn of 1974) and the group was briefly a trio before Joe Breen (ex-Dream Police) came in on bass. Refusing to play most of the band's old hit records on stage, the group slowly came to a standstill.
1975–1978
In 1975 Knight linked up with former drummer Alan Whitehead to form 'Vintage Marmalade' with Sandy Newman (vocals, guitar, keyboards) and Charlie Smith (guitar). They were reunited with their old manager, Peter Walsh, to play all the hits on stage and had a full date sheet.
Later in 1975, after Ford and the remaining members called it quits, Knight and Whitehead took over the name Marmalade with the new line-up, fronted by Newman. They signed a deal with Tony Macaulay's Target Records and in 1976, had what turned out to be their final Top 10 hit with the ominously entitled, Macaulay penned song, "Falling Apart at the Seams". The song also reached the easy listening charts in the U.S. and made the Top 50 of the Billboard Hot 100, becoming the group's last charting single on the U.S charts. Subsequent singles failed to chart. One of these was "Talking In Your Sleep", produced by Roger Greenaway and released in January 1978, six months ahead of the Crystal Gayle version of the same song, which became well known worldwide.
Newman (ex-Chris McClure Section, 1968–1970) has continued to front Marmalade since 1975, releasing a further eleven singles in the UK (excluding re-releases), seven of which were via Target Records, none of which have charted in the UK or US, and today they continue to tour the nostalgia circuit performing the band's full hit repertoire.
Smith departed in 1977 to join Nicholson in Blue and Garth Watt-Roy came in briefly for Marmalade's Only Light On My Horizon Now album, before leaving for the Q-Tips in 1978. He was replaced by guitarist Ian Withington, who appeared alongside Knight, Newman and new drummer Stu Williamson for the next album Doing It All For You (1979).
Whitehead left the band in 1978 to manage other pop groups and singers, which he has continued to do. He also appeared in the 2010 TV series Take Me Out and ran a lap dancing club.
Subsequent years
Charlie Smith returned in 1980, as the band's drummer this time. Alan Holmes (vocals, guitars, keyboards), a former member of the Bristol-based band Federation, succeeded Withington. A 1980 US only album, Marmalade, on G&P Records, featured a re-recorded mix of their Decca, EMI and Target material, alongside some Junior Campbell-penned tracks. Another unsuccessful album, Heartbreaker, came out in the UK in 1982 on the Spectra label.
Graham Knight remained as the sole original band member touring the nostalgia circuit with Newman, Smith and Alan Holmes. In 1982, Glenn Taylor replaced Smith on drums, though Smith returned from 1989 to around 1998, before Taylor took over permanently.
Dave Dee began appearing as guest singer for Marmalade in 1987 and recorded a single with the band, "Scirocco", in 1989. He continued to make live guest appearances with them until his death in 2009.
In September 2010, Graham Knight, the last remaining member of the original band, departed. Drummer Taylor also left to join the Fortunes. The new players were drummer Damon Sawyer and bassist Mike Steed. In 2011, guitarist and vocalist John James Newman joined, making the band a quintet once again.
2013 saw the current Marmalade line-up release their first new studio album since 1979. Entitled Penultimate and released in CD and vinyl formats, it featured six new compositions, together with re-recordings of many Marmalade songs. The album was launched on 4 October 2013 to coincide with the start of a 52-date UK tour.
In 2015 Jan Robinson (vocals, bass) and Chris North (drums, percussion) were brought in as the new rhythm section, in place of Steed and Sawyer.
Original band members — evolved history
2011 saw the release of Fine Cuts–The Best Of Marmalade on the Union Square Music BMG Salvo label (SALVOMDCD26), a double album containing all of the Marmalade original studio recordings between 1966 and 1972, including all of their chart hits. The complete catalogue was also made available via digital download.
Ford was one of many lead vocalists contributing to the Alan Parsons Project. Although for some years he withdrew from the music industry and battled alcoholism, settling in Los Angeles (after a brief spell in New York ), he became active in music again and released a single of his own composition "Glasgow Road" with Joe Tansin (ex-Badfinger) in 2012. He later recorded a version of "Reflections Of My Life" in 2015 and in 2016 released a PledgeMusic album entitled Feel My Heartbeat, available for digital download.
Ford died on 31 December 2018 at the age of 73 at his home in Los Angeles of complications from Parkinson's disease. His final album, a two-disc collection called This Scottish Heart, was released just weeks before his death.
Fairley also moved to Los Angeles in the late 1970s having worked in music publishing for the RSO Group Robert Stigwood and for the band Yes. He retired from the music business many years ago and set up a bar and music venue called The Scotland Yard Pub, in Los Angeles in the early 1980s. He sold the successful business in March 2018 and retired. He died at his home in Los Angeles on 11 August 2020, at the age of 76.
Whitehead continues in artist management and can be seen reviewing the Onyx range of tuned sports cars on the Together TV programme "Rock 'N' Roll Cars" (he also provides the voice-over for this show, which features pop acts such as Go West and Tony Hadley talking about their motoring history).
Knight has retired and has homes in Sussex and Spain.
Campbell became a successful solo recording artist, songwriter, television and film composer, record producer and music arranger, and lives in Sussex. He continues to oversee all of the master rights to the original band recordings on behalf of the whole band, which they retain, and also their publishing rights.
Members
Original band
Graham Knight – vocals, bass (1966–1973, 1975–2010)
Dean Ford – lead vocals, guitar, harmonica (1966–1975; died 2018)
Patrick Fairley – vocals, six string bass/rhythm guitars (1966–1972; died 2020)
William Junior Campbell – vocals, guitars, keyboards (1966–1971)
Raymond Duffy – drums (1966)
Further members
Alan Whitehead – drums (1966–1971, 1975–1978)
Dougie Henderson – drums (1971–1975)
Hugh Nicholson – vocals, guitars (1971–1973)
Joe Breen – vocals, bass (1973–1975)
Mike Japp – vocals, guitars (1973–1975; died 2012)
Charlie Smith – vocals, guitar (1975–1977; drums 1980–1982 and 1989–1998)
Garth Watt-Roy – vocals, keyboards (1977–1978)
Ian Withington – vocals, guitar (1978–1980)
Stu Williamson – drums (1978–1980)
Glenn Taylor – drums (1982–1989; 1998–2010)
Dave Dee – vocals (1987–2009; died 2009)
Damon Sawyer – drums (2010-2015)
Mike Steed – vocals, bass (2010-2015)
Gaylords members
Patrick Fairley (1961–1966)
William Junior Campbell (1961–1966)
Bill Irving – bass (1961–1964)
Tommy Frew – drums (1961–1963)
Tommy Scott – vocals (1961–1963)
Billy Johnston – bass (1961)
Wattie Rodgers (Dunlop) – vocals (1961)
Pat McGovern – lead guitars (1961)
Billy Reid – vocals (1961)
Dean Ford (1963–1966)
Raymond Duffy (1963–1966)
Davey Hunter – organ (1963)
Graham Knight (1965–1966)
Current members
Sandy Newman – lead vocals, lead guitar, keyboards (1975–present)
Alan Holmes – vocals, acoustic/electric guitar, keyboards (1980–present)
John James Newman – vocals, acoustic guitar (2011–present)
Jan S Robinson – vocals, bass (2015–present)
Chris North – drums, percussion (2015–present)
Timeline
Discography
Dean Ford and The Gaylords singles
Singles as The Marmalade
Singles as Marmalade
Marmalade studio albums
Original band
There's a Lot of It About (December 1968) CBS
Best Of (1969) CBS
Reflections of the Marmalade (1970) Decca Records
Songs (1971) Decca Records
Additional/ later line-ups
Our House Is Rocking (1974)
The Only Light on My Horizon Now (1977)
Hello Baby (1978)
... Doing It All for You (1978)
Heavens Above (1979)
Marmalade (US only) (1980)
Heartbreaker (1982)
Penultimate (2013)
The Full Spread (2019)
See also
List of bands from Glasgow
List of Scottish musicians
References
Sources
Info sourced from liner notes, including those by band members on:
1992 Decca Records (Deram) 820 562-2 Reflections of The Marmalade
1996 Castle CD CCSCD436; The Marmalade – The Definitive Collection
1998 Castle CD CCSCD825 Marmalade – The Definitive Collection
2000 Castle – Sequel NEECD 335 Rainbow: The Decca Years
2004 Sanctuary CMOCD 940 The Marmalade – BBC Sessions
2005 Sanctuary SMETD 182 Marmalade – The Ultimate Collection
2011 Union Square Music – Salvo SALVOMDCD26 "Fine Cuts: The Best Of Marmalade"
External links
Marmalade at "Rockingscots"
[ Marmalade biography at AllMusic]
Current official website
Marmalade feature in German
Marquee Club Calendar – 1967
Official Facebook for former Marmalade lead singer Dean Ford
1966 establishments in Scotland
Baillieston
Musical groups established in 1966
Beat groups
Decca Records artists
Columbia Records artists
Columbia Graphophone Company artists
London Records artists
Musical groups from Glasgow
Scottish psychedelic rock music groups
Scottish pop music groups
Psychedelic pop music groups | false | [
"Clinton Earl Wolgamot (December 21, 1892 – April 25, 1970) was an American professional baseball catcher, coach and manager. In Major League Baseball, he was a coach for the Cleveland Indians from to .\n\nBorn in Fairbank, Iowa, he threw and batted right-handed and was listed as tall and . Wolgamot began his playing career in 1915, became a player-manager in 1929 in the minors, and appeared in his last games in 1938 at age 45. Though statistical information is incomplete, it is known that he played in at least 909 games and collected at least 716 career hits. As well, he hit at least 36 home runs, 144 doubles and 27 triples.\n\nHe began his managerial career by skippering the 1929 Terre Haute Tots through 1930. As a coach in Cleveland, he worked under managers Roger Peckinpaugh and Baseball Hall of Famer Walter Johnson. In 1934, he managed for the Grand Rapids Tigers, Monessen Indians and Zanesville Grays. After taking over the Grays partway through the season, he led them to a league championship. He managed the Grays until 1936, leading them to another league championship in his final year with the team. He moved onto the Springfield Indians in 1937 and managed them until 1939, leading them to the playoffs each year. From 1940 to 1942, he managed the Wilkes-Barre Barons, leading them to the playoffs twice. In 1943 he managed the Batavia Clippers, in 1944 and 1945 he managed the Springfield Giants (leading them to the playoffs both times), in 1947 he managed the Trenton Giants and in 1948 he managed the Fort Smith Giants. \n\nFrom 1939 through 1941, he managed future Hall of Fame pitcher Bob Lemon at Springfield and Wilkes-Barre, while Lemon was still an infielder; he converted to full-time pitching with Cleveland after World War II.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nRetosheet\n\n1892 births\n1970 deaths\nBaseball coaches from Iowa\nBaseball players from Iowa\nCleveland Indians coaches\nEdmonton Eskimos (baseball) players\nFort Worth Panthers players\nGalveston Sand Crabs players\nIonia Mayors players\nKalamazoo Celery Pickers players\nMinor league baseball managers\nMonessen Indians players\nPeople from Independence, Iowa\nRockford Wakes players\nSan Antonio Bronchos players\nSpringfield Indians (baseball) players\nTerre Haute Tots players\nToledo Mud Hens players\nWaco Cubs players\nZanesville Greys players",
"Charles Elmer \"Punch\" Knoll (October 7, 1881 in Evansville, Indiana, USA – February 8, 1960 in Evansville, Indiana) was a Major League Baseball outfielder who played for the Washington Senators in 1905. He also spent 27 seasons playing in the minor leagues and managed in the minor leagues for 22 seasons.\n\nMajor league career\nKnoll made his major league debut on April 27, 1905 with the Senators and played in 79 games for them. He hit .213 with no home runs and 29 RBI in 244 at-bats, scoring 24 runs and hitting five triples. He committed eight errors as an outfielder in his only major league season, posting a .927 fielding percentage at that position. He played his final big league game on October 4.\n\nMinor league career\nKnoll began his minor league career in 1901 and played every season, except for 1905, 1918 and 1929, until 1930. A .279 hitter, he had 2,455 career hits, 456 doubles, 141 triples and 85 home runs. In seasons in which he had more than 100 at-bats, Knoll hit more than .300 five times. He also exceeded the 10-triple mark four times and the 10-home run mark three times.\n\nManagerial career\nKnoll managed the Evansville River Rats from 1907 to 1909, leading them to a league championship in 1908. He then managed the Dayton Veterans from 1910 to 1912, leading them to a league championship in 1911. In 1913, he returned to the River Rats and managed them until 1915. They switched their name to the Evansville Evas for the 1916 season, and he managed them until 1917.\n\nHe next managed the Ludington Mariners in 1920 and the Bay City Wolves from 1921 to 1924, leading them to successive league championships in 1923 and 1924. In 1925, he returned to the Danville Veterans, whom he managed until 1926. He then managed the Quincy Red Birds for part of 1927 (replacing Mack Allison), the Fort Wayne Chiefs in 1928 (leading them to a league championship), the Wilkes-Barre Barons in 1929 (replacing Don Sykes) and the Fort Wayne Chiefs again in 1930.\n\nFollowing his death, he was interred at Locust Hill Cemetery in Evansville.\n\nReferences\n\n1881 births\n1960 deaths\nWashington Senators (1901–1960) players\nBaseball players from Indiana\nMinor league baseball managers\nEvansville River Rats players\nMemphis Egyptians players\nNashville Vols players\nNew Orleans Pelicans (baseball) players\nDayton Veterans players\nEvansville Evas players\nLudington Mariners players\nBay City Wolves players\nDanville Veterans players\nQuincy Red Birds players\nFort Wayne Chiefs players"
]
|
[
"Marmalade (band)",
"1975-1978",
"What was the band doing in 1975",
"In 1975, Knight linked up with former drummer Alan Whitehead to form 'Vintage Marmalade' with Sandy Newman (vocals, guitar, keyboards) and Charlie Smith (guitar).",
"Did any of the band members receive formal education",
"I don't know.",
"What happened in the year 1978",
"Alan Whitehead left the band in 1978 to manage other pop groups and singers, which he has continued to do.",
"Who managed them after that",
"I don't know."
]
| C_e51d4ce1cf404d7ab520229526e3bcf7_0 | Did they lose popularity when they lost the manager | 5 | Did the band Marmalade lose popularity when Marmalade lost their manager Alan Whitehead in 1978? | Marmalade (band) | In 1975, Knight linked up with former drummer Alan Whitehead to form 'Vintage Marmalade' with Sandy Newman (vocals, guitar, keyboards) and Charlie Smith (guitar). They were reunited with their old manager, Peter Walsh, to play all the hits on stage and had a full date sheet. Later in 1975, after Ford and the remaining members called it quits, Knight and Whitehead took over the name Marmalade with the new line-up, fronted by Newman. They signed a deal with Tony Macaulay's Target Records and in 1976, had what turned out to be their final Top 10 hit with the ominously entitled, Macaulay penned song, "Falling Apart at The Seams". The song also reached the easy listening charts in the U.S. and made the Top 50 of the Billboard Hot 100, becoming the group's last charting single on the U.S charts. Subsequent singles failed to chart. One of these was "Talking In Your Sleep", produced by Roger Greenaway and released in January 1978, six months ahead of the Crystal Gayle version of the same song, which became well known worldwide. Sandy Newman (ex-The Chris McClure Section, 1968-1970) has continued to front Marmalade since 1975, releasing a further eleven singles in the UK (excluding re-releases), seven of which were via Target Records, none of which have charted in the UK or US, and today they continue to tour the nostalgia circuit performing the band's full hit repertoire. Charlie Smith departed in 1977 to join Nicholson in Blue, and Garth Watt-Roy came in briefly for Marmalade's Only Light On My Horizon Now album, before leaving for the Q-Tips in 1978. He was replaced by guitarist Ian Withington, who appeared alongside Knight, Newman and new drummer Stu Williamson for the next album Doing It All For You (1979). Alan Whitehead left the band in 1978 to manage other pop groups and singers, which he has continued to do. He also appeared in the 2010 TV series Take Me Out and ran a lap dancing club. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Marmalade are a Scottish pop rock band originating from the east end of Glasgow, originally formed in 1961 as The Gaylords, and then later billed as Dean Ford and The Gaylords, recording four singles for Columbia (EMI). In 1966 they changed the band's name to The Marmalade, and were credited as such on all of their subsequent recorded releases with CBS Records and Decca Records until 1972. Their greatest chart success was between 1968 and 1972, placing ten songs on the UK Singles Chart, and many overseas territories, including international hits "Reflections of My Life", which reached #10 on the US Billboard Hot 100 Chart and #3 on the UK Chart in January 1970, and "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da", which topped the UK chart in January 1969, the group becoming the first-ever Scottish group to top that chart.
The original members began to drift away in the early 1970s, resulting in the band departing Decca in 1972.
In 1973 the first evolved line up of the band rejoined EMI Records and with their first record release became known simply as Marmalade. All subsequent record releases are credited similarly.
Graham Knight (an ongoing member from the pre-Marmalade "Dean Ford and The Gaylords" lineup) remained until September 2010.
The band still exists, with many additional further evolved lineups including vocalist Sandy Newman, a member since 1975, touring the nostalgia circuit.
History
The Gaylords
The Gaylords (named after the notorious post war Chicago Gaylords street gang) were originally formed by Pat Fairley and Billy Johnston in Baillieston, a suburb east of Glasgow, in 1961. Their initial line-up included Tommy Frew on drums and lead guitarist Pat McGovern, fronted by vocalist Wattie Rodgers. William Junior Campbell joined on his fourteenth birthday on 31 May 1961 replacing McGovern, and Rodgers was then himself replaced, initially by two new lead vocalists, Billy Reid and Tommy Scott, although Reid soon departed leaving Scott as the sole frontman. Bill Irving, from local Baillieston group the Cadillacs, then took over from Johnston on bass.
The group began gathering notice and in 1963 Fairley and Campbell spotted Thomas McAleese, singer with local group the Monarchs, at the Barrowland Ballroom in Glasgow, and it was not long before he replaced Scott as lead singer. McAleese then adopted the stage moniker Dean Ford, and they then became known as Dean Ford and The Gaylords. Raymond Duffy, from Glasgow group the Escorts, then came in on drums after Frew departed. For a few months, they had an organist, Davey Hunter. By early 1965, Graham Knight, from the local group the Vampires, had displaced Irving on bass.
Becoming popular in Scotland, and under the management of Billy Grainger, in early 1964 they were championed by Scottish music journalist Gordon Reid, which led to them being signed to EMI's Columbia label by Norrie Paramor after auditions at Glasgow's Locarno Ballroom. They went on to record four singles, including a cover of the 1963 Chubby Checker US hit "Twenty Miles", which was a big seller locally but failed to chart nationally. The Columbia releases, although uncredited, were all produced by Bob Barratt, EMI staff producer, with Norrie Paramor as executive. Paramor played the celesta on "What's The Matter With Me"; the b-side of "Twenty Miles". In 1965, they played a long stint in Germany at the Storyville in Cologne and also in Duisburg. By this time The Gaylords had attained status as one of the top groups in Scotland, borne out in music poll results, but were ambitious, and so on their return from Germany to London in early 1965, they decided to try for success in the UK as a whole, and remained in London, where they changed management and agency representation, as Billy Grainger wished to remain in Glasgow.
Name change and the CBS era
On the recommendation of the Tremeloes, who had played with them in Glasgow, the Gaylords were invited to join the London-based agency Starlite Artistes, owned and managed by Peter Walsh. They then began to build up a club reputation as a tight, close harmony band and in 1966, finding themselves in the middle of the 1960s swinging London scene, they decided to update their image and instrumentation. On the advice of their new manager, they changed the band name to "The Marmalade". Unusually, they now had two bass players, Knight on four-string and Fairley on six-string (Fairley having dropped the standard rhythm guitar normally associated with rock groups of the early 1960s).
With their EMI Columbia contract at an end, Walsh, with the help of John Salter, Walsh's booking agent, was successful in signing the band to CBS Records with producer Mike Smith, who was having great success with the Tremeloes, now their agency stablemates. But their first few CBS singles also failed to chart in the UK.
Drummer Ray Duffy (who later played with Matthews Southern Comfort and Gallagher and Lyle and also on Campbell's later solo recordings), decided to leave in 1966 to return to Scotland to get married just after their first CBS release, "Its All Leading up to Saturday Night". The band then placed adverts in the New Musical Express and Melody Maker, and after various auditions, former postman Alan Whitehead ex member of London outfit the Loose Ends became their new drummer, debuting on their next single, "Can't Stop Now", which failed to sell despite the group's performing it on a TV play, The Fantasist, written by Alun Owen, for the BBC Two Theatre 625 series.
Their third CBS single, the self penned "I See the Rain", written by Campbell and Ford, was praised by Jimi Hendrix as the "best cut of 1967". It became a chart-topper in the Netherlands the same year. Graham Nash of the Hollies contributed to the session, but it too flopped in the UK, although the track, with its distinct 1960s feel, has since attained a cult following and been resurrected recently by artists such as Susanna Hoffs of the Bangles and Matthew Sweet. (see Under the Covers, Vol. 1)
19 January 1967 proved to be a turning point in the band's progress when they made their debut at London's Marquee Club where they supported Pink Floyd. Two weeks later, on 3 February, they supported the Action. After that, they never supported anyone again at the Marquee and on 16 March 1967 they began a long residency which carried through to the autumn of the following year, building a reputation and following, including touring with the Who, Joe Cocker, Traffic, Gene Pitney and the Tremeloes. This culminated with summer appearances at the Windsor Jazz and Rock Festival, directly preceding Jerry Lee Lewis, and Festival of the Flower Children Woburn Abbey.
CBS, concerned at Marmalade's lack of commercial success, threatened to drop them if they did not have a hit. So after the failure of another self-penned single later that year, "Man in a Shop", they were urged to record more chart-orientated material. Mike Smith offered the band "Everlasting Love", but they declined as they preferred to continue to record group based material rather than with large orchestral accompaniment. The song was then given to Love Affair, arranged by Keith Mansfield, which became a No. 1 for them. They later gave in to pressure and recorded "Lovin' Things" written by Artie Schroeck and Jet Loring in 1967, and arranged by Keith using a similar orchestral formula (Keith already knew the band and had previously arranged earlier cuts including their last single Man In A Shop) It reached No. 6 in the UK Singles Chart in the summer of 1968. This was covered by the Grass Roots in the US in 1969, using virtually the same arrangement. Marmalade's debut album, There's A Lot Of It About, featured a mix of some of their singles and cover versions of current popular tunes, and was released in 1968.
Marmalade made a cameo appearance on the big screen in the film Subterfuge that year.
After a lesser hit with their follow-up single "Wait For Me Mary-Anne" (written by Alan Blaikley and Ken Howard), which made No. 30, they enjoyed their biggest UK success with their cover of the Beatles' "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da", which topped the UK chart in January 1969, the group becoming the first ever Scottish group to top that chart. Their version of "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" sold around half a million in the UK, and a million copies globally by April 1969. This was followed by further success with "Baby Make It Soon" (written by Tony Macaulay), which reached No. 9 in the summer of 1969.
In February 1969 the band appeared on the BBC's flagship program Colour Me Pop, (precursor to The Old Grey Whistle Test) performing a halfhour slot. They also appeared on the BBC's review of the 1960s music scene, Pop Go The Sixties, performing "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" live on the broadcast on BBC 1 on New Year's Eve 1969.
Decca era
In November 1969 the band was signed to Decca Records by Decca head of A&R, Dick Rowe under a highly lucrative advance deal, allowing the band to write and produce their own songs, with no studio time restraints, and in their very first Decca recording session, they recorded "Reflections of My Life", which would become their biggest worldwide hit, rewarding Decca's and Dick Rowe's faith in the band. Topping the charts in Europe (also Top 10 in United States and No. 1 in most of South America), it was written by Campbell and Ford, and featured a "backwards" (backmasking) guitar solo by Campbell.
"Reflections of My Life" has recorded over two million sales, and the writers were awarded a Special Citation of Achievement in 1998 by BMI in attaining radio broadcast performances in excess of one million in the US alone.
Other UK hits for Decca included "Rainbow" (UK No. 3 and US No. 51) and "My Little One" (UK No. 15)., "Cousin Norman" and "Radancer" (both reaching UK No. 6).
Their manager, Peter Walsh, was a 1960s and 1970s pop entrepreneur whose portfolio also included the Tremeloes, Bay City Rollers, the Move, Billy Ocean, the Troggs and Blue Mink.
Their first Decca album, Reflections Of The Marmalade was released in the US as Reflections Of My Life on Decca's London Records subsidiary. Their US singles during this era likewise came out on London. But their manager, Walsh, turned down an offer to tour the US opening for Three Dog Night, thus blowing an opportunity for further exposure there. To be fair to Walsh, he did not much care for the fact that Marmalade would have had to pay a substantial dollar premium to do so, a practice common in the US but totally alien to Walsh's traditional UK management and agency style.
After Campbell, who co-wrote most of the group's original material with Ford, left the band in March 1971 for a solo career, and to study orchestration and composition at the Royal College of Music, they began a series of line-up changes, including the loss of drummer Whitehead.
Marmalade recruited guitarist Hugh Nicholson, an ex-member of the Poets, to replace Campbell, and after the first post Campbell release, "Cousin Norman", it was Nicholson who insisted on them sacking Whitehead and recruiting his friend and colleague from the Poets, Dougie Henderson. This caused Marmalade to suffer adverse publicity from the UK's News of the World after an embittered Whitehead gave them stories of the band's experiences with groupies.
Marmalade released Songs in November 1971, with Nicholson taking over most song compositions, which met with limited success. However, Nicholson penned two of their last hits, "Cousin Norman" (brass arranged by Campbell) and "Radancer", as well as the lesser hit "Back on the Road", on which he sang lead vocal.
Fairley quit the band circa 1972 to run the group's music publishing company, then Nicholson, who was discouraged over the failure of their Songs album, also left in 1973 to form Blue (not to be confused with a later boy band of the same name). Ford, Knight and Henderson carried on with Marmalade. Nicholson was eventually replaced by Mike Japp, a rock guitarist from the Welsh band, Thank You.
The group returned to EMI and released a new single, "Wishing Well", credited simply as Marmalade (dropping the "The"). But Knight left during the recording of their next album, Our House Is Rocking (which showcased a heavier rock sound and was delayed until the autumn of 1974) and the group was briefly a trio before Joe Breen (ex-Dream Police) came in on bass. Refusing to play most of the band's old hit records on stage, the group slowly came to a standstill.
1975–1978
In 1975 Knight linked up with former drummer Alan Whitehead to form 'Vintage Marmalade' with Sandy Newman (vocals, guitar, keyboards) and Charlie Smith (guitar). They were reunited with their old manager, Peter Walsh, to play all the hits on stage and had a full date sheet.
Later in 1975, after Ford and the remaining members called it quits, Knight and Whitehead took over the name Marmalade with the new line-up, fronted by Newman. They signed a deal with Tony Macaulay's Target Records and in 1976, had what turned out to be their final Top 10 hit with the ominously entitled, Macaulay penned song, "Falling Apart at the Seams". The song also reached the easy listening charts in the U.S. and made the Top 50 of the Billboard Hot 100, becoming the group's last charting single on the U.S charts. Subsequent singles failed to chart. One of these was "Talking In Your Sleep", produced by Roger Greenaway and released in January 1978, six months ahead of the Crystal Gayle version of the same song, which became well known worldwide.
Newman (ex-Chris McClure Section, 1968–1970) has continued to front Marmalade since 1975, releasing a further eleven singles in the UK (excluding re-releases), seven of which were via Target Records, none of which have charted in the UK or US, and today they continue to tour the nostalgia circuit performing the band's full hit repertoire.
Smith departed in 1977 to join Nicholson in Blue and Garth Watt-Roy came in briefly for Marmalade's Only Light On My Horizon Now album, before leaving for the Q-Tips in 1978. He was replaced by guitarist Ian Withington, who appeared alongside Knight, Newman and new drummer Stu Williamson for the next album Doing It All For You (1979).
Whitehead left the band in 1978 to manage other pop groups and singers, which he has continued to do. He also appeared in the 2010 TV series Take Me Out and ran a lap dancing club.
Subsequent years
Charlie Smith returned in 1980, as the band's drummer this time. Alan Holmes (vocals, guitars, keyboards), a former member of the Bristol-based band Federation, succeeded Withington. A 1980 US only album, Marmalade, on G&P Records, featured a re-recorded mix of their Decca, EMI and Target material, alongside some Junior Campbell-penned tracks. Another unsuccessful album, Heartbreaker, came out in the UK in 1982 on the Spectra label.
Graham Knight remained as the sole original band member touring the nostalgia circuit with Newman, Smith and Alan Holmes. In 1982, Glenn Taylor replaced Smith on drums, though Smith returned from 1989 to around 1998, before Taylor took over permanently.
Dave Dee began appearing as guest singer for Marmalade in 1987 and recorded a single with the band, "Scirocco", in 1989. He continued to make live guest appearances with them until his death in 2009.
In September 2010, Graham Knight, the last remaining member of the original band, departed. Drummer Taylor also left to join the Fortunes. The new players were drummer Damon Sawyer and bassist Mike Steed. In 2011, guitarist and vocalist John James Newman joined, making the band a quintet once again.
2013 saw the current Marmalade line-up release their first new studio album since 1979. Entitled Penultimate and released in CD and vinyl formats, it featured six new compositions, together with re-recordings of many Marmalade songs. The album was launched on 4 October 2013 to coincide with the start of a 52-date UK tour.
In 2015 Jan Robinson (vocals, bass) and Chris North (drums, percussion) were brought in as the new rhythm section, in place of Steed and Sawyer.
Original band members — evolved history
2011 saw the release of Fine Cuts–The Best Of Marmalade on the Union Square Music BMG Salvo label (SALVOMDCD26), a double album containing all of the Marmalade original studio recordings between 1966 and 1972, including all of their chart hits. The complete catalogue was also made available via digital download.
Ford was one of many lead vocalists contributing to the Alan Parsons Project. Although for some years he withdrew from the music industry and battled alcoholism, settling in Los Angeles (after a brief spell in New York ), he became active in music again and released a single of his own composition "Glasgow Road" with Joe Tansin (ex-Badfinger) in 2012. He later recorded a version of "Reflections Of My Life" in 2015 and in 2016 released a PledgeMusic album entitled Feel My Heartbeat, available for digital download.
Ford died on 31 December 2018 at the age of 73 at his home in Los Angeles of complications from Parkinson's disease. His final album, a two-disc collection called This Scottish Heart, was released just weeks before his death.
Fairley also moved to Los Angeles in the late 1970s having worked in music publishing for the RSO Group Robert Stigwood and for the band Yes. He retired from the music business many years ago and set up a bar and music venue called The Scotland Yard Pub, in Los Angeles in the early 1980s. He sold the successful business in March 2018 and retired. He died at his home in Los Angeles on 11 August 2020, at the age of 76.
Whitehead continues in artist management and can be seen reviewing the Onyx range of tuned sports cars on the Together TV programme "Rock 'N' Roll Cars" (he also provides the voice-over for this show, which features pop acts such as Go West and Tony Hadley talking about their motoring history).
Knight has retired and has homes in Sussex and Spain.
Campbell became a successful solo recording artist, songwriter, television and film composer, record producer and music arranger, and lives in Sussex. He continues to oversee all of the master rights to the original band recordings on behalf of the whole band, which they retain, and also their publishing rights.
Members
Original band
Graham Knight – vocals, bass (1966–1973, 1975–2010)
Dean Ford – lead vocals, guitar, harmonica (1966–1975; died 2018)
Patrick Fairley – vocals, six string bass/rhythm guitars (1966–1972; died 2020)
William Junior Campbell – vocals, guitars, keyboards (1966–1971)
Raymond Duffy – drums (1966)
Further members
Alan Whitehead – drums (1966–1971, 1975–1978)
Dougie Henderson – drums (1971–1975)
Hugh Nicholson – vocals, guitars (1971–1973)
Joe Breen – vocals, bass (1973–1975)
Mike Japp – vocals, guitars (1973–1975; died 2012)
Charlie Smith – vocals, guitar (1975–1977; drums 1980–1982 and 1989–1998)
Garth Watt-Roy – vocals, keyboards (1977–1978)
Ian Withington – vocals, guitar (1978–1980)
Stu Williamson – drums (1978–1980)
Glenn Taylor – drums (1982–1989; 1998–2010)
Dave Dee – vocals (1987–2009; died 2009)
Damon Sawyer – drums (2010-2015)
Mike Steed – vocals, bass (2010-2015)
Gaylords members
Patrick Fairley (1961–1966)
William Junior Campbell (1961–1966)
Bill Irving – bass (1961–1964)
Tommy Frew – drums (1961–1963)
Tommy Scott – vocals (1961–1963)
Billy Johnston – bass (1961)
Wattie Rodgers (Dunlop) – vocals (1961)
Pat McGovern – lead guitars (1961)
Billy Reid – vocals (1961)
Dean Ford (1963–1966)
Raymond Duffy (1963–1966)
Davey Hunter – organ (1963)
Graham Knight (1965–1966)
Current members
Sandy Newman – lead vocals, lead guitar, keyboards (1975–present)
Alan Holmes – vocals, acoustic/electric guitar, keyboards (1980–present)
John James Newman – vocals, acoustic guitar (2011–present)
Jan S Robinson – vocals, bass (2015–present)
Chris North – drums, percussion (2015–present)
Timeline
Discography
Dean Ford and The Gaylords singles
Singles as The Marmalade
Singles as Marmalade
Marmalade studio albums
Original band
There's a Lot of It About (December 1968) CBS
Best Of (1969) CBS
Reflections of the Marmalade (1970) Decca Records
Songs (1971) Decca Records
Additional/ later line-ups
Our House Is Rocking (1974)
The Only Light on My Horizon Now (1977)
Hello Baby (1978)
... Doing It All for You (1978)
Heavens Above (1979)
Marmalade (US only) (1980)
Heartbreaker (1982)
Penultimate (2013)
The Full Spread (2019)
See also
List of bands from Glasgow
List of Scottish musicians
References
Sources
Info sourced from liner notes, including those by band members on:
1992 Decca Records (Deram) 820 562-2 Reflections of The Marmalade
1996 Castle CD CCSCD436; The Marmalade – The Definitive Collection
1998 Castle CD CCSCD825 Marmalade – The Definitive Collection
2000 Castle – Sequel NEECD 335 Rainbow: The Decca Years
2004 Sanctuary CMOCD 940 The Marmalade – BBC Sessions
2005 Sanctuary SMETD 182 Marmalade – The Ultimate Collection
2011 Union Square Music – Salvo SALVOMDCD26 "Fine Cuts: The Best Of Marmalade"
External links
Marmalade at "Rockingscots"
[ Marmalade biography at AllMusic]
Current official website
Marmalade feature in German
Marquee Club Calendar – 1967
Official Facebook for former Marmalade lead singer Dean Ford
1966 establishments in Scotland
Baillieston
Musical groups established in 1966
Beat groups
Decca Records artists
Columbia Records artists
Columbia Graphophone Company artists
London Records artists
Musical groups from Glasgow
Scottish psychedelic rock music groups
Scottish pop music groups
Psychedelic pop music groups | false | [
"Huddersfield Town's 1993–94 campaign was Town's last season playing at their Leeds Road stadium, before moving to the Alfred McAlpine Stadium. Neil Warnock became the Town boss following Ian Ross' decision to join ex-Town manager Mick Buxton at Sunderland. Town finished in 11th place, but a good run in the League Trophy saw Town reach a final at Wembley final for the first time since the 1938 FA Cup Final. Town did lose 3–1 on penalties to Swansea City.\n\nSquad at the start of the season\n\nReview\nNeil Warnock's first game in charge saw Town lose 3–0 at home against Reading, which was the start of a particularly bad opening spell of the season, which saw only one win in the first 8 games. After that period was a second round League Cup match against Premier League side Arsenal. They lost the first leg 5–0 at Leeds Road, but amazingly they drew 1–1 at Highbury Stadium to lose 6–1 on aggregate.\n\nThe mid season didn't give much more joy, but a run in the League Trophy saw Town reach the area final for a two-legged play-off against Carlisle United. They won the first leg 4–1 at Leeds Road, but despite losing 2–0 at Brunton Park, they won 4–3 on aggregate to set up a final at Wembley against Swansea City. This was Town's first match at Wembley since the 1938 FA Cup Final, when they lost to Preston North End. The match was a 1–1 draw, but Town then lost 3–1 on a penalty shoot-out.\n\nFollowing the defeat to promotion chasing Port Vale on 15 March, many were even wondering if Town were staying in Division 2. But that turned out to be Town's last league defeat of the season as Town won 8 of their last 12 games, so Town finished in a respectable 11th place.\n\nSquad at the end of the season\n\nResults\n\nFootball League Second Division\n\nFA Cup\n\nLeague Cup\n\nLeague Trophy\n\nAppearances and goals\n\n1993-94\n1993–94 Football League Second Division by team",
"The 1910–11 Yale Bulldogs men's ice hockey season was the 16th season of play for the program.\n\nSeason\nFor the second time in three years Yale finished the season 4 games below .500. They did, however, lose four games to undefeated intercollegiate champion Cornell.\n\nThe team did not have a coach, however, C. Lawson Reed served as team manager.\n\nRoster\n\nStandings\n\nSchedule and Results\n\n|-\n!colspan=12 style=\";\" | Regular Season\n\nReferences\n\nYale Bulldogs men's ice hockey seasons\nYale Bulldogs\nYale Bulldogs\nYale Bulldogs\nYale Bulldogs"
]
|
[
"Grace Hopper",
"Anecdotes"
]
| C_f3d8fdd6d43946db9eb69a1841255eb2_0 | What can you tell me about her anecdotes? | 1 | What can you tell me about Grace Hopper's anecdotes? | Grace Hopper | Throughout much of her later career, Hopper was much in demand as a speaker at various computer-related events. She was well known for her lively and irreverent speaking style, as well as a rich treasury of early war stories. She also received the nickname "Grandma COBOL". While she was working on a Mark II Computer at a US Navy research lab in Dahlgren, Virginia in 1947, her associates discovered a moth that was stuck in a relay; the moth impeded the operation of the relay. While neither Hopper nor her crew mentioned the phrase "debugging" in their logs, the case was held as an instance of literal "debugging." For many years, the term bug had been in use in engineering. The remains of the moth can be found in the group's log book at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. Grace Hopper is famous for her nanoseconds visual aid. People (such as generals and admirals) used to ask her why satellite communication took so long. She started handing out pieces of wire that were just under one foot long (11.80 inches = 300 millimeters)--the distance that light travels in one nanosecond. She gave these pieces of wire the metonym "nanoseconds." She was careful to tell her audience that the length of her nanoseconds was actually the maximum speed the signals would travel in a vacuum, and that signals would travel more slowly through the actual wires that were her teaching aids. Later she used the same pieces of wire to illustrate why computers had to be small to be fast. At many of her talks and visits, she handed out "nanoseconds" to everyone in the audience, contrasting them with a coil of wire 984 feet long, representing a microsecond. Later, while giving these lectures while working for DEC, she passed out packets of pepper, calling the individual grains of ground pepper picoseconds. Jay Elliot described Grace Hopper as appearing to be "'all Navy', but when you reach inside, you find a 'Pirate' dying to be released". CANNOTANSWER | Grace Hopper is famous for her nanoseconds visual aid. | Grace Brewster Murray Hopper (; December 9, 1906 – January 1, 1992) was an American computer scientist and United States Navy rear admiral. One of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I computer, she was a pioneer of computer programming who invented one of the first linkers. Hopper was the first to devise the theory of machine-independent programming languages, and the FLOW-MATIC programming language she created using this theory was later extended to create COBOL, an early high-level programming language still in use today.
Prior to joining the Navy, Hopper earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from Yale University and was a professor of mathematics at Vassar College. Hopper attempted to enlist in the Navy during World War II but was rejected because she was 34 years old. She instead joined the Navy Reserves. Hopper began her computing career in 1944 when she worked on the Harvard Mark I team led by Howard H. Aiken. In 1949, she joined the Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation and was part of the team that developed the UNIVAC I computer. At Eckert–Mauchly she managed the development of one of the first COBOL compilers. She believed that a programming language based on English was possible. Her compiler converted English terms into machine code understood by computers. By 1952, Hopper had finished her program linker (originally called a compiler), which was written for the A-0 System. During her wartime service, she co-authored three papers based on her work on the Harvard Mark 1.
In 1954, Eckert–Mauchly chose Hopper to lead their department for automatic programming, and she led the release of some of the first compiled languages like FLOW-MATIC. In 1959, she participated in the CODASYL consortium, which consulted Hopper to guide them in creating a machine-independent programming language. This led to the COBOL language, which was inspired by her idea of a language being based on English words. In 1966, she retired from the Naval Reserve, but in 1967 the Navy recalled her to active duty. She retired from the Navy in 1986 and found work as a consultant for the Digital Equipment Corporation, sharing her computing experiences.
The U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyer was named for her, as was the Cray XE6 "Hopper" supercomputer at NERSC. During her lifetime, Hopper was awarded 40 honorary degrees from universities across the world. A college at Yale University was renamed in her honor. In 1991, she received the National Medal of Technology. On November 22, 2016, she was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama.
Early life and education
Grace Brewster Murray was born in New York City. She was the eldest of three children. Her parents, Walter Fletcher Murray and Mary Campbell Van Horne, were of Scottish and Dutch descent, and attended West End Collegiate Church. Her great-grandfather, Alexander Wilson Russell, an admiral in the US Navy, fought in the Battle of Mobile Bay during the Civil War.
Grace was very curious as a child; this was a lifelong trait. At the age of seven, she decided to determine how an alarm clock worked and dismantled seven alarm clocks before her mother realized what she was doing (she was then limited to one clock). For her preparatory school education, she attended the Hartridge School in Plainfield, New Jersey. Grace was initially rejected for early admission to Vassar College at age 16 (because her test scores in Latin were too low), but she was admitted the following year. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Vassar in 1928 with a bachelor's degree in mathematics and physics and earned her master's degree at Yale University in 1930.
In 1930 Grace Murray married New York University professor Vincent Foster Hopper (1906–1976); they divorced in 1945. Although she did not marry again, she retained his surname.
In 1934, Hopper earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from Yale under the direction of Øystein Ore. Her dissertation, "New Types of Irreducibility Criteria", was published that same year. She began teaching mathematics at Vassar in 1931, and was promoted to associate professor in 1941.
Career
World War II
Hopper tried to enlist in the Navy early in World War II. She was rejected for a few reasons. At age 34, she was too old to enlist, and her weight to height ratio was too low. She was also denied on the basis that her job as a mathematician and mathematics professor at Vassar College was valuable to the war effort. During the war in 1943, Hopper obtained a leave of absence from Vassar and was sworn into the United States Navy Reserve; she was one of many women who volunteered to serve in the WAVES. She had to get an exemption to enlist; she was below the Navy minimum weight of . She reported in December and trained at the Naval Reserve Midshipmen's School at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. Hopper graduated first in her class in 1944, and was assigned to the Bureau of Ships Computation Project at Harvard University as a lieutenant, junior grade. She served on the Mark I computer programming staff headed by Howard H. Aiken. Hopper and Aiken co-authored three papers on the Mark I, also known as the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator. Hopper's request to transfer to the regular Navy at the end of the war was declined due to her advanced age of 38. She continued to serve in the Navy Reserve. Hopper remained at the Harvard Computation Lab until 1949, turning down a full professorship at Vassar in favor of working as a research fellow under a Navy contract at Harvard.
UNIVAC
In 1949, Hopper became an employee of the Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation as a senior mathematician and joined the team developing the UNIVAC I. Hopper also served as UNIVAC director of Automatic Programming Development for Remington Rand. The UNIVAC was the first known large-scale electronic computer to be on the market in 1950, and was more competitive at processing information than the Mark I.
When Hopper recommended the development of a new programming language that would use entirely English words, she "was told very quickly that [she] couldn't do this because computers didn't understand English." Still, she persisted. "It's much easier for most people to write an English statement than it is to use symbols," she explained. "So I decided data processors ought to be able to write their programs in English, and the computers would translate them into machine code."
Her idea was not accepted for three years. In the meantime, she published her first paper on the subject, compilers, in 1952. In the early 1950s, the company was taken over by the Remington Rand corporation, and it was while she was working for them that her original compiler work was done. The program was known as the A compiler and its first version was A-0.
In 1952, she had an operational link-loader, which at the time was referred to as a compiler. She later said that "Nobody believed that," and that she "had a running compiler and nobody would touch it. They told me computers could only do arithmetic." She goes on to say that her compiler "translated mathematical notation into machine code. Manipulating symbols was fine for mathematicians but it was no good for data processors who were not symbol manipulators. Very few people are really symbol manipulators. If they are they become professional mathematicians, not data processors. It's much easier for most people to write an English statement than it is to use symbols. So I decided data processors ought to be able to write their programs in English, and the computers would translate them into machine code. That was the beginning of COBOL, a computer language for data processors. I could say 'Subtract income tax from pay' instead of trying to write that in octal code or using all kinds of symbols. COBOL is the major language used today in data processing."
In 1954 Hopper was named the company's first director of automatic programming, and her department released some of the first compiler-based programming languages, including MATH-MATIC and FLOW-MATIC.
COBOL
In the spring of 1959, computer experts from industry and government were brought together in a two-day conference known as the Conference on Data Systems Languages (CODASYL). Hopper served as a technical consultant to the committee, and many of her former employees served on the short-term committee that defined the new language COBOL (an acronym for COmmon Business-Oriented Language). The new language extended Hopper's FLOW-MATIC language with some ideas from the IBM equivalent, COMTRAN. Hopper's belief that programs should be written in a language that was close to English (rather than in machine code or in languages close to machine code, such as assembly languages) was captured in the new business language, and COBOL went on to be the most ubiquitous business language to date. Among the members of the committee that worked on COBOL was Mount Holyoke College alumna Jean E. Sammet.
From 1967 to 1977, Hopper served as the director of the Navy Programming Languages Group in the Navy's Office of Information Systems Planning and was promoted to the rank of captain in 1973. She developed validation software for COBOL and its compiler as part of a COBOL standardization program for the entire Navy.
Standards
In the 1970s, Hopper advocated for the Defense Department to replace large, centralized systems with networks of small, distributed computers. Any user on any computer node could access common databases located on the network. She developed the implementation of standards for testing computer systems and components, most significantly for early programming languages such as FORTRAN and COBOL. The Navy tests for conformance to these standards led to significant convergence among the programming language dialects of the major computer vendors. In the 1980s, these tests (and their official administration) were assumed by the National Bureau of Standards (NBS), known today as the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
Retirement
In accordance with Navy attrition regulations, Hopper retired from the Naval Reserve with the rank of commander at age 60 at the end of 1966. She was recalled to active duty in August 1967 for a six-month period that turned into an indefinite assignment. She again retired in 1971 but was again asked to return to active duty in 1972. She was promoted to captain in 1973 by Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt, Jr.
After Republican Representative Philip Crane saw her on a March 1983 segment of 60 Minutes, he championed , a joint resolution originating in the House of Representatives, which led to her promotion on 15 December 1983 to commodore by special Presidential appointment by President Ronald Reagan. She remained on active duty for several years beyond mandatory retirement by special approval of Congress. Effective November 8, 1985, the rank of commodore was renamed rear admiral (lower half) and Hopper became one of the Navy's few female admirals.
Following a career that spanned more than 42 years, Admiral Hopper took retirement from the Navy on August 14, 1986. At a celebration held in Boston on the to commemorate her retirement, Hopper was awarded the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, the highest non-combat decoration awarded by the Department of Defense.
At the time of her retirement, she was the oldest active-duty commissioned officer in the United States Navy (79 years, eight months and five days), and had her retirement ceremony aboard the oldest commissioned ship in the United States Navy (188 years, nine months and 23 days). Admirals William D. Leahy, Chester W. Nimitz, Hyman G. Rickover and Charles Stewart were the only other officers in the Navy's history to serve on active duty at a higher age. Leahy and Nimitz served on active duty for life due to their promotions to the rank of fleet admiral.
Post-retirement
Following her retirement from the Navy, she was hired as a senior consultant to Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). Hopper was initially offered a position by Rita Yavinsky, but she insisted on going through the typical formal interview process. She then proposed in jest that she would be willing to accept a position which made her available on alternating Thursdays, exhibited at their museum of computing as a pioneer, in exchange for a generous salary and unlimited expense account. Instead, she was hired as a full-time Principal Corporate Consulting Engineer, a tech-track SVP-equivalent. In this position, Hopper represented the company at industry forums, serving on various industry committees, along with other obligations. She retained that position until her death at age 85 in 1992.
At DEC Hopper served primarily as a goodwill ambassador. She lectured widely about the early days of computing, her career, and on efforts that computer vendors could take to make life easier for their users. She visited most of Digital's engineering facilities, where she generally received a standing ovation at the conclusion of her remarks. Although no longer a serving officer, she always wore her Navy full dress uniform to these lectures contrary to U.S. Department of Defense policy.
"The most important thing I've accomplished, other than building the compiler," she said, "is training young people. They come to me, you know, and say, 'Do you think we can do this?' I say, 'Try it.' And I back 'em up. They need that. I keep track of them as they get older and I stir 'em up at intervals so they don't forget to take chances."
Anecdotes
Throughout much of her later career, Hopper was much in demand as a speaker at various computer-related events. She was well known for her lively and irreverent speaking style, as well as a rich treasury of early war stories. She also received the nickname "Grandma COBOL".
While she was working on a Mark II Computer at Harvard University in 1947, her associates discovered a moth that was stuck in a relay and impeding the operation of the computer. Upon extraction, the insect was affixed to a log sheet for that day with the notation, “First actual case of a bug being found”. While neither she nor her crew members mentioned the exact phrase, "debugging", in their log entries, the case is held as a historical instance of "debugging" a computer and Hopper is credited with popularizing the term in computing. For many decades, the term "bug" for a malfunction had been in use in several fields before being applied to computers. The remains of the moth can be found taped into the group's log book at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.
Grace Hopper is famous for her nanoseconds visual aid. People (such as generals and admirals) used to ask her why satellite communication took so long. She started handing out pieces of wire that were just under one foot long——the distance that light travels in one nanosecond. She gave these pieces of wire the metonym "nanoseconds." She was careful to tell her audience that the length of her nanoseconds was actually the maximum speed the signals would travel in a vacuum, and that signals would travel more slowly through the actual wires that were her teaching aids. Later she used the same pieces of wire to illustrate why computers had to be small to be fast. At many of her talks and visits, she handed out "nanoseconds" to everyone in the audience, contrasting them with a coil of wire long, representing a microsecond. Later, while giving these lectures while working for DEC, she passed out packets of pepper, calling the individual grains of ground pepper picoseconds.
Jay Elliot described Grace Hopper as appearing to be " 'all Navy', but when you reach inside, you find a 'Pirate' dying to be released."
Death
On New Year's Day 1992, Hopper died in her sleep of natural causes at her home in Arlington, Virginia; she was 85 years of age. She was interred with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery.
Dates of rank
Awards and honors
Military awards
Other awards
1964: Hopper was awarded the Society of Women Engineers Achievement Award, the Society's highest honor, "In recognition of her significant contributions to the burgeoning computer industry as an engineering manager and originator of automatic programming systems." In May 1955, Hopper was one of the founding members of the Society of Women Engineers.
1969: Hopper was awarded the inaugural Data Processing Management Association Man of the Year award (now called the Distinguished Information Sciences Award).
1971: The annual Grace Murray Hopper Award for Outstanding Young Computer Professionals was established in 1971 by the Association for Computing Machinery.
1973: Elected to the U.S. National Academy of Engineering.
1973: First American and the first woman of any nationality to be made a Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society.
1981: Received an Honorary PhD from Clarkson University.
1982: American Association of University Women Achievement Award and an Honorary Doctor of Science from Marquette University.
1983: Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.
1985: Honorary Doctor of Letters from Western New England College (now Western New England University).
1986: Received the Defense Distinguished Service Medal at her retirement.
1986: Received an Honorary Doctor of Science from Syracuse University.
1987: She became the first Computer History Museum Fellow Award Recipient "for contributions to the development of programming languages, for standardization efforts, and for lifelong naval service."
1988: Received the Golden Gavel Award, Toastmasters International.
1991: National Medal of Technology.
1991: Elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
1992: The Society of Women Engineers established three annual, renewable, "Admiral Grace Murray Hopper Scholarships"
1994: Inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.
1996: was launched. Nicknamed Amazing Grace, it is on a very short list of U.S. military vessels named after women.
2001: Eavan Boland wrote a poem dedicated to Grace Hopper titled "Code" in her 2001 release Against Love Poetry.
2001: The Gracies, the Government Technology Leadership Award were named in her honor.
2009: The Department of Energy's National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center named its flagship system "Hopper".
2009: Office of Naval Intelligence creates the Grace Hopper Information Services Center.
2013: Google made the Google Doodle for Hopper's 107th birthday an animation of her sitting at a computer, using COBOL to print out her age. At the end of the animation, a moth flies out of the computer.
2016: On November 22, 2016, Hopper was posthumously awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom for her accomplishments in the field of computer science.
2017: Hopper College at Yale University was named in her honor.
2021: The Admiral Grace Hopper Award was established by the chancellor of the College of Information and Cyberspace (CIC) of the National Defense University to recognize leaders in the fields of information and cybersecurity throughout the National Security community.
Legacy
Grace Hopper was awarded 40 honorary degrees from universities worldwide during her lifetime.
Born with Curiosity: The Grace Hopper Story is an upcoming documentary film.
Nvidia is naming an upcoming GPU generation Hopper after Grace Hopper.
The Navy's Hopper Information Services Center is named for her.
The Navy named a guided-missile destroyer Hopper after her.
Places
Grace Hopper Avenue in Monterey, California, is the location of the Navy's Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center as well as the National Weather Service's San Francisco Bay Area forecast office.
Grace M. Hopper Navy Regional Data Automation Center at Naval Air Station, North Island, California.
Grace Murray Hopper Park, located on South Joyce Street in Arlington, Virginia, is a small memorial park in front of her former residence (River House Apartments) and is now owned by Arlington County, Virginia.
Brewster Academy, a school located in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, United States, dedicated their computer lab to her in 1985, calling it the Grace Murray Hopper Center for Computer Learning. The academy bestows a Grace Murray Hopper Prize to a graduate who excelled in the field of computer systems. Hopper had spent her childhood summers at a family home in Wolfeboro.
Grace Hopper College, one of the residential colleges of Yale University.
An administration building on Naval Support Activity Annapolis (previously known as Naval Station Annapolis) in Annapolis, Maryland is named the Grace Hopper Building in her honor.
Vice Admiral Walter E. "Ted" Carter announced on September 8, 2016 at the Athena Conference that the Naval Academy's newest Cyber Operations building would be named Hopper Hall after Admiral Grace Hopper. This is the first building at any service academy named after a woman. In his words, Grace Hopper was "the admiral of the cyber seas."
The US Naval Academy also owns a Cray XC-30 supercomputer named "Grace," hosted at the University of Maryland-College Park.
Building 1482 aboard Naval Air Station North Island, housing the Naval Computer and Telecommunication Station San Diego, is named the Grace Hopper Building, and also contains the History of Naval Communications Museum.
Building 6007, C2/CNT West in Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, is named after her.
The street outside of the Nathan Deal Georgia Cyber Innovation and Training Center in Augusta, Georgia, is named Grace Hopper Lane.
Grace Hopper Academy is a for-profit immersive programming school in New York City named in Grace Hopper's honor. It opened in January 2016 with the goal of increasing the proportion of women in software engineering careers.
A bridge over Goose Creek, to join the north and south sides of the Naval Support Activity Charleston side of Joint Base Charleston, South Carolina, is named the Grace Hopper Memorial Bridge in her honor.
Minor planet 5773 Hopper discovered by Eleanor Helin is named in her honor. The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on 8 November 2019 ().
Grace Hopper Hall, a community meeting hall in Orlando, Florida (located on the site of the former Orlando Naval Training Center) is named for her.
Programs
Women at Microsoft Corporation formed an employee group called Hoppers and established a scholarship in her honor.
Beginning in 2015, one of the nine competition fields at the FIRST Robotics Competition world championship is named for Hopper.
A named professorship in the Department of Computer Sciences was established at Yale University in her honor. Joan Feigenbaum was named to this chair in 2008.
In 2020, Google named its new undersea network cable 'Grace Hopper'. The cable will connect the US, UK and Spain and is estimated to be completed by 2022.
In popular culture
In his comic book series, Secret Coders by Gene Luen Yang, the main character is named Hopper Gracie-Hu.
Since 2013, Hopper's official portrait has been included in the matplotlib python library as sample data to replace the controversial Lenna image.
Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing
Her legacy was an inspiring factor in the creation of the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. Held yearly, this conference is designed to bring the research and career interests of women in computing to the forefront.
See also
Code: Debugging the Gender Gap
Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing
List of pioneers in computer science
Systems engineering
Women in computing
Women in the United States Navy
List of female United States military generals and flag officers
Timeline of women in science
Notes
Obituary notices
Betts, Mitch (Computerworld 26: 14, 1992)
Bromberg, Howard (IEEE Software 9: 103–104, 1992)
Danca, Richard A. (Federal Computer Week 6: 26–27, 1992)
Hancock, Bill (Digital Review 9: 40, 1992)
Power, Kevin (Government Computer News 11: 70, 1992)
Sammet, J. E. (Communications of the ACM 35 (4): 128–131, 1992)
Weiss, Eric A. (IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 14: 56–58, 1992)
References
Further reading
Williams' book focuses on the lives and contributions of four notable women scientists: Mary Sears (1905–1997); Florence van Straten (1913–1992); Grace Murray Hopper (1906–1992); Mina Spiegel Rees (1902–1997).
External links
Oral History of Captain Grace Hopper – Interviewed by: Angeline Pantages 1980, Naval Data Automation Command, Maryland.
from Chips, the United States Navy information technology magazine.
Grace Hopper: Navy to the Core, a Pirate at Heart (2014), To learn more about Hopper's story and Navy legacy navy.mil.
The Queen of Code (2015), a documentary film about Grace Hopper produced by FiveThirtyEight.
Norwood, Arlisha. "Grace Hopper". National Women's History Museum. 2017.
1906 births
1992 deaths
American computer programmers
American computer scientists
COBOL
Programming language designers
American women computer scientists
Women inventors
American women mathematicians
United States Navy rear admirals (lower half)
Female admirals of the United States Navy
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Fellows of the British Computer Society
National Medal of Technology recipients
Recipients of the Defense Distinguished Service Medal
Recipients of the Legion of Merit
Recipients of the Meritorious Service Medal (United States)
Harvard University people
Vassar College faculty
Military personnel from New York City
Vassar College alumni
Yale University alumni
American people of Dutch descent
American people of Scottish descent
Burials at Arlington National Cemetery
20th-century American engineers
20th-century American mathematicians
20th-century American scientists
20th-century American women scientists
Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients
Computer science educators
American software engineers
20th-century women mathematicians
Mathematicians from New York (state)
Wardlaw-Hartridge School alumni
WAVES personnel | true | [
"\"Talk About Love\" is a song recorded by Christine Anu. It was released in October 2003 as the first and only single from her third studio album, 45 Degrees (2003). The song peaked at number 85 on the ARIA Charts.\n\nContent\nLyrically, the song sees Anu confront someone who believes they know about love, without evidence:\n\n\"You talk about love / But I can't see any love coming out of your mind \nYou talk about truth / But you don't seem to know what the truth is all about \nYou talk about me / Tell me what you've done to make that come about \nTalk to me about something real, baby / Can you hear me now?\"\n\nTrack listing\nCD single/Digital download (021522)\n \"Talk About Love\" – 3:30\n \"Talk About Love\" (Jarrad Rogers and Tony Espie Remix) – 3:19\n \"Talk About Love\" (instrumental) – 3:30\n\nCharts\n\nReferences\n\n2003 songs\n2003 singles\nMushroom Records singles\nChristine Anu songs\nSongs written by Jarrad Rogers\nFunk songs\nAustralian pop rock songs\nSongs written by Gary Pinto",
"\"Tell Me How You Feel\" is a song by American singer and actress Joy Enriquez. It samples \"Mellow Mellow Right On\" by Lowrell Simon. The song was released as the second single from her debut self-titled studio album in September 2000, peaking at number 17 on the US Billboard Bubbling Under R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, number 24 in Australia and number 14 in New Zealand, where it was certified Gold for sales of over 5,000.\n\nTrack listings\n\nUS CD single\n \"Tell Me How You Feel\" – 4:06\n Snippets from Joy Enriquez\n \"Shake Up the Party\"\n \"Situation\"\n \"I Can't Believe\"\n\nAustralian maxi-CD single\n \"Tell Me How You Feel\" – 4:06\n \"Tell Me How You Feel\" (Full Crew remix) – 4:04\n \"Between You and Me\" – 4:21\n \"How Can I Not Love You\" – 4:33\n\nEuropean CD single\n \"Tell Me How You Feel\" (album version) – 4:06\n \"Tell Me How You Feel\" (Full Crew remix) – 4:05\n\nEuropean maxi-CD single\n \"Tell Me How You Feel\" (album version) – 4:06\n \"Tell Me How You Feel\" (Full Crew remix) – 4:05\n \"Dime mi amor\" (Spanish version) – 3:59\n \"Tell Me How You Feel\" (instrumental) – 4:05\n\nJapanese CD single\n \"Tell Me How You Feel\"\n \"How Can I Not Love You\"\n\nCharts\n\nCertifications\n\nRelease history\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n at Discogs\n\n2000 singles\n2000 songs\n2001 singles\nArista Records singles\nSong recordings produced by Soulshock and Karlin\nSongs written by Kenneth Karlin\nSongs written by Soulshock"
]
|
[
"Grace Hopper",
"Anecdotes",
"What can you tell me about her anecdotes?",
"Grace Hopper is famous for her nanoseconds visual aid."
]
| C_f3d8fdd6d43946db9eb69a1841255eb2_0 | How so? | 2 | How is Grace Hopper famous fro her nanoseconds visual aid? | Grace Hopper | Throughout much of her later career, Hopper was much in demand as a speaker at various computer-related events. She was well known for her lively and irreverent speaking style, as well as a rich treasury of early war stories. She also received the nickname "Grandma COBOL". While she was working on a Mark II Computer at a US Navy research lab in Dahlgren, Virginia in 1947, her associates discovered a moth that was stuck in a relay; the moth impeded the operation of the relay. While neither Hopper nor her crew mentioned the phrase "debugging" in their logs, the case was held as an instance of literal "debugging." For many years, the term bug had been in use in engineering. The remains of the moth can be found in the group's log book at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. Grace Hopper is famous for her nanoseconds visual aid. People (such as generals and admirals) used to ask her why satellite communication took so long. She started handing out pieces of wire that were just under one foot long (11.80 inches = 300 millimeters)--the distance that light travels in one nanosecond. She gave these pieces of wire the metonym "nanoseconds." She was careful to tell her audience that the length of her nanoseconds was actually the maximum speed the signals would travel in a vacuum, and that signals would travel more slowly through the actual wires that were her teaching aids. Later she used the same pieces of wire to illustrate why computers had to be small to be fast. At many of her talks and visits, she handed out "nanoseconds" to everyone in the audience, contrasting them with a coil of wire 984 feet long, representing a microsecond. Later, while giving these lectures while working for DEC, she passed out packets of pepper, calling the individual grains of ground pepper picoseconds. Jay Elliot described Grace Hopper as appearing to be "'all Navy', but when you reach inside, you find a 'Pirate' dying to be released". CANNOTANSWER | She started handing out pieces of wire that were just under one foot long (11.80 inches = 300 millimeters)-- | Grace Brewster Murray Hopper (; December 9, 1906 – January 1, 1992) was an American computer scientist and United States Navy rear admiral. One of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I computer, she was a pioneer of computer programming who invented one of the first linkers. Hopper was the first to devise the theory of machine-independent programming languages, and the FLOW-MATIC programming language she created using this theory was later extended to create COBOL, an early high-level programming language still in use today.
Prior to joining the Navy, Hopper earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from Yale University and was a professor of mathematics at Vassar College. Hopper attempted to enlist in the Navy during World War II but was rejected because she was 34 years old. She instead joined the Navy Reserves. Hopper began her computing career in 1944 when she worked on the Harvard Mark I team led by Howard H. Aiken. In 1949, she joined the Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation and was part of the team that developed the UNIVAC I computer. At Eckert–Mauchly she managed the development of one of the first COBOL compilers. She believed that a programming language based on English was possible. Her compiler converted English terms into machine code understood by computers. By 1952, Hopper had finished her program linker (originally called a compiler), which was written for the A-0 System. During her wartime service, she co-authored three papers based on her work on the Harvard Mark 1.
In 1954, Eckert–Mauchly chose Hopper to lead their department for automatic programming, and she led the release of some of the first compiled languages like FLOW-MATIC. In 1959, she participated in the CODASYL consortium, which consulted Hopper to guide them in creating a machine-independent programming language. This led to the COBOL language, which was inspired by her idea of a language being based on English words. In 1966, she retired from the Naval Reserve, but in 1967 the Navy recalled her to active duty. She retired from the Navy in 1986 and found work as a consultant for the Digital Equipment Corporation, sharing her computing experiences.
The U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyer was named for her, as was the Cray XE6 "Hopper" supercomputer at NERSC. During her lifetime, Hopper was awarded 40 honorary degrees from universities across the world. A college at Yale University was renamed in her honor. In 1991, she received the National Medal of Technology. On November 22, 2016, she was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama.
Early life and education
Grace Brewster Murray was born in New York City. She was the eldest of three children. Her parents, Walter Fletcher Murray and Mary Campbell Van Horne, were of Scottish and Dutch descent, and attended West End Collegiate Church. Her great-grandfather, Alexander Wilson Russell, an admiral in the US Navy, fought in the Battle of Mobile Bay during the Civil War.
Grace was very curious as a child; this was a lifelong trait. At the age of seven, she decided to determine how an alarm clock worked and dismantled seven alarm clocks before her mother realized what she was doing (she was then limited to one clock). For her preparatory school education, she attended the Hartridge School in Plainfield, New Jersey. Grace was initially rejected for early admission to Vassar College at age 16 (because her test scores in Latin were too low), but she was admitted the following year. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Vassar in 1928 with a bachelor's degree in mathematics and physics and earned her master's degree at Yale University in 1930.
In 1930 Grace Murray married New York University professor Vincent Foster Hopper (1906–1976); they divorced in 1945. Although she did not marry again, she retained his surname.
In 1934, Hopper earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from Yale under the direction of Øystein Ore. Her dissertation, "New Types of Irreducibility Criteria", was published that same year. She began teaching mathematics at Vassar in 1931, and was promoted to associate professor in 1941.
Career
World War II
Hopper tried to enlist in the Navy early in World War II. She was rejected for a few reasons. At age 34, she was too old to enlist, and her weight to height ratio was too low. She was also denied on the basis that her job as a mathematician and mathematics professor at Vassar College was valuable to the war effort. During the war in 1943, Hopper obtained a leave of absence from Vassar and was sworn into the United States Navy Reserve; she was one of many women who volunteered to serve in the WAVES. She had to get an exemption to enlist; she was below the Navy minimum weight of . She reported in December and trained at the Naval Reserve Midshipmen's School at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. Hopper graduated first in her class in 1944, and was assigned to the Bureau of Ships Computation Project at Harvard University as a lieutenant, junior grade. She served on the Mark I computer programming staff headed by Howard H. Aiken. Hopper and Aiken co-authored three papers on the Mark I, also known as the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator. Hopper's request to transfer to the regular Navy at the end of the war was declined due to her advanced age of 38. She continued to serve in the Navy Reserve. Hopper remained at the Harvard Computation Lab until 1949, turning down a full professorship at Vassar in favor of working as a research fellow under a Navy contract at Harvard.
UNIVAC
In 1949, Hopper became an employee of the Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation as a senior mathematician and joined the team developing the UNIVAC I. Hopper also served as UNIVAC director of Automatic Programming Development for Remington Rand. The UNIVAC was the first known large-scale electronic computer to be on the market in 1950, and was more competitive at processing information than the Mark I.
When Hopper recommended the development of a new programming language that would use entirely English words, she "was told very quickly that [she] couldn't do this because computers didn't understand English." Still, she persisted. "It's much easier for most people to write an English statement than it is to use symbols," she explained. "So I decided data processors ought to be able to write their programs in English, and the computers would translate them into machine code."
Her idea was not accepted for three years. In the meantime, she published her first paper on the subject, compilers, in 1952. In the early 1950s, the company was taken over by the Remington Rand corporation, and it was while she was working for them that her original compiler work was done. The program was known as the A compiler and its first version was A-0.
In 1952, she had an operational link-loader, which at the time was referred to as a compiler. She later said that "Nobody believed that," and that she "had a running compiler and nobody would touch it. They told me computers could only do arithmetic." She goes on to say that her compiler "translated mathematical notation into machine code. Manipulating symbols was fine for mathematicians but it was no good for data processors who were not symbol manipulators. Very few people are really symbol manipulators. If they are they become professional mathematicians, not data processors. It's much easier for most people to write an English statement than it is to use symbols. So I decided data processors ought to be able to write their programs in English, and the computers would translate them into machine code. That was the beginning of COBOL, a computer language for data processors. I could say 'Subtract income tax from pay' instead of trying to write that in octal code or using all kinds of symbols. COBOL is the major language used today in data processing."
In 1954 Hopper was named the company's first director of automatic programming, and her department released some of the first compiler-based programming languages, including MATH-MATIC and FLOW-MATIC.
COBOL
In the spring of 1959, computer experts from industry and government were brought together in a two-day conference known as the Conference on Data Systems Languages (CODASYL). Hopper served as a technical consultant to the committee, and many of her former employees served on the short-term committee that defined the new language COBOL (an acronym for COmmon Business-Oriented Language). The new language extended Hopper's FLOW-MATIC language with some ideas from the IBM equivalent, COMTRAN. Hopper's belief that programs should be written in a language that was close to English (rather than in machine code or in languages close to machine code, such as assembly languages) was captured in the new business language, and COBOL went on to be the most ubiquitous business language to date. Among the members of the committee that worked on COBOL was Mount Holyoke College alumna Jean E. Sammet.
From 1967 to 1977, Hopper served as the director of the Navy Programming Languages Group in the Navy's Office of Information Systems Planning and was promoted to the rank of captain in 1973. She developed validation software for COBOL and its compiler as part of a COBOL standardization program for the entire Navy.
Standards
In the 1970s, Hopper advocated for the Defense Department to replace large, centralized systems with networks of small, distributed computers. Any user on any computer node could access common databases located on the network. She developed the implementation of standards for testing computer systems and components, most significantly for early programming languages such as FORTRAN and COBOL. The Navy tests for conformance to these standards led to significant convergence among the programming language dialects of the major computer vendors. In the 1980s, these tests (and their official administration) were assumed by the National Bureau of Standards (NBS), known today as the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
Retirement
In accordance with Navy attrition regulations, Hopper retired from the Naval Reserve with the rank of commander at age 60 at the end of 1966. She was recalled to active duty in August 1967 for a six-month period that turned into an indefinite assignment. She again retired in 1971 but was again asked to return to active duty in 1972. She was promoted to captain in 1973 by Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt, Jr.
After Republican Representative Philip Crane saw her on a March 1983 segment of 60 Minutes, he championed , a joint resolution originating in the House of Representatives, which led to her promotion on 15 December 1983 to commodore by special Presidential appointment by President Ronald Reagan. She remained on active duty for several years beyond mandatory retirement by special approval of Congress. Effective November 8, 1985, the rank of commodore was renamed rear admiral (lower half) and Hopper became one of the Navy's few female admirals.
Following a career that spanned more than 42 years, Admiral Hopper took retirement from the Navy on August 14, 1986. At a celebration held in Boston on the to commemorate her retirement, Hopper was awarded the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, the highest non-combat decoration awarded by the Department of Defense.
At the time of her retirement, she was the oldest active-duty commissioned officer in the United States Navy (79 years, eight months and five days), and had her retirement ceremony aboard the oldest commissioned ship in the United States Navy (188 years, nine months and 23 days). Admirals William D. Leahy, Chester W. Nimitz, Hyman G. Rickover and Charles Stewart were the only other officers in the Navy's history to serve on active duty at a higher age. Leahy and Nimitz served on active duty for life due to their promotions to the rank of fleet admiral.
Post-retirement
Following her retirement from the Navy, she was hired as a senior consultant to Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). Hopper was initially offered a position by Rita Yavinsky, but she insisted on going through the typical formal interview process. She then proposed in jest that she would be willing to accept a position which made her available on alternating Thursdays, exhibited at their museum of computing as a pioneer, in exchange for a generous salary and unlimited expense account. Instead, she was hired as a full-time Principal Corporate Consulting Engineer, a tech-track SVP-equivalent. In this position, Hopper represented the company at industry forums, serving on various industry committees, along with other obligations. She retained that position until her death at age 85 in 1992.
At DEC Hopper served primarily as a goodwill ambassador. She lectured widely about the early days of computing, her career, and on efforts that computer vendors could take to make life easier for their users. She visited most of Digital's engineering facilities, where she generally received a standing ovation at the conclusion of her remarks. Although no longer a serving officer, she always wore her Navy full dress uniform to these lectures contrary to U.S. Department of Defense policy.
"The most important thing I've accomplished, other than building the compiler," she said, "is training young people. They come to me, you know, and say, 'Do you think we can do this?' I say, 'Try it.' And I back 'em up. They need that. I keep track of them as they get older and I stir 'em up at intervals so they don't forget to take chances."
Anecdotes
Throughout much of her later career, Hopper was much in demand as a speaker at various computer-related events. She was well known for her lively and irreverent speaking style, as well as a rich treasury of early war stories. She also received the nickname "Grandma COBOL".
While she was working on a Mark II Computer at Harvard University in 1947, her associates discovered a moth that was stuck in a relay and impeding the operation of the computer. Upon extraction, the insect was affixed to a log sheet for that day with the notation, “First actual case of a bug being found”. While neither she nor her crew members mentioned the exact phrase, "debugging", in their log entries, the case is held as a historical instance of "debugging" a computer and Hopper is credited with popularizing the term in computing. For many decades, the term "bug" for a malfunction had been in use in several fields before being applied to computers. The remains of the moth can be found taped into the group's log book at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.
Grace Hopper is famous for her nanoseconds visual aid. People (such as generals and admirals) used to ask her why satellite communication took so long. She started handing out pieces of wire that were just under one foot long——the distance that light travels in one nanosecond. She gave these pieces of wire the metonym "nanoseconds." She was careful to tell her audience that the length of her nanoseconds was actually the maximum speed the signals would travel in a vacuum, and that signals would travel more slowly through the actual wires that were her teaching aids. Later she used the same pieces of wire to illustrate why computers had to be small to be fast. At many of her talks and visits, she handed out "nanoseconds" to everyone in the audience, contrasting them with a coil of wire long, representing a microsecond. Later, while giving these lectures while working for DEC, she passed out packets of pepper, calling the individual grains of ground pepper picoseconds.
Jay Elliot described Grace Hopper as appearing to be " 'all Navy', but when you reach inside, you find a 'Pirate' dying to be released."
Death
On New Year's Day 1992, Hopper died in her sleep of natural causes at her home in Arlington, Virginia; she was 85 years of age. She was interred with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery.
Dates of rank
Awards and honors
Military awards
Other awards
1964: Hopper was awarded the Society of Women Engineers Achievement Award, the Society's highest honor, "In recognition of her significant contributions to the burgeoning computer industry as an engineering manager and originator of automatic programming systems." In May 1955, Hopper was one of the founding members of the Society of Women Engineers.
1969: Hopper was awarded the inaugural Data Processing Management Association Man of the Year award (now called the Distinguished Information Sciences Award).
1971: The annual Grace Murray Hopper Award for Outstanding Young Computer Professionals was established in 1971 by the Association for Computing Machinery.
1973: Elected to the U.S. National Academy of Engineering.
1973: First American and the first woman of any nationality to be made a Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society.
1981: Received an Honorary PhD from Clarkson University.
1982: American Association of University Women Achievement Award and an Honorary Doctor of Science from Marquette University.
1983: Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.
1985: Honorary Doctor of Letters from Western New England College (now Western New England University).
1986: Received the Defense Distinguished Service Medal at her retirement.
1986: Received an Honorary Doctor of Science from Syracuse University.
1987: She became the first Computer History Museum Fellow Award Recipient "for contributions to the development of programming languages, for standardization efforts, and for lifelong naval service."
1988: Received the Golden Gavel Award, Toastmasters International.
1991: National Medal of Technology.
1991: Elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
1992: The Society of Women Engineers established three annual, renewable, "Admiral Grace Murray Hopper Scholarships"
1994: Inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.
1996: was launched. Nicknamed Amazing Grace, it is on a very short list of U.S. military vessels named after women.
2001: Eavan Boland wrote a poem dedicated to Grace Hopper titled "Code" in her 2001 release Against Love Poetry.
2001: The Gracies, the Government Technology Leadership Award were named in her honor.
2009: The Department of Energy's National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center named its flagship system "Hopper".
2009: Office of Naval Intelligence creates the Grace Hopper Information Services Center.
2013: Google made the Google Doodle for Hopper's 107th birthday an animation of her sitting at a computer, using COBOL to print out her age. At the end of the animation, a moth flies out of the computer.
2016: On November 22, 2016, Hopper was posthumously awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom for her accomplishments in the field of computer science.
2017: Hopper College at Yale University was named in her honor.
2021: The Admiral Grace Hopper Award was established by the chancellor of the College of Information and Cyberspace (CIC) of the National Defense University to recognize leaders in the fields of information and cybersecurity throughout the National Security community.
Legacy
Grace Hopper was awarded 40 honorary degrees from universities worldwide during her lifetime.
Born with Curiosity: The Grace Hopper Story is an upcoming documentary film.
Nvidia is naming an upcoming GPU generation Hopper after Grace Hopper.
The Navy's Hopper Information Services Center is named for her.
The Navy named a guided-missile destroyer Hopper after her.
Places
Grace Hopper Avenue in Monterey, California, is the location of the Navy's Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center as well as the National Weather Service's San Francisco Bay Area forecast office.
Grace M. Hopper Navy Regional Data Automation Center at Naval Air Station, North Island, California.
Grace Murray Hopper Park, located on South Joyce Street in Arlington, Virginia, is a small memorial park in front of her former residence (River House Apartments) and is now owned by Arlington County, Virginia.
Brewster Academy, a school located in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, United States, dedicated their computer lab to her in 1985, calling it the Grace Murray Hopper Center for Computer Learning. The academy bestows a Grace Murray Hopper Prize to a graduate who excelled in the field of computer systems. Hopper had spent her childhood summers at a family home in Wolfeboro.
Grace Hopper College, one of the residential colleges of Yale University.
An administration building on Naval Support Activity Annapolis (previously known as Naval Station Annapolis) in Annapolis, Maryland is named the Grace Hopper Building in her honor.
Vice Admiral Walter E. "Ted" Carter announced on September 8, 2016 at the Athena Conference that the Naval Academy's newest Cyber Operations building would be named Hopper Hall after Admiral Grace Hopper. This is the first building at any service academy named after a woman. In his words, Grace Hopper was "the admiral of the cyber seas."
The US Naval Academy also owns a Cray XC-30 supercomputer named "Grace," hosted at the University of Maryland-College Park.
Building 1482 aboard Naval Air Station North Island, housing the Naval Computer and Telecommunication Station San Diego, is named the Grace Hopper Building, and also contains the History of Naval Communications Museum.
Building 6007, C2/CNT West in Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, is named after her.
The street outside of the Nathan Deal Georgia Cyber Innovation and Training Center in Augusta, Georgia, is named Grace Hopper Lane.
Grace Hopper Academy is a for-profit immersive programming school in New York City named in Grace Hopper's honor. It opened in January 2016 with the goal of increasing the proportion of women in software engineering careers.
A bridge over Goose Creek, to join the north and south sides of the Naval Support Activity Charleston side of Joint Base Charleston, South Carolina, is named the Grace Hopper Memorial Bridge in her honor.
Minor planet 5773 Hopper discovered by Eleanor Helin is named in her honor. The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on 8 November 2019 ().
Grace Hopper Hall, a community meeting hall in Orlando, Florida (located on the site of the former Orlando Naval Training Center) is named for her.
Programs
Women at Microsoft Corporation formed an employee group called Hoppers and established a scholarship in her honor.
Beginning in 2015, one of the nine competition fields at the FIRST Robotics Competition world championship is named for Hopper.
A named professorship in the Department of Computer Sciences was established at Yale University in her honor. Joan Feigenbaum was named to this chair in 2008.
In 2020, Google named its new undersea network cable 'Grace Hopper'. The cable will connect the US, UK and Spain and is estimated to be completed by 2022.
In popular culture
In his comic book series, Secret Coders by Gene Luen Yang, the main character is named Hopper Gracie-Hu.
Since 2013, Hopper's official portrait has been included in the matplotlib python library as sample data to replace the controversial Lenna image.
Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing
Her legacy was an inspiring factor in the creation of the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. Held yearly, this conference is designed to bring the research and career interests of women in computing to the forefront.
See also
Code: Debugging the Gender Gap
Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing
List of pioneers in computer science
Systems engineering
Women in computing
Women in the United States Navy
List of female United States military generals and flag officers
Timeline of women in science
Notes
Obituary notices
Betts, Mitch (Computerworld 26: 14, 1992)
Bromberg, Howard (IEEE Software 9: 103–104, 1992)
Danca, Richard A. (Federal Computer Week 6: 26–27, 1992)
Hancock, Bill (Digital Review 9: 40, 1992)
Power, Kevin (Government Computer News 11: 70, 1992)
Sammet, J. E. (Communications of the ACM 35 (4): 128–131, 1992)
Weiss, Eric A. (IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 14: 56–58, 1992)
References
Further reading
Williams' book focuses on the lives and contributions of four notable women scientists: Mary Sears (1905–1997); Florence van Straten (1913–1992); Grace Murray Hopper (1906–1992); Mina Spiegel Rees (1902–1997).
External links
Oral History of Captain Grace Hopper – Interviewed by: Angeline Pantages 1980, Naval Data Automation Command, Maryland.
from Chips, the United States Navy information technology magazine.
Grace Hopper: Navy to the Core, a Pirate at Heart (2014), To learn more about Hopper's story and Navy legacy navy.mil.
The Queen of Code (2015), a documentary film about Grace Hopper produced by FiveThirtyEight.
Norwood, Arlisha. "Grace Hopper". National Women's History Museum. 2017.
1906 births
1992 deaths
American computer programmers
American computer scientists
COBOL
Programming language designers
American women computer scientists
Women inventors
American women mathematicians
United States Navy rear admirals (lower half)
Female admirals of the United States Navy
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Fellows of the British Computer Society
National Medal of Technology recipients
Recipients of the Defense Distinguished Service Medal
Recipients of the Legion of Merit
Recipients of the Meritorious Service Medal (United States)
Harvard University people
Vassar College faculty
Military personnel from New York City
Vassar College alumni
Yale University alumni
American people of Dutch descent
American people of Scottish descent
Burials at Arlington National Cemetery
20th-century American engineers
20th-century American mathematicians
20th-century American scientists
20th-century American women scientists
Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients
Computer science educators
American software engineers
20th-century women mathematicians
Mathematicians from New York (state)
Wardlaw-Hartridge School alumni
WAVES personnel | false | [
"Adele Faber (born January 12, 1928) is an American author. She writes books about parenting and families and is an expert on communication between adults and children. She currently resides in Long Island, New York and is the parent of three children.\n\nBiography \nFaber graduated from the Queens College with a B.A. in theater and drama and earned her master's degree in education from New York University. She also taught in the New York City High schools for eight years. Having studied with the late child psychologist, Dr. Haim Ginott, Faber is also a former member of the faculty of The New School for Social Research in New York and The Family Life Institute of Long Island University.\n\nBibliography \nBooks that Adele Faber has authored/co-authored, many of them intended for parents struggling to take care of their children, include:\n How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk\n Siblings Without Rivalry: How to Help Your Children Live Together So You Can Live Too\n How To Talk So Kids Can Learn\n How to Talk So Teens Will Listen and Listen So Teens Will Talk \n Liberated Parents, Liberated Children: Your Guide to a Happier Family \n How To Be The Parent You Always Wanted To Be \n Hercules: The Man, The Myth, The Hero \n In common cause \n Between Brothers and Sisters \n How to Talk So Kids Will Listen Book Summary \n Bobby and the Brockles Go to School \n Bobby and the Brockles \n How To Stop Your Children Fighting\n\nSee also \n\n Haim Ginott\n Elaine Mazlish\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n LONG ISLAND Q&A: ADELE FABER AND ELAINE MAZLISH;2 Writers Guide Parents in Communicating With Children\n Adele Faber as featured on Harper Collins Publishers\n\nLiving people\n1928 births\nWriters from New York City\nQueens College, City University of New York alumni\nNew York University alumni",
"How Dare You may refer to:\n How Dare You! (TV series), a UK children's TV series from 1984 to 1987\n How Dare You (speech), by Greta Thunberg at the 2019 UN Climate Action Summit\n\nMusic\n How Dare You! (album), by 10cc\nHow Dare You? (Electric Six album), 2017\n \"How Dare You!\", a song by 10cc, a B-side of \"I'm Mandy Fly Me\"\n \"How Dare You\", So Cool (Sistar album)\n \"How Dare You\", a song by Whodini from Back in Black\n \"How Dare You\", a song by Lupe Fiasco from Food & Liquor II: The Great American Rap Album Pt. 1"
]
|
[
"Grace Hopper",
"Anecdotes",
"What can you tell me about her anecdotes?",
"Grace Hopper is famous for her nanoseconds visual aid.",
"How so?",
"She started handing out pieces of wire that were just under one foot long (11.80 inches = 300 millimeters)--"
]
| C_f3d8fdd6d43946db9eb69a1841255eb2_0 | Why did she do this? | 3 | Why did Grace Hopper start handing out wire? | Grace Hopper | Throughout much of her later career, Hopper was much in demand as a speaker at various computer-related events. She was well known for her lively and irreverent speaking style, as well as a rich treasury of early war stories. She also received the nickname "Grandma COBOL". While she was working on a Mark II Computer at a US Navy research lab in Dahlgren, Virginia in 1947, her associates discovered a moth that was stuck in a relay; the moth impeded the operation of the relay. While neither Hopper nor her crew mentioned the phrase "debugging" in their logs, the case was held as an instance of literal "debugging." For many years, the term bug had been in use in engineering. The remains of the moth can be found in the group's log book at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. Grace Hopper is famous for her nanoseconds visual aid. People (such as generals and admirals) used to ask her why satellite communication took so long. She started handing out pieces of wire that were just under one foot long (11.80 inches = 300 millimeters)--the distance that light travels in one nanosecond. She gave these pieces of wire the metonym "nanoseconds." She was careful to tell her audience that the length of her nanoseconds was actually the maximum speed the signals would travel in a vacuum, and that signals would travel more slowly through the actual wires that were her teaching aids. Later she used the same pieces of wire to illustrate why computers had to be small to be fast. At many of her talks and visits, she handed out "nanoseconds" to everyone in the audience, contrasting them with a coil of wire 984 feet long, representing a microsecond. Later, while giving these lectures while working for DEC, she passed out packets of pepper, calling the individual grains of ground pepper picoseconds. Jay Elliot described Grace Hopper as appearing to be "'all Navy', but when you reach inside, you find a 'Pirate' dying to be released". CANNOTANSWER | (11.80 inches = 300 millimeters)--the distance that light travels in one nanosecond. | Grace Brewster Murray Hopper (; December 9, 1906 – January 1, 1992) was an American computer scientist and United States Navy rear admiral. One of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I computer, she was a pioneer of computer programming who invented one of the first linkers. Hopper was the first to devise the theory of machine-independent programming languages, and the FLOW-MATIC programming language she created using this theory was later extended to create COBOL, an early high-level programming language still in use today.
Prior to joining the Navy, Hopper earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from Yale University and was a professor of mathematics at Vassar College. Hopper attempted to enlist in the Navy during World War II but was rejected because she was 34 years old. She instead joined the Navy Reserves. Hopper began her computing career in 1944 when she worked on the Harvard Mark I team led by Howard H. Aiken. In 1949, she joined the Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation and was part of the team that developed the UNIVAC I computer. At Eckert–Mauchly she managed the development of one of the first COBOL compilers. She believed that a programming language based on English was possible. Her compiler converted English terms into machine code understood by computers. By 1952, Hopper had finished her program linker (originally called a compiler), which was written for the A-0 System. During her wartime service, she co-authored three papers based on her work on the Harvard Mark 1.
In 1954, Eckert–Mauchly chose Hopper to lead their department for automatic programming, and she led the release of some of the first compiled languages like FLOW-MATIC. In 1959, she participated in the CODASYL consortium, which consulted Hopper to guide them in creating a machine-independent programming language. This led to the COBOL language, which was inspired by her idea of a language being based on English words. In 1966, she retired from the Naval Reserve, but in 1967 the Navy recalled her to active duty. She retired from the Navy in 1986 and found work as a consultant for the Digital Equipment Corporation, sharing her computing experiences.
The U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyer was named for her, as was the Cray XE6 "Hopper" supercomputer at NERSC. During her lifetime, Hopper was awarded 40 honorary degrees from universities across the world. A college at Yale University was renamed in her honor. In 1991, she received the National Medal of Technology. On November 22, 2016, she was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama.
Early life and education
Grace Brewster Murray was born in New York City. She was the eldest of three children. Her parents, Walter Fletcher Murray and Mary Campbell Van Horne, were of Scottish and Dutch descent, and attended West End Collegiate Church. Her great-grandfather, Alexander Wilson Russell, an admiral in the US Navy, fought in the Battle of Mobile Bay during the Civil War.
Grace was very curious as a child; this was a lifelong trait. At the age of seven, she decided to determine how an alarm clock worked and dismantled seven alarm clocks before her mother realized what she was doing (she was then limited to one clock). For her preparatory school education, she attended the Hartridge School in Plainfield, New Jersey. Grace was initially rejected for early admission to Vassar College at age 16 (because her test scores in Latin were too low), but she was admitted the following year. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Vassar in 1928 with a bachelor's degree in mathematics and physics and earned her master's degree at Yale University in 1930.
In 1930 Grace Murray married New York University professor Vincent Foster Hopper (1906–1976); they divorced in 1945. Although she did not marry again, she retained his surname.
In 1934, Hopper earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from Yale under the direction of Øystein Ore. Her dissertation, "New Types of Irreducibility Criteria", was published that same year. She began teaching mathematics at Vassar in 1931, and was promoted to associate professor in 1941.
Career
World War II
Hopper tried to enlist in the Navy early in World War II. She was rejected for a few reasons. At age 34, she was too old to enlist, and her weight to height ratio was too low. She was also denied on the basis that her job as a mathematician and mathematics professor at Vassar College was valuable to the war effort. During the war in 1943, Hopper obtained a leave of absence from Vassar and was sworn into the United States Navy Reserve; she was one of many women who volunteered to serve in the WAVES. She had to get an exemption to enlist; she was below the Navy minimum weight of . She reported in December and trained at the Naval Reserve Midshipmen's School at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. Hopper graduated first in her class in 1944, and was assigned to the Bureau of Ships Computation Project at Harvard University as a lieutenant, junior grade. She served on the Mark I computer programming staff headed by Howard H. Aiken. Hopper and Aiken co-authored three papers on the Mark I, also known as the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator. Hopper's request to transfer to the regular Navy at the end of the war was declined due to her advanced age of 38. She continued to serve in the Navy Reserve. Hopper remained at the Harvard Computation Lab until 1949, turning down a full professorship at Vassar in favor of working as a research fellow under a Navy contract at Harvard.
UNIVAC
In 1949, Hopper became an employee of the Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation as a senior mathematician and joined the team developing the UNIVAC I. Hopper also served as UNIVAC director of Automatic Programming Development for Remington Rand. The UNIVAC was the first known large-scale electronic computer to be on the market in 1950, and was more competitive at processing information than the Mark I.
When Hopper recommended the development of a new programming language that would use entirely English words, she "was told very quickly that [she] couldn't do this because computers didn't understand English." Still, she persisted. "It's much easier for most people to write an English statement than it is to use symbols," she explained. "So I decided data processors ought to be able to write their programs in English, and the computers would translate them into machine code."
Her idea was not accepted for three years. In the meantime, she published her first paper on the subject, compilers, in 1952. In the early 1950s, the company was taken over by the Remington Rand corporation, and it was while she was working for them that her original compiler work was done. The program was known as the A compiler and its first version was A-0.
In 1952, she had an operational link-loader, which at the time was referred to as a compiler. She later said that "Nobody believed that," and that she "had a running compiler and nobody would touch it. They told me computers could only do arithmetic." She goes on to say that her compiler "translated mathematical notation into machine code. Manipulating symbols was fine for mathematicians but it was no good for data processors who were not symbol manipulators. Very few people are really symbol manipulators. If they are they become professional mathematicians, not data processors. It's much easier for most people to write an English statement than it is to use symbols. So I decided data processors ought to be able to write their programs in English, and the computers would translate them into machine code. That was the beginning of COBOL, a computer language for data processors. I could say 'Subtract income tax from pay' instead of trying to write that in octal code or using all kinds of symbols. COBOL is the major language used today in data processing."
In 1954 Hopper was named the company's first director of automatic programming, and her department released some of the first compiler-based programming languages, including MATH-MATIC and FLOW-MATIC.
COBOL
In the spring of 1959, computer experts from industry and government were brought together in a two-day conference known as the Conference on Data Systems Languages (CODASYL). Hopper served as a technical consultant to the committee, and many of her former employees served on the short-term committee that defined the new language COBOL (an acronym for COmmon Business-Oriented Language). The new language extended Hopper's FLOW-MATIC language with some ideas from the IBM equivalent, COMTRAN. Hopper's belief that programs should be written in a language that was close to English (rather than in machine code or in languages close to machine code, such as assembly languages) was captured in the new business language, and COBOL went on to be the most ubiquitous business language to date. Among the members of the committee that worked on COBOL was Mount Holyoke College alumna Jean E. Sammet.
From 1967 to 1977, Hopper served as the director of the Navy Programming Languages Group in the Navy's Office of Information Systems Planning and was promoted to the rank of captain in 1973. She developed validation software for COBOL and its compiler as part of a COBOL standardization program for the entire Navy.
Standards
In the 1970s, Hopper advocated for the Defense Department to replace large, centralized systems with networks of small, distributed computers. Any user on any computer node could access common databases located on the network. She developed the implementation of standards for testing computer systems and components, most significantly for early programming languages such as FORTRAN and COBOL. The Navy tests for conformance to these standards led to significant convergence among the programming language dialects of the major computer vendors. In the 1980s, these tests (and their official administration) were assumed by the National Bureau of Standards (NBS), known today as the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
Retirement
In accordance with Navy attrition regulations, Hopper retired from the Naval Reserve with the rank of commander at age 60 at the end of 1966. She was recalled to active duty in August 1967 for a six-month period that turned into an indefinite assignment. She again retired in 1971 but was again asked to return to active duty in 1972. She was promoted to captain in 1973 by Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt, Jr.
After Republican Representative Philip Crane saw her on a March 1983 segment of 60 Minutes, he championed , a joint resolution originating in the House of Representatives, which led to her promotion on 15 December 1983 to commodore by special Presidential appointment by President Ronald Reagan. She remained on active duty for several years beyond mandatory retirement by special approval of Congress. Effective November 8, 1985, the rank of commodore was renamed rear admiral (lower half) and Hopper became one of the Navy's few female admirals.
Following a career that spanned more than 42 years, Admiral Hopper took retirement from the Navy on August 14, 1986. At a celebration held in Boston on the to commemorate her retirement, Hopper was awarded the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, the highest non-combat decoration awarded by the Department of Defense.
At the time of her retirement, she was the oldest active-duty commissioned officer in the United States Navy (79 years, eight months and five days), and had her retirement ceremony aboard the oldest commissioned ship in the United States Navy (188 years, nine months and 23 days). Admirals William D. Leahy, Chester W. Nimitz, Hyman G. Rickover and Charles Stewart were the only other officers in the Navy's history to serve on active duty at a higher age. Leahy and Nimitz served on active duty for life due to their promotions to the rank of fleet admiral.
Post-retirement
Following her retirement from the Navy, she was hired as a senior consultant to Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). Hopper was initially offered a position by Rita Yavinsky, but she insisted on going through the typical formal interview process. She then proposed in jest that she would be willing to accept a position which made her available on alternating Thursdays, exhibited at their museum of computing as a pioneer, in exchange for a generous salary and unlimited expense account. Instead, she was hired as a full-time Principal Corporate Consulting Engineer, a tech-track SVP-equivalent. In this position, Hopper represented the company at industry forums, serving on various industry committees, along with other obligations. She retained that position until her death at age 85 in 1992.
At DEC Hopper served primarily as a goodwill ambassador. She lectured widely about the early days of computing, her career, and on efforts that computer vendors could take to make life easier for their users. She visited most of Digital's engineering facilities, where she generally received a standing ovation at the conclusion of her remarks. Although no longer a serving officer, she always wore her Navy full dress uniform to these lectures contrary to U.S. Department of Defense policy.
"The most important thing I've accomplished, other than building the compiler," she said, "is training young people. They come to me, you know, and say, 'Do you think we can do this?' I say, 'Try it.' And I back 'em up. They need that. I keep track of them as they get older and I stir 'em up at intervals so they don't forget to take chances."
Anecdotes
Throughout much of her later career, Hopper was much in demand as a speaker at various computer-related events. She was well known for her lively and irreverent speaking style, as well as a rich treasury of early war stories. She also received the nickname "Grandma COBOL".
While she was working on a Mark II Computer at Harvard University in 1947, her associates discovered a moth that was stuck in a relay and impeding the operation of the computer. Upon extraction, the insect was affixed to a log sheet for that day with the notation, “First actual case of a bug being found”. While neither she nor her crew members mentioned the exact phrase, "debugging", in their log entries, the case is held as a historical instance of "debugging" a computer and Hopper is credited with popularizing the term in computing. For many decades, the term "bug" for a malfunction had been in use in several fields before being applied to computers. The remains of the moth can be found taped into the group's log book at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.
Grace Hopper is famous for her nanoseconds visual aid. People (such as generals and admirals) used to ask her why satellite communication took so long. She started handing out pieces of wire that were just under one foot long——the distance that light travels in one nanosecond. She gave these pieces of wire the metonym "nanoseconds." She was careful to tell her audience that the length of her nanoseconds was actually the maximum speed the signals would travel in a vacuum, and that signals would travel more slowly through the actual wires that were her teaching aids. Later she used the same pieces of wire to illustrate why computers had to be small to be fast. At many of her talks and visits, she handed out "nanoseconds" to everyone in the audience, contrasting them with a coil of wire long, representing a microsecond. Later, while giving these lectures while working for DEC, she passed out packets of pepper, calling the individual grains of ground pepper picoseconds.
Jay Elliot described Grace Hopper as appearing to be " 'all Navy', but when you reach inside, you find a 'Pirate' dying to be released."
Death
On New Year's Day 1992, Hopper died in her sleep of natural causes at her home in Arlington, Virginia; she was 85 years of age. She was interred with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery.
Dates of rank
Awards and honors
Military awards
Other awards
1964: Hopper was awarded the Society of Women Engineers Achievement Award, the Society's highest honor, "In recognition of her significant contributions to the burgeoning computer industry as an engineering manager and originator of automatic programming systems." In May 1955, Hopper was one of the founding members of the Society of Women Engineers.
1969: Hopper was awarded the inaugural Data Processing Management Association Man of the Year award (now called the Distinguished Information Sciences Award).
1971: The annual Grace Murray Hopper Award for Outstanding Young Computer Professionals was established in 1971 by the Association for Computing Machinery.
1973: Elected to the U.S. National Academy of Engineering.
1973: First American and the first woman of any nationality to be made a Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society.
1981: Received an Honorary PhD from Clarkson University.
1982: American Association of University Women Achievement Award and an Honorary Doctor of Science from Marquette University.
1983: Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.
1985: Honorary Doctor of Letters from Western New England College (now Western New England University).
1986: Received the Defense Distinguished Service Medal at her retirement.
1986: Received an Honorary Doctor of Science from Syracuse University.
1987: She became the first Computer History Museum Fellow Award Recipient "for contributions to the development of programming languages, for standardization efforts, and for lifelong naval service."
1988: Received the Golden Gavel Award, Toastmasters International.
1991: National Medal of Technology.
1991: Elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
1992: The Society of Women Engineers established three annual, renewable, "Admiral Grace Murray Hopper Scholarships"
1994: Inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.
1996: was launched. Nicknamed Amazing Grace, it is on a very short list of U.S. military vessels named after women.
2001: Eavan Boland wrote a poem dedicated to Grace Hopper titled "Code" in her 2001 release Against Love Poetry.
2001: The Gracies, the Government Technology Leadership Award were named in her honor.
2009: The Department of Energy's National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center named its flagship system "Hopper".
2009: Office of Naval Intelligence creates the Grace Hopper Information Services Center.
2013: Google made the Google Doodle for Hopper's 107th birthday an animation of her sitting at a computer, using COBOL to print out her age. At the end of the animation, a moth flies out of the computer.
2016: On November 22, 2016, Hopper was posthumously awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom for her accomplishments in the field of computer science.
2017: Hopper College at Yale University was named in her honor.
2021: The Admiral Grace Hopper Award was established by the chancellor of the College of Information and Cyberspace (CIC) of the National Defense University to recognize leaders in the fields of information and cybersecurity throughout the National Security community.
Legacy
Grace Hopper was awarded 40 honorary degrees from universities worldwide during her lifetime.
Born with Curiosity: The Grace Hopper Story is an upcoming documentary film.
Nvidia is naming an upcoming GPU generation Hopper after Grace Hopper.
The Navy's Hopper Information Services Center is named for her.
The Navy named a guided-missile destroyer Hopper after her.
Places
Grace Hopper Avenue in Monterey, California, is the location of the Navy's Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center as well as the National Weather Service's San Francisco Bay Area forecast office.
Grace M. Hopper Navy Regional Data Automation Center at Naval Air Station, North Island, California.
Grace Murray Hopper Park, located on South Joyce Street in Arlington, Virginia, is a small memorial park in front of her former residence (River House Apartments) and is now owned by Arlington County, Virginia.
Brewster Academy, a school located in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, United States, dedicated their computer lab to her in 1985, calling it the Grace Murray Hopper Center for Computer Learning. The academy bestows a Grace Murray Hopper Prize to a graduate who excelled in the field of computer systems. Hopper had spent her childhood summers at a family home in Wolfeboro.
Grace Hopper College, one of the residential colleges of Yale University.
An administration building on Naval Support Activity Annapolis (previously known as Naval Station Annapolis) in Annapolis, Maryland is named the Grace Hopper Building in her honor.
Vice Admiral Walter E. "Ted" Carter announced on September 8, 2016 at the Athena Conference that the Naval Academy's newest Cyber Operations building would be named Hopper Hall after Admiral Grace Hopper. This is the first building at any service academy named after a woman. In his words, Grace Hopper was "the admiral of the cyber seas."
The US Naval Academy also owns a Cray XC-30 supercomputer named "Grace," hosted at the University of Maryland-College Park.
Building 1482 aboard Naval Air Station North Island, housing the Naval Computer and Telecommunication Station San Diego, is named the Grace Hopper Building, and also contains the History of Naval Communications Museum.
Building 6007, C2/CNT West in Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, is named after her.
The street outside of the Nathan Deal Georgia Cyber Innovation and Training Center in Augusta, Georgia, is named Grace Hopper Lane.
Grace Hopper Academy is a for-profit immersive programming school in New York City named in Grace Hopper's honor. It opened in January 2016 with the goal of increasing the proportion of women in software engineering careers.
A bridge over Goose Creek, to join the north and south sides of the Naval Support Activity Charleston side of Joint Base Charleston, South Carolina, is named the Grace Hopper Memorial Bridge in her honor.
Minor planet 5773 Hopper discovered by Eleanor Helin is named in her honor. The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on 8 November 2019 ().
Grace Hopper Hall, a community meeting hall in Orlando, Florida (located on the site of the former Orlando Naval Training Center) is named for her.
Programs
Women at Microsoft Corporation formed an employee group called Hoppers and established a scholarship in her honor.
Beginning in 2015, one of the nine competition fields at the FIRST Robotics Competition world championship is named for Hopper.
A named professorship in the Department of Computer Sciences was established at Yale University in her honor. Joan Feigenbaum was named to this chair in 2008.
In 2020, Google named its new undersea network cable 'Grace Hopper'. The cable will connect the US, UK and Spain and is estimated to be completed by 2022.
In popular culture
In his comic book series, Secret Coders by Gene Luen Yang, the main character is named Hopper Gracie-Hu.
Since 2013, Hopper's official portrait has been included in the matplotlib python library as sample data to replace the controversial Lenna image.
Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing
Her legacy was an inspiring factor in the creation of the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. Held yearly, this conference is designed to bring the research and career interests of women in computing to the forefront.
See also
Code: Debugging the Gender Gap
Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing
List of pioneers in computer science
Systems engineering
Women in computing
Women in the United States Navy
List of female United States military generals and flag officers
Timeline of women in science
Notes
Obituary notices
Betts, Mitch (Computerworld 26: 14, 1992)
Bromberg, Howard (IEEE Software 9: 103–104, 1992)
Danca, Richard A. (Federal Computer Week 6: 26–27, 1992)
Hancock, Bill (Digital Review 9: 40, 1992)
Power, Kevin (Government Computer News 11: 70, 1992)
Sammet, J. E. (Communications of the ACM 35 (4): 128–131, 1992)
Weiss, Eric A. (IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 14: 56–58, 1992)
References
Further reading
Williams' book focuses on the lives and contributions of four notable women scientists: Mary Sears (1905–1997); Florence van Straten (1913–1992); Grace Murray Hopper (1906–1992); Mina Spiegel Rees (1902–1997).
External links
Oral History of Captain Grace Hopper – Interviewed by: Angeline Pantages 1980, Naval Data Automation Command, Maryland.
from Chips, the United States Navy information technology magazine.
Grace Hopper: Navy to the Core, a Pirate at Heart (2014), To learn more about Hopper's story and Navy legacy navy.mil.
The Queen of Code (2015), a documentary film about Grace Hopper produced by FiveThirtyEight.
Norwood, Arlisha. "Grace Hopper". National Women's History Museum. 2017.
1906 births
1992 deaths
American computer programmers
American computer scientists
COBOL
Programming language designers
American women computer scientists
Women inventors
American women mathematicians
United States Navy rear admirals (lower half)
Female admirals of the United States Navy
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Fellows of the British Computer Society
National Medal of Technology recipients
Recipients of the Defense Distinguished Service Medal
Recipients of the Legion of Merit
Recipients of the Meritorious Service Medal (United States)
Harvard University people
Vassar College faculty
Military personnel from New York City
Vassar College alumni
Yale University alumni
American people of Dutch descent
American people of Scottish descent
Burials at Arlington National Cemetery
20th-century American engineers
20th-century American mathematicians
20th-century American scientists
20th-century American women scientists
Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients
Computer science educators
American software engineers
20th-century women mathematicians
Mathematicians from New York (state)
Wardlaw-Hartridge School alumni
WAVES personnel | false | [
"\"Why Did You Do That?\" is a song recorded by American singer Lady Gaga for the 2018 film A Star Is Born and released on the soundtrack of the same name. It was written by Gaga with Diane Warren, Mark Nilan Jr., Nick Monson and Paul \"DJWS\" Blair, and produced by all but Warren. The song appears in the film during a sequence when Gaga's character, Ally, performs on Saturday Night Live, watched by her husband Jackson (played by co-star Bradley Cooper). Later Jackson berates Ally for selling out with the song's trite lyrics, but she defends it. \"Why Did You Do That?\" was written to evoke both a retro and a modern feel, and was recorded while Gaga was on her Joanne World Tour.\n\nThe song is interspersed with the sound of a xylophone and a repetitive chorus and post-chorus. After its release, the track received a great deal of attention for its lyrics, which some critics and fans felt were a critique of pop music. The songwriters defended the track, saying it was specifically written to emphasize that Ally's career was on the rise as Jackson's was declining.\n\nRecording and composition\n\n\"Why Did You Do That?\" was written by Gaga with Diane Warren, Mark Nilan Jr., Nick Monson and Paul \"DJWS\" Blair; all but Warren produced it. The singer had first collaborated with Warren on the 2015 sexual assault-themed song, \"Til It Happens to You\". Wanting to create a \"cool and fun Gaga song\", Warren wrote the lyrics of \"Why Did You Do That?\" against a backing track. Gaga wanted a \"retro/modern feel\" to the song and wanted Warren to get out of her comfort zone of writing alone. Monson had worked with Gaga on her third studio album, Artpop (2013), and was called in to write songs for A Star Is Born in early March 2017. Around two and a half years before, Paul \"DJWS\" Blair asked Mark Nilan Jr. to come to The Village West studio in Los Angeles and do a songwriting session with Gaga and Warren, resulting in the initial version of \"Why Did You Do That?\".\n\nCooper and Gaga began working with producers on the songs for A Star Is Born in a recording studio in Los Angeles. Once Gaga embarked on her Joanne World Tour (2017–2018), they created a recording studio on the tour bus. Every night after her show Gaga would return to the studio bus and record the tracks. Further recording was carried out at Woodrow Wilson in Hollywood, California, and Shangri-La Studios in Malibu, California. \"Why Did You Do That?\" was mixed by Tom Elmhirst at Electric Lady Studios in New York and was mastered by Randy Merrill at Sterling Sound Studios. The song opens with Ally singing the lines, \"Why do you look so good in those jeans? / Why'd you come around me with an ass like that?\" Warren had thought about the line and Gaga agreed to include it as the opening lyric. The composition is interspersed with xylophone music and the word \"damn\" in the mix. The chorus is repetitive with Gaga singing the words, \"Why did you do that, do that, do that, do that, do that to me?\" against a house beat.\n\nWarren clarified that the intention was not to write a \"bad\" pop song, but something that was fun and less serious, showing Ally's change into a pop artist. She added: \"I love that [Ally] defended her music. It doesn't have to be what he thinks music should be – music can be everything. It can be a serious song, it can be a pop song, it can be a song about an ass.\" Blair also defended the lyrics in an interview with The Washington Post, saying that it was written to specifically portray Ally's career \"taking off\", and hence it had to be \"more bubbly and mainstream\". He felt whatever the song Jackson would have resented it since he was upset at Ally's success and his failing career. Gaga on the other hand was vague about whether \"Why Did You Do That?\" is a bad song saying: \"When we see her on Saturday Night Live and she’s singing a song about why do you look so good in those jeans, it’s almost the antithesis of where we started,\" Gaga said. \"That is relatively shallow.\"\n\nUse in film\nIn A Star Is Born, \"Why Did You Do That?\" is performed by Lady Gaga's character Ally on an Alec Baldwin-hosted episode of Saturday Night Live. The performance represents Ally's transformation from a simple singer-songwriter into a \"full-fledged radio pop star\". Cooper's character, Ally's husband rock musician Jackson Maine, watches her perform it. This drives him to start drinking again. According to Refinery29, Jackson's disbelief and disappointment stems from his feeling that Ally is \"selling out\". Later, when Ally receives a Grammy Award nomination, a drunken Jackson berates her for \"letting go of the person he thought she was happiest being\". Ally defends the song and they quarrel.\n\nFor the dance sequence during the song, Gaga enlisted her long-time choreographer Richy Jackson, who choreographed all the performances in the film. The singer wanted the choreography to be \"jerky\". Jackson described the choreography he created for the song as having \"pop/R&B style with a 90s feel to it\". Since Ally's style and movements are not supposed to be like Gaga's, Jackson created an individual aesthetic for Ally as she performs \"Why Did You Do That?\" and the other uptempo songs like \"Heal Me\" and \"Hair Body Face\".\n\nCritical response and analysis\nAfter the soundtrack was released, \"Why Did You Do That?\" divided critics. Many reviewers assumed it was purposefully written with trite lyrics, to underscore Jackson's point of view about pop music compared to his country-rock songs. Critics found Jackson's dismissal of \"pop music\" to be caused by the character's short-sightedness and inability to go beyond his own rock music. Others believed that the \"bad\" song led the character reverting to his \"rampant alcoholism\".\n\nBrittany Spanos of Rolling Stone felt that the first time Gaga performs the song in the film it \"is meant to be jarring on many levels\" since it is the first time the audience sees Ally as a pop star. Spanos believes \"Why Did You Do That?\" presents \"an argument against pop, which inherently feels like an argument against Lady Gaga herself, one of the biggest advocates for the delectably catchy dance-pop Ally embodies\". However, she does find the song \"intoxicating\" and \"actually pretty great\", comparing it to Gaga's early work from The Fame (2008) era, \"a vampy flirt with a penchant for a hook you won't forget for years\". Alejandra Salazar of Refinery29 described the track as a \"campy, over-the-top pop track with ridiculous lyrics about texting and praying, and also about butts\". Salazar wondered whether the song was purposely \"engineered to be not-so-good\", to portray rock music as a more authentic genre in the film.\n\nWriting for The Daily Dot, Brenden Gallagher noted that \"Why Did You Do That?\" was not submitted by Warner Bros. for the Academy Award for Best Original Song, although it was popular among fans for its lyrics. Gallagher listed a number of Internet memes based on the song. Hazel Cillis of Jezebel contends that although \"Shallow\" and \"I'll Never Love Again\" \"might be the Oscar bait\" of Cooper's movie, \"Why Did You Do That\" is a \"mindless pop song that embodies all that Ally has become in the movie\".\n\nNate Jones of New York magazine characterized \"Why Did You Do That?\" as \"the song about butts\", noting how the song's opening line had become a central point of discussion of the film's portrayal of pop music against rock. Jones felt the general perception about the track \"often boils down to how you feel about [it] – is it terrible, is it a bop, or is it a terrible song that's also a bop?\" He found a number of \"ear-candy\" elements in the composition which grabbed the audience's attention, especially after the line about buttocks. Writing for The New York Times, Kyle Buchanan confessed to having the lyrics stuck in his head. He added that the track can sound shocking initially since \"it forgoes the timelessness of 'Shallow' and its ilk in favor of what feels like pop disposability\", but noted its rising popularity on social media. Dianne Warren noted the track has its \"revenge, because it sticks in your brain. And then you end up saying, 'Why did you do that, do that, do that'.\"\n\nCredits and personnel\nCredits adapted from the liner notes of A Star Is Born.\n\nManagement\n Recorded at Saturday Night Live set in NBC Studios, Woodrow Wilson Studios (Hollywood, California), The Village West (Los Angeles, California) and Shangri-La Studios (Malibu, California)\n Mixed at Electric Lady Studios (New York City)\n Mastered at Sterling Sound Studios (New York City)\n\nPersonnel\n\n Lady Gaga – primary vocals, songwriter, record producer\n Diane Warren – songwriter\n Mark Nilan Jr. – songwriter, producer, keyboards, programming\n Nick Monson – songwriter, producer, keyboards, programming\n Paul \"DJWS\" Blair – songwriter, producer\n Benjamin Rice – recording\n Alex Williams – recording assistant\n Rob Bisel – recording assistant\n Tom Elmhirst – mixing\n Brandon Bost – mixing engineer\n Randy Merrill – audio mastering\n Tim Stewart – guitar\n\nCharts\n\nReferences\n\n2018 songs\nLady Gaga songs\nSong recordings produced by Lady Gaga\nSongs written by Diane Warren\nSongs written by DJ White Shadow\nSongs written by Lady Gaga\nSongs written by Nick Monson\nSongs written for films",
"Beverly Gooden is an African American writer and social activist known for her groundbreaking work in domestic violence, victimology, and women's health, who created the Why I Stayed hashtag (#WhyIStayed) and movement in 2014. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, the U.S. Office on Women's Health, and NBC's Today.\n\nEarly life and education\nBorn in Cleveland, Ohio, Beverly lived in foster care until being adopted by the Gooden family as a child. As a sophomore at Hampton University, she was selected as a media scholar with the Summer Research Opportunities Program at the University of Iowa and researched the connection between alcohol advertisements and teen drinking and driving. During her junior year, she interned with the Scripps Howard Foundation Wire as a reporter on Capitol Hill, covering the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal and NCAA recruiting reform. In 2005, she graduated with a bachelor's degree in journalism and communications. She went on to attend Loyola University Chicago and graduated with a master's degree in social justice in 2009.\n\nActivism\nOn September 8, 2014, Beverly created the hashtag #WhyIStayed in response to the Ray Rice video released by TMZ. A survivor of domestic violence, she tweeted several reasons why she remained in an abusive marriage as a direct response to widespread victim blaming of Janay Rice.\n\nTwo days later, Gooden was interviewed by Robin Roberts on Good Morning America, where she explained her motivations for creating the Why I Stayed movement. \"The reason that I started the hashtag was to give voice to the people out there who had that voice taken away. I think what bothered me most was that the question was 'why did she stay?' and not 'why did he hit her?'. And we do this across the board with violent situations, we do this with domestic violence by asking 'why did she stay?' and we do this with rape by saying 'why did she wear that?' as if your clothing or your mere presence gives someone the right to hurt you.\"\n\nShe has been featured on Good Morning America, CNN, Time, The Washington Post, HLN, Inside Edition, NBC Nightly News, and more.\n\nWhy I Stayed was listed as one of the top social change hashtags of 2014 by Forbes, and one of the \"top 10 hashtags that started a conversation\" by Time magazine. In March 2015, Why I Stayed was recognized as one of \"8 hashtags that changed the world\".\n\nThe Bolt Bag Project\nIn 2014, Beverly founded the Ella Mae Foundation, which supports \"protection and superior upbringing for children as well as self-actualization and equitable rights for women\". She created the Bolt Bag Project, a program that provides basic necessities to anonymous survivors of relationship violence.\n\nCareer\nGooden served as a development intern at the Chicago Alliance to End Homelessness during graduate school in 2008. Following the financial crisis of 2007–2008, she worked for various government and nonprofit agencies to secure or administer housing and food resources for those affected by the crisis. As a grant recipient of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 funding while serving as continuum of care coordinator, she worked with organizations to find stable and affordable housing for families facing housing insecurity in Chicago; Hampton Roads, Virginia; and northwest Georgia.\n\nAppearances\nIn September 2014, Gooden made guest appearances on the Dr. Phil show and in Verizon's 2014 Domestic Violence Summit at Paramount Studios in Los Angeles. In October 2015, she contributed a piece to the U.S. Office on Women's Health blog. She was also featured in the short film Why We Stayed by Emmy Award-nominated producers of Private Violence. She wrote an article, \"Why We Stayed\", for The New York Times, and appeared in the December 2015 issue of Redbook magazine. She was featured in the August 2016 issue of Glamour magazine; and appeared in a Toyota commercial discussing her work with the Ella Mae Foundation, sponsored by Investigation Discovery. She was featured in the September 2018 issue of Ebony magazine in an article titled \"The Struggle To Get Out\".\n\nHonors and awards\nBeverly was given the \"Digital Champion\" Heart of Courage award by the Mary Kay Foundation in October 2017. She was chosen by Investigation Discovery and Glamour magazine as the 2015 Inspire A Difference \"Everyday Hero\" award winner. She was honored at an event in New York City alongside Angie Harmon, Grace Gealey, and AnnaLynne McCord.\n\nBook\nHer memoir, Surviving: Why We Stay and How We Leave Abusive Relationships, is set for publication in spring 2022 by Rowman & Littlefield.\n\nPersonal life\nGooden plays three musical instruments, and is an avid children's literature reader with a special interest in fantasy and folklore. She speaks openly about having a total hysterectomy after a decade of debilitating uterine fibroids. She lives in Houston, Texas.\n\nExternal links\n\nFacebook\nTwitter\nInstagram\n\nReferences\n\nPeople from Cleveland\nLiving people\nYear of birth missing (living people)"
]
|
[
"Grace Hopper",
"Anecdotes",
"What can you tell me about her anecdotes?",
"Grace Hopper is famous for her nanoseconds visual aid.",
"How so?",
"She started handing out pieces of wire that were just under one foot long (11.80 inches = 300 millimeters)--",
"Why did she do this?",
"(11.80 inches = 300 millimeters)--the distance that light travels in one nanosecond."
]
| C_f3d8fdd6d43946db9eb69a1841255eb2_0 | What was she trying to convey to people? | 4 | What was Grace Hopper trying to convey to people with the wire? | Grace Hopper | Throughout much of her later career, Hopper was much in demand as a speaker at various computer-related events. She was well known for her lively and irreverent speaking style, as well as a rich treasury of early war stories. She also received the nickname "Grandma COBOL". While she was working on a Mark II Computer at a US Navy research lab in Dahlgren, Virginia in 1947, her associates discovered a moth that was stuck in a relay; the moth impeded the operation of the relay. While neither Hopper nor her crew mentioned the phrase "debugging" in their logs, the case was held as an instance of literal "debugging." For many years, the term bug had been in use in engineering. The remains of the moth can be found in the group's log book at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. Grace Hopper is famous for her nanoseconds visual aid. People (such as generals and admirals) used to ask her why satellite communication took so long. She started handing out pieces of wire that were just under one foot long (11.80 inches = 300 millimeters)--the distance that light travels in one nanosecond. She gave these pieces of wire the metonym "nanoseconds." She was careful to tell her audience that the length of her nanoseconds was actually the maximum speed the signals would travel in a vacuum, and that signals would travel more slowly through the actual wires that were her teaching aids. Later she used the same pieces of wire to illustrate why computers had to be small to be fast. At many of her talks and visits, she handed out "nanoseconds" to everyone in the audience, contrasting them with a coil of wire 984 feet long, representing a microsecond. Later, while giving these lectures while working for DEC, she passed out packets of pepper, calling the individual grains of ground pepper picoseconds. Jay Elliot described Grace Hopper as appearing to be "'all Navy', but when you reach inside, you find a 'Pirate' dying to be released". CANNOTANSWER | Later she used the same pieces of wire to illustrate why computers had to be small to be fast. | Grace Brewster Murray Hopper (; December 9, 1906 – January 1, 1992) was an American computer scientist and United States Navy rear admiral. One of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I computer, she was a pioneer of computer programming who invented one of the first linkers. Hopper was the first to devise the theory of machine-independent programming languages, and the FLOW-MATIC programming language she created using this theory was later extended to create COBOL, an early high-level programming language still in use today.
Prior to joining the Navy, Hopper earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from Yale University and was a professor of mathematics at Vassar College. Hopper attempted to enlist in the Navy during World War II but was rejected because she was 34 years old. She instead joined the Navy Reserves. Hopper began her computing career in 1944 when she worked on the Harvard Mark I team led by Howard H. Aiken. In 1949, she joined the Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation and was part of the team that developed the UNIVAC I computer. At Eckert–Mauchly she managed the development of one of the first COBOL compilers. She believed that a programming language based on English was possible. Her compiler converted English terms into machine code understood by computers. By 1952, Hopper had finished her program linker (originally called a compiler), which was written for the A-0 System. During her wartime service, she co-authored three papers based on her work on the Harvard Mark 1.
In 1954, Eckert–Mauchly chose Hopper to lead their department for automatic programming, and she led the release of some of the first compiled languages like FLOW-MATIC. In 1959, she participated in the CODASYL consortium, which consulted Hopper to guide them in creating a machine-independent programming language. This led to the COBOL language, which was inspired by her idea of a language being based on English words. In 1966, she retired from the Naval Reserve, but in 1967 the Navy recalled her to active duty. She retired from the Navy in 1986 and found work as a consultant for the Digital Equipment Corporation, sharing her computing experiences.
The U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyer was named for her, as was the Cray XE6 "Hopper" supercomputer at NERSC. During her lifetime, Hopper was awarded 40 honorary degrees from universities across the world. A college at Yale University was renamed in her honor. In 1991, she received the National Medal of Technology. On November 22, 2016, she was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama.
Early life and education
Grace Brewster Murray was born in New York City. She was the eldest of three children. Her parents, Walter Fletcher Murray and Mary Campbell Van Horne, were of Scottish and Dutch descent, and attended West End Collegiate Church. Her great-grandfather, Alexander Wilson Russell, an admiral in the US Navy, fought in the Battle of Mobile Bay during the Civil War.
Grace was very curious as a child; this was a lifelong trait. At the age of seven, she decided to determine how an alarm clock worked and dismantled seven alarm clocks before her mother realized what she was doing (she was then limited to one clock). For her preparatory school education, she attended the Hartridge School in Plainfield, New Jersey. Grace was initially rejected for early admission to Vassar College at age 16 (because her test scores in Latin were too low), but she was admitted the following year. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Vassar in 1928 with a bachelor's degree in mathematics and physics and earned her master's degree at Yale University in 1930.
In 1930 Grace Murray married New York University professor Vincent Foster Hopper (1906–1976); they divorced in 1945. Although she did not marry again, she retained his surname.
In 1934, Hopper earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from Yale under the direction of Øystein Ore. Her dissertation, "New Types of Irreducibility Criteria", was published that same year. She began teaching mathematics at Vassar in 1931, and was promoted to associate professor in 1941.
Career
World War II
Hopper tried to enlist in the Navy early in World War II. She was rejected for a few reasons. At age 34, she was too old to enlist, and her weight to height ratio was too low. She was also denied on the basis that her job as a mathematician and mathematics professor at Vassar College was valuable to the war effort. During the war in 1943, Hopper obtained a leave of absence from Vassar and was sworn into the United States Navy Reserve; she was one of many women who volunteered to serve in the WAVES. She had to get an exemption to enlist; she was below the Navy minimum weight of . She reported in December and trained at the Naval Reserve Midshipmen's School at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. Hopper graduated first in her class in 1944, and was assigned to the Bureau of Ships Computation Project at Harvard University as a lieutenant, junior grade. She served on the Mark I computer programming staff headed by Howard H. Aiken. Hopper and Aiken co-authored three papers on the Mark I, also known as the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator. Hopper's request to transfer to the regular Navy at the end of the war was declined due to her advanced age of 38. She continued to serve in the Navy Reserve. Hopper remained at the Harvard Computation Lab until 1949, turning down a full professorship at Vassar in favor of working as a research fellow under a Navy contract at Harvard.
UNIVAC
In 1949, Hopper became an employee of the Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation as a senior mathematician and joined the team developing the UNIVAC I. Hopper also served as UNIVAC director of Automatic Programming Development for Remington Rand. The UNIVAC was the first known large-scale electronic computer to be on the market in 1950, and was more competitive at processing information than the Mark I.
When Hopper recommended the development of a new programming language that would use entirely English words, she "was told very quickly that [she] couldn't do this because computers didn't understand English." Still, she persisted. "It's much easier for most people to write an English statement than it is to use symbols," she explained. "So I decided data processors ought to be able to write their programs in English, and the computers would translate them into machine code."
Her idea was not accepted for three years. In the meantime, she published her first paper on the subject, compilers, in 1952. In the early 1950s, the company was taken over by the Remington Rand corporation, and it was while she was working for them that her original compiler work was done. The program was known as the A compiler and its first version was A-0.
In 1952, she had an operational link-loader, which at the time was referred to as a compiler. She later said that "Nobody believed that," and that she "had a running compiler and nobody would touch it. They told me computers could only do arithmetic." She goes on to say that her compiler "translated mathematical notation into machine code. Manipulating symbols was fine for mathematicians but it was no good for data processors who were not symbol manipulators. Very few people are really symbol manipulators. If they are they become professional mathematicians, not data processors. It's much easier for most people to write an English statement than it is to use symbols. So I decided data processors ought to be able to write their programs in English, and the computers would translate them into machine code. That was the beginning of COBOL, a computer language for data processors. I could say 'Subtract income tax from pay' instead of trying to write that in octal code or using all kinds of symbols. COBOL is the major language used today in data processing."
In 1954 Hopper was named the company's first director of automatic programming, and her department released some of the first compiler-based programming languages, including MATH-MATIC and FLOW-MATIC.
COBOL
In the spring of 1959, computer experts from industry and government were brought together in a two-day conference known as the Conference on Data Systems Languages (CODASYL). Hopper served as a technical consultant to the committee, and many of her former employees served on the short-term committee that defined the new language COBOL (an acronym for COmmon Business-Oriented Language). The new language extended Hopper's FLOW-MATIC language with some ideas from the IBM equivalent, COMTRAN. Hopper's belief that programs should be written in a language that was close to English (rather than in machine code or in languages close to machine code, such as assembly languages) was captured in the new business language, and COBOL went on to be the most ubiquitous business language to date. Among the members of the committee that worked on COBOL was Mount Holyoke College alumna Jean E. Sammet.
From 1967 to 1977, Hopper served as the director of the Navy Programming Languages Group in the Navy's Office of Information Systems Planning and was promoted to the rank of captain in 1973. She developed validation software for COBOL and its compiler as part of a COBOL standardization program for the entire Navy.
Standards
In the 1970s, Hopper advocated for the Defense Department to replace large, centralized systems with networks of small, distributed computers. Any user on any computer node could access common databases located on the network. She developed the implementation of standards for testing computer systems and components, most significantly for early programming languages such as FORTRAN and COBOL. The Navy tests for conformance to these standards led to significant convergence among the programming language dialects of the major computer vendors. In the 1980s, these tests (and their official administration) were assumed by the National Bureau of Standards (NBS), known today as the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
Retirement
In accordance with Navy attrition regulations, Hopper retired from the Naval Reserve with the rank of commander at age 60 at the end of 1966. She was recalled to active duty in August 1967 for a six-month period that turned into an indefinite assignment. She again retired in 1971 but was again asked to return to active duty in 1972. She was promoted to captain in 1973 by Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt, Jr.
After Republican Representative Philip Crane saw her on a March 1983 segment of 60 Minutes, he championed , a joint resolution originating in the House of Representatives, which led to her promotion on 15 December 1983 to commodore by special Presidential appointment by President Ronald Reagan. She remained on active duty for several years beyond mandatory retirement by special approval of Congress. Effective November 8, 1985, the rank of commodore was renamed rear admiral (lower half) and Hopper became one of the Navy's few female admirals.
Following a career that spanned more than 42 years, Admiral Hopper took retirement from the Navy on August 14, 1986. At a celebration held in Boston on the to commemorate her retirement, Hopper was awarded the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, the highest non-combat decoration awarded by the Department of Defense.
At the time of her retirement, she was the oldest active-duty commissioned officer in the United States Navy (79 years, eight months and five days), and had her retirement ceremony aboard the oldest commissioned ship in the United States Navy (188 years, nine months and 23 days). Admirals William D. Leahy, Chester W. Nimitz, Hyman G. Rickover and Charles Stewart were the only other officers in the Navy's history to serve on active duty at a higher age. Leahy and Nimitz served on active duty for life due to their promotions to the rank of fleet admiral.
Post-retirement
Following her retirement from the Navy, she was hired as a senior consultant to Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). Hopper was initially offered a position by Rita Yavinsky, but she insisted on going through the typical formal interview process. She then proposed in jest that she would be willing to accept a position which made her available on alternating Thursdays, exhibited at their museum of computing as a pioneer, in exchange for a generous salary and unlimited expense account. Instead, she was hired as a full-time Principal Corporate Consulting Engineer, a tech-track SVP-equivalent. In this position, Hopper represented the company at industry forums, serving on various industry committees, along with other obligations. She retained that position until her death at age 85 in 1992.
At DEC Hopper served primarily as a goodwill ambassador. She lectured widely about the early days of computing, her career, and on efforts that computer vendors could take to make life easier for their users. She visited most of Digital's engineering facilities, where she generally received a standing ovation at the conclusion of her remarks. Although no longer a serving officer, she always wore her Navy full dress uniform to these lectures contrary to U.S. Department of Defense policy.
"The most important thing I've accomplished, other than building the compiler," she said, "is training young people. They come to me, you know, and say, 'Do you think we can do this?' I say, 'Try it.' And I back 'em up. They need that. I keep track of them as they get older and I stir 'em up at intervals so they don't forget to take chances."
Anecdotes
Throughout much of her later career, Hopper was much in demand as a speaker at various computer-related events. She was well known for her lively and irreverent speaking style, as well as a rich treasury of early war stories. She also received the nickname "Grandma COBOL".
While she was working on a Mark II Computer at Harvard University in 1947, her associates discovered a moth that was stuck in a relay and impeding the operation of the computer. Upon extraction, the insect was affixed to a log sheet for that day with the notation, “First actual case of a bug being found”. While neither she nor her crew members mentioned the exact phrase, "debugging", in their log entries, the case is held as a historical instance of "debugging" a computer and Hopper is credited with popularizing the term in computing. For many decades, the term "bug" for a malfunction had been in use in several fields before being applied to computers. The remains of the moth can be found taped into the group's log book at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.
Grace Hopper is famous for her nanoseconds visual aid. People (such as generals and admirals) used to ask her why satellite communication took so long. She started handing out pieces of wire that were just under one foot long——the distance that light travels in one nanosecond. She gave these pieces of wire the metonym "nanoseconds." She was careful to tell her audience that the length of her nanoseconds was actually the maximum speed the signals would travel in a vacuum, and that signals would travel more slowly through the actual wires that were her teaching aids. Later she used the same pieces of wire to illustrate why computers had to be small to be fast. At many of her talks and visits, she handed out "nanoseconds" to everyone in the audience, contrasting them with a coil of wire long, representing a microsecond. Later, while giving these lectures while working for DEC, she passed out packets of pepper, calling the individual grains of ground pepper picoseconds.
Jay Elliot described Grace Hopper as appearing to be " 'all Navy', but when you reach inside, you find a 'Pirate' dying to be released."
Death
On New Year's Day 1992, Hopper died in her sleep of natural causes at her home in Arlington, Virginia; she was 85 years of age. She was interred with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery.
Dates of rank
Awards and honors
Military awards
Other awards
1964: Hopper was awarded the Society of Women Engineers Achievement Award, the Society's highest honor, "In recognition of her significant contributions to the burgeoning computer industry as an engineering manager and originator of automatic programming systems." In May 1955, Hopper was one of the founding members of the Society of Women Engineers.
1969: Hopper was awarded the inaugural Data Processing Management Association Man of the Year award (now called the Distinguished Information Sciences Award).
1971: The annual Grace Murray Hopper Award for Outstanding Young Computer Professionals was established in 1971 by the Association for Computing Machinery.
1973: Elected to the U.S. National Academy of Engineering.
1973: First American and the first woman of any nationality to be made a Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society.
1981: Received an Honorary PhD from Clarkson University.
1982: American Association of University Women Achievement Award and an Honorary Doctor of Science from Marquette University.
1983: Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.
1985: Honorary Doctor of Letters from Western New England College (now Western New England University).
1986: Received the Defense Distinguished Service Medal at her retirement.
1986: Received an Honorary Doctor of Science from Syracuse University.
1987: She became the first Computer History Museum Fellow Award Recipient "for contributions to the development of programming languages, for standardization efforts, and for lifelong naval service."
1988: Received the Golden Gavel Award, Toastmasters International.
1991: National Medal of Technology.
1991: Elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
1992: The Society of Women Engineers established three annual, renewable, "Admiral Grace Murray Hopper Scholarships"
1994: Inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.
1996: was launched. Nicknamed Amazing Grace, it is on a very short list of U.S. military vessels named after women.
2001: Eavan Boland wrote a poem dedicated to Grace Hopper titled "Code" in her 2001 release Against Love Poetry.
2001: The Gracies, the Government Technology Leadership Award were named in her honor.
2009: The Department of Energy's National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center named its flagship system "Hopper".
2009: Office of Naval Intelligence creates the Grace Hopper Information Services Center.
2013: Google made the Google Doodle for Hopper's 107th birthday an animation of her sitting at a computer, using COBOL to print out her age. At the end of the animation, a moth flies out of the computer.
2016: On November 22, 2016, Hopper was posthumously awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom for her accomplishments in the field of computer science.
2017: Hopper College at Yale University was named in her honor.
2021: The Admiral Grace Hopper Award was established by the chancellor of the College of Information and Cyberspace (CIC) of the National Defense University to recognize leaders in the fields of information and cybersecurity throughout the National Security community.
Legacy
Grace Hopper was awarded 40 honorary degrees from universities worldwide during her lifetime.
Born with Curiosity: The Grace Hopper Story is an upcoming documentary film.
Nvidia is naming an upcoming GPU generation Hopper after Grace Hopper.
The Navy's Hopper Information Services Center is named for her.
The Navy named a guided-missile destroyer Hopper after her.
Places
Grace Hopper Avenue in Monterey, California, is the location of the Navy's Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center as well as the National Weather Service's San Francisco Bay Area forecast office.
Grace M. Hopper Navy Regional Data Automation Center at Naval Air Station, North Island, California.
Grace Murray Hopper Park, located on South Joyce Street in Arlington, Virginia, is a small memorial park in front of her former residence (River House Apartments) and is now owned by Arlington County, Virginia.
Brewster Academy, a school located in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, United States, dedicated their computer lab to her in 1985, calling it the Grace Murray Hopper Center for Computer Learning. The academy bestows a Grace Murray Hopper Prize to a graduate who excelled in the field of computer systems. Hopper had spent her childhood summers at a family home in Wolfeboro.
Grace Hopper College, one of the residential colleges of Yale University.
An administration building on Naval Support Activity Annapolis (previously known as Naval Station Annapolis) in Annapolis, Maryland is named the Grace Hopper Building in her honor.
Vice Admiral Walter E. "Ted" Carter announced on September 8, 2016 at the Athena Conference that the Naval Academy's newest Cyber Operations building would be named Hopper Hall after Admiral Grace Hopper. This is the first building at any service academy named after a woman. In his words, Grace Hopper was "the admiral of the cyber seas."
The US Naval Academy also owns a Cray XC-30 supercomputer named "Grace," hosted at the University of Maryland-College Park.
Building 1482 aboard Naval Air Station North Island, housing the Naval Computer and Telecommunication Station San Diego, is named the Grace Hopper Building, and also contains the History of Naval Communications Museum.
Building 6007, C2/CNT West in Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, is named after her.
The street outside of the Nathan Deal Georgia Cyber Innovation and Training Center in Augusta, Georgia, is named Grace Hopper Lane.
Grace Hopper Academy is a for-profit immersive programming school in New York City named in Grace Hopper's honor. It opened in January 2016 with the goal of increasing the proportion of women in software engineering careers.
A bridge over Goose Creek, to join the north and south sides of the Naval Support Activity Charleston side of Joint Base Charleston, South Carolina, is named the Grace Hopper Memorial Bridge in her honor.
Minor planet 5773 Hopper discovered by Eleanor Helin is named in her honor. The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on 8 November 2019 ().
Grace Hopper Hall, a community meeting hall in Orlando, Florida (located on the site of the former Orlando Naval Training Center) is named for her.
Programs
Women at Microsoft Corporation formed an employee group called Hoppers and established a scholarship in her honor.
Beginning in 2015, one of the nine competition fields at the FIRST Robotics Competition world championship is named for Hopper.
A named professorship in the Department of Computer Sciences was established at Yale University in her honor. Joan Feigenbaum was named to this chair in 2008.
In 2020, Google named its new undersea network cable 'Grace Hopper'. The cable will connect the US, UK and Spain and is estimated to be completed by 2022.
In popular culture
In his comic book series, Secret Coders by Gene Luen Yang, the main character is named Hopper Gracie-Hu.
Since 2013, Hopper's official portrait has been included in the matplotlib python library as sample data to replace the controversial Lenna image.
Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing
Her legacy was an inspiring factor in the creation of the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. Held yearly, this conference is designed to bring the research and career interests of women in computing to the forefront.
See also
Code: Debugging the Gender Gap
Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing
List of pioneers in computer science
Systems engineering
Women in computing
Women in the United States Navy
List of female United States military generals and flag officers
Timeline of women in science
Notes
Obituary notices
Betts, Mitch (Computerworld 26: 14, 1992)
Bromberg, Howard (IEEE Software 9: 103–104, 1992)
Danca, Richard A. (Federal Computer Week 6: 26–27, 1992)
Hancock, Bill (Digital Review 9: 40, 1992)
Power, Kevin (Government Computer News 11: 70, 1992)
Sammet, J. E. (Communications of the ACM 35 (4): 128–131, 1992)
Weiss, Eric A. (IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 14: 56–58, 1992)
References
Further reading
Williams' book focuses on the lives and contributions of four notable women scientists: Mary Sears (1905–1997); Florence van Straten (1913–1992); Grace Murray Hopper (1906–1992); Mina Spiegel Rees (1902–1997).
External links
Oral History of Captain Grace Hopper – Interviewed by: Angeline Pantages 1980, Naval Data Automation Command, Maryland.
from Chips, the United States Navy information technology magazine.
Grace Hopper: Navy to the Core, a Pirate at Heart (2014), To learn more about Hopper's story and Navy legacy navy.mil.
The Queen of Code (2015), a documentary film about Grace Hopper produced by FiveThirtyEight.
Norwood, Arlisha. "Grace Hopper". National Women's History Museum. 2017.
1906 births
1992 deaths
American computer programmers
American computer scientists
COBOL
Programming language designers
American women computer scientists
Women inventors
American women mathematicians
United States Navy rear admirals (lower half)
Female admirals of the United States Navy
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Fellows of the British Computer Society
National Medal of Technology recipients
Recipients of the Defense Distinguished Service Medal
Recipients of the Legion of Merit
Recipients of the Meritorious Service Medal (United States)
Harvard University people
Vassar College faculty
Military personnel from New York City
Vassar College alumni
Yale University alumni
American people of Dutch descent
American people of Scottish descent
Burials at Arlington National Cemetery
20th-century American engineers
20th-century American mathematicians
20th-century American scientists
20th-century American women scientists
Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients
Computer science educators
American software engineers
20th-century women mathematicians
Mathematicians from New York (state)
Wardlaw-Hartridge School alumni
WAVES personnel | true | [
"Sylvia Convey (born 1948) is a Latvian Australian self-taught artist known for her paintings, quilts and dolls.\n\nLife\nSylvia Convey was born in a refugee camp at Itzehoe near Hamburg, Germany in 1948. With her Latvian parents and elder sister she sailed to Australia on the Skaugum in early 1950. They were part of the first wave of immigrants to arrive in Australia after World War II joining a large group of displaced Latvians that settled in Australia in the late 40s and early 50s.\n\nWork\nA true outsider artist her images are derived from her own day to day and oneiric experiences. Intuitively she has tapped the richness of her ancestral heritage which adds a decorative radiance to her images. An engaging eroticism is also a dominant theme in her oeuvre.\n\nA recurring thread in her work has been the blurring of boundaries between art forms. As a painter she rejected the primacy of canvas and used non conventional surfaces. As a printmaker she has used textiles as much as paper and her sculptural muse finds expression in wonderfully exotic and exuberant cloth dolls. She approached quilt making in a spontaneous rather than formal manner as it gave her lifelong love of fabric and colour complete expression. She loves the sensual, tactile pleasure of handling cloth - tearing, cutting, printing and painting it to produce shimmering life embracing forms.\n\nCollections and exhibits\nConvey's work has been acquired by several institutions including the National Gallery of Australia, Iwalewa Haus at the University of Bayreuth and the Canberra Museum and Gallery.\n\nSince 1972 she has exhibited widely in Australia, Germany, the United States and France. Her work was part of the landmark exhibition Australian outsiders at the Halle St. Pierre in Paris in 2006.\nConvey's work was included in the 2010 exhibition 13 Australian Outsider Artists at Callan Park Gallery. In 2015 a survey exhibition of Sylvia Convey and, husband Tony Convey's work titled Double Vision was held at the Orange Regional Gallery.\n\nReferences\n\n Australian Migrant ships 1946-1977, Peter Plowman (Chiswick)\n Allgemeines Kunstlerlexikon Volume 21 (K.G. Saur Verlag) Munich 1999\n Outsider Art in Australia - Ulli Beier, Phillip Hammal (EDS) (Aspect) 1989\n Australian Naive Art - Sandra Warner (Craftsman House) 1997\n Australian Printmaking in the 1990s - Sasha Grishin (Craftsman House) 1997\n Australian Outsiders - Martine Lusardy (Halle St. Pierre) 2006\n\nExternal links\nSylvia Convey artwork\n\n1948 births\nLiving people\nPeople from Itzehoe\n20th-century Australian women artists\n20th-century Australian artists\n21st-century Australian women artists\n21st-century Australian artists\nOutsider artists\nWomen outsider artists",
"Rose Kalamahaaheo Otis Tribe Tyson (July 15, 1890 – February 18, 1934) was a soprano soloist in the Territory of Hawaii, and was a protégée of Queen Liliʻuokalani.\n\nEarly life\nShe was born of Hawaiian ancestry in Lahaina, Maui, Kingdom of Hawaii, and was primarily known as a soprano soloist. A graduate of Kamehameha School for girls, she was hand maiden to Queen Liliʻuokalani and traveled with the queen's retinue. She was positioned as the royal musical protégée, groomed by the queen herself to convey Liliʻuokalani's compositions in the manner in which they were originally composed. In 1915, she married Leopold W. Tribe.\n\nProfessional career\nAfter Liliʻuokalani's death, she began performing publicly as a soloist, accompanying herself on the ukulele, eventually becoming known as \"the soprano with the million dollar smile\". She was a popular featured soloist on radio stations KGMB and KGU.\n\nTribe worked off and on with composer Charles E. King, who had also been a musical protogée of Liliʻuokalani's. She was cast in his Hawaiian-language opera The Prince of Hawaii. At its May 4, 1925 premiere, Tribe appeared as Queen Kamaka, with Joseph Kamakau as King Kalani and Ray Kinney in the lead of Prince Kauikalu.\n\nShe was sent to Portland, Oregon as part of the Honolulu Ad Club representatives to draw delegates to a 1928 convention in Honolulu. Singing the Charles Alphin composition \"What Aloha Means\", she received a standing ovation from the estimated 800 delegates in the audience.\n\nLater life and death\nOn April 15, 1932, Tribe married KGU announcer Homer N. Tyson. Afterward, she was professionally referred to as both Rose Tribe and Rose Tribe Tyson. She died on February 18, 1934, from complications of a stroke.\n\nIn later decades, Hawaiian opera tenor Charles K.L. Davis attributed much of his repertoire to a songbook once owned by Tribe.\n\nDiscography\nTribe recorded four songs for Columbia Records\n\nSingles\n\"Old Plantation:\n\"What Aloha Means\" \n\"Ku'u Home\" \t\n\"Pauoa Liko Lehua\"\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nRose Tribe on Territorial Airwaves\n\n1890 births\n1934 deaths\nPeople from Maui\nHawaiian Kingdom people\nPeople of the Territory of Hawaii\n20th-century American musicians\nAmerican radio personalities\nHawaiian music\nMusicians from Honolulu\nNative Hawaiian musicians"
]
|
[
"Grace Hopper",
"Anecdotes",
"What can you tell me about her anecdotes?",
"Grace Hopper is famous for her nanoseconds visual aid.",
"How so?",
"She started handing out pieces of wire that were just under one foot long (11.80 inches = 300 millimeters)--",
"Why did she do this?",
"(11.80 inches = 300 millimeters)--the distance that light travels in one nanosecond.",
"What was she trying to convey to people?",
"Later she used the same pieces of wire to illustrate why computers had to be small to be fast."
]
| C_f3d8fdd6d43946db9eb69a1841255eb2_0 | What other messages did she have for the public? | 5 | What other messages did Grace Hopper have for the public aside from illustrating why computers had to be small to be fast? | Grace Hopper | Throughout much of her later career, Hopper was much in demand as a speaker at various computer-related events. She was well known for her lively and irreverent speaking style, as well as a rich treasury of early war stories. She also received the nickname "Grandma COBOL". While she was working on a Mark II Computer at a US Navy research lab in Dahlgren, Virginia in 1947, her associates discovered a moth that was stuck in a relay; the moth impeded the operation of the relay. While neither Hopper nor her crew mentioned the phrase "debugging" in their logs, the case was held as an instance of literal "debugging." For many years, the term bug had been in use in engineering. The remains of the moth can be found in the group's log book at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. Grace Hopper is famous for her nanoseconds visual aid. People (such as generals and admirals) used to ask her why satellite communication took so long. She started handing out pieces of wire that were just under one foot long (11.80 inches = 300 millimeters)--the distance that light travels in one nanosecond. She gave these pieces of wire the metonym "nanoseconds." She was careful to tell her audience that the length of her nanoseconds was actually the maximum speed the signals would travel in a vacuum, and that signals would travel more slowly through the actual wires that were her teaching aids. Later she used the same pieces of wire to illustrate why computers had to be small to be fast. At many of her talks and visits, she handed out "nanoseconds" to everyone in the audience, contrasting them with a coil of wire 984 feet long, representing a microsecond. Later, while giving these lectures while working for DEC, she passed out packets of pepper, calling the individual grains of ground pepper picoseconds. Jay Elliot described Grace Hopper as appearing to be "'all Navy', but when you reach inside, you find a 'Pirate' dying to be released". CANNOTANSWER | she passed out packets of pepper, calling the individual grains of ground pepper picoseconds. | Grace Brewster Murray Hopper (; December 9, 1906 – January 1, 1992) was an American computer scientist and United States Navy rear admiral. One of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I computer, she was a pioneer of computer programming who invented one of the first linkers. Hopper was the first to devise the theory of machine-independent programming languages, and the FLOW-MATIC programming language she created using this theory was later extended to create COBOL, an early high-level programming language still in use today.
Prior to joining the Navy, Hopper earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from Yale University and was a professor of mathematics at Vassar College. Hopper attempted to enlist in the Navy during World War II but was rejected because she was 34 years old. She instead joined the Navy Reserves. Hopper began her computing career in 1944 when she worked on the Harvard Mark I team led by Howard H. Aiken. In 1949, she joined the Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation and was part of the team that developed the UNIVAC I computer. At Eckert–Mauchly she managed the development of one of the first COBOL compilers. She believed that a programming language based on English was possible. Her compiler converted English terms into machine code understood by computers. By 1952, Hopper had finished her program linker (originally called a compiler), which was written for the A-0 System. During her wartime service, she co-authored three papers based on her work on the Harvard Mark 1.
In 1954, Eckert–Mauchly chose Hopper to lead their department for automatic programming, and she led the release of some of the first compiled languages like FLOW-MATIC. In 1959, she participated in the CODASYL consortium, which consulted Hopper to guide them in creating a machine-independent programming language. This led to the COBOL language, which was inspired by her idea of a language being based on English words. In 1966, she retired from the Naval Reserve, but in 1967 the Navy recalled her to active duty. She retired from the Navy in 1986 and found work as a consultant for the Digital Equipment Corporation, sharing her computing experiences.
The U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyer was named for her, as was the Cray XE6 "Hopper" supercomputer at NERSC. During her lifetime, Hopper was awarded 40 honorary degrees from universities across the world. A college at Yale University was renamed in her honor. In 1991, she received the National Medal of Technology. On November 22, 2016, she was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama.
Early life and education
Grace Brewster Murray was born in New York City. She was the eldest of three children. Her parents, Walter Fletcher Murray and Mary Campbell Van Horne, were of Scottish and Dutch descent, and attended West End Collegiate Church. Her great-grandfather, Alexander Wilson Russell, an admiral in the US Navy, fought in the Battle of Mobile Bay during the Civil War.
Grace was very curious as a child; this was a lifelong trait. At the age of seven, she decided to determine how an alarm clock worked and dismantled seven alarm clocks before her mother realized what she was doing (she was then limited to one clock). For her preparatory school education, she attended the Hartridge School in Plainfield, New Jersey. Grace was initially rejected for early admission to Vassar College at age 16 (because her test scores in Latin were too low), but she was admitted the following year. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Vassar in 1928 with a bachelor's degree in mathematics and physics and earned her master's degree at Yale University in 1930.
In 1930 Grace Murray married New York University professor Vincent Foster Hopper (1906–1976); they divorced in 1945. Although she did not marry again, she retained his surname.
In 1934, Hopper earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from Yale under the direction of Øystein Ore. Her dissertation, "New Types of Irreducibility Criteria", was published that same year. She began teaching mathematics at Vassar in 1931, and was promoted to associate professor in 1941.
Career
World War II
Hopper tried to enlist in the Navy early in World War II. She was rejected for a few reasons. At age 34, she was too old to enlist, and her weight to height ratio was too low. She was also denied on the basis that her job as a mathematician and mathematics professor at Vassar College was valuable to the war effort. During the war in 1943, Hopper obtained a leave of absence from Vassar and was sworn into the United States Navy Reserve; she was one of many women who volunteered to serve in the WAVES. She had to get an exemption to enlist; she was below the Navy minimum weight of . She reported in December and trained at the Naval Reserve Midshipmen's School at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. Hopper graduated first in her class in 1944, and was assigned to the Bureau of Ships Computation Project at Harvard University as a lieutenant, junior grade. She served on the Mark I computer programming staff headed by Howard H. Aiken. Hopper and Aiken co-authored three papers on the Mark I, also known as the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator. Hopper's request to transfer to the regular Navy at the end of the war was declined due to her advanced age of 38. She continued to serve in the Navy Reserve. Hopper remained at the Harvard Computation Lab until 1949, turning down a full professorship at Vassar in favor of working as a research fellow under a Navy contract at Harvard.
UNIVAC
In 1949, Hopper became an employee of the Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation as a senior mathematician and joined the team developing the UNIVAC I. Hopper also served as UNIVAC director of Automatic Programming Development for Remington Rand. The UNIVAC was the first known large-scale electronic computer to be on the market in 1950, and was more competitive at processing information than the Mark I.
When Hopper recommended the development of a new programming language that would use entirely English words, she "was told very quickly that [she] couldn't do this because computers didn't understand English." Still, she persisted. "It's much easier for most people to write an English statement than it is to use symbols," she explained. "So I decided data processors ought to be able to write their programs in English, and the computers would translate them into machine code."
Her idea was not accepted for three years. In the meantime, she published her first paper on the subject, compilers, in 1952. In the early 1950s, the company was taken over by the Remington Rand corporation, and it was while she was working for them that her original compiler work was done. The program was known as the A compiler and its first version was A-0.
In 1952, she had an operational link-loader, which at the time was referred to as a compiler. She later said that "Nobody believed that," and that she "had a running compiler and nobody would touch it. They told me computers could only do arithmetic." She goes on to say that her compiler "translated mathematical notation into machine code. Manipulating symbols was fine for mathematicians but it was no good for data processors who were not symbol manipulators. Very few people are really symbol manipulators. If they are they become professional mathematicians, not data processors. It's much easier for most people to write an English statement than it is to use symbols. So I decided data processors ought to be able to write their programs in English, and the computers would translate them into machine code. That was the beginning of COBOL, a computer language for data processors. I could say 'Subtract income tax from pay' instead of trying to write that in octal code or using all kinds of symbols. COBOL is the major language used today in data processing."
In 1954 Hopper was named the company's first director of automatic programming, and her department released some of the first compiler-based programming languages, including MATH-MATIC and FLOW-MATIC.
COBOL
In the spring of 1959, computer experts from industry and government were brought together in a two-day conference known as the Conference on Data Systems Languages (CODASYL). Hopper served as a technical consultant to the committee, and many of her former employees served on the short-term committee that defined the new language COBOL (an acronym for COmmon Business-Oriented Language). The new language extended Hopper's FLOW-MATIC language with some ideas from the IBM equivalent, COMTRAN. Hopper's belief that programs should be written in a language that was close to English (rather than in machine code or in languages close to machine code, such as assembly languages) was captured in the new business language, and COBOL went on to be the most ubiquitous business language to date. Among the members of the committee that worked on COBOL was Mount Holyoke College alumna Jean E. Sammet.
From 1967 to 1977, Hopper served as the director of the Navy Programming Languages Group in the Navy's Office of Information Systems Planning and was promoted to the rank of captain in 1973. She developed validation software for COBOL and its compiler as part of a COBOL standardization program for the entire Navy.
Standards
In the 1970s, Hopper advocated for the Defense Department to replace large, centralized systems with networks of small, distributed computers. Any user on any computer node could access common databases located on the network. She developed the implementation of standards for testing computer systems and components, most significantly for early programming languages such as FORTRAN and COBOL. The Navy tests for conformance to these standards led to significant convergence among the programming language dialects of the major computer vendors. In the 1980s, these tests (and their official administration) were assumed by the National Bureau of Standards (NBS), known today as the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
Retirement
In accordance with Navy attrition regulations, Hopper retired from the Naval Reserve with the rank of commander at age 60 at the end of 1966. She was recalled to active duty in August 1967 for a six-month period that turned into an indefinite assignment. She again retired in 1971 but was again asked to return to active duty in 1972. She was promoted to captain in 1973 by Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt, Jr.
After Republican Representative Philip Crane saw her on a March 1983 segment of 60 Minutes, he championed , a joint resolution originating in the House of Representatives, which led to her promotion on 15 December 1983 to commodore by special Presidential appointment by President Ronald Reagan. She remained on active duty for several years beyond mandatory retirement by special approval of Congress. Effective November 8, 1985, the rank of commodore was renamed rear admiral (lower half) and Hopper became one of the Navy's few female admirals.
Following a career that spanned more than 42 years, Admiral Hopper took retirement from the Navy on August 14, 1986. At a celebration held in Boston on the to commemorate her retirement, Hopper was awarded the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, the highest non-combat decoration awarded by the Department of Defense.
At the time of her retirement, she was the oldest active-duty commissioned officer in the United States Navy (79 years, eight months and five days), and had her retirement ceremony aboard the oldest commissioned ship in the United States Navy (188 years, nine months and 23 days). Admirals William D. Leahy, Chester W. Nimitz, Hyman G. Rickover and Charles Stewart were the only other officers in the Navy's history to serve on active duty at a higher age. Leahy and Nimitz served on active duty for life due to their promotions to the rank of fleet admiral.
Post-retirement
Following her retirement from the Navy, she was hired as a senior consultant to Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). Hopper was initially offered a position by Rita Yavinsky, but she insisted on going through the typical formal interview process. She then proposed in jest that she would be willing to accept a position which made her available on alternating Thursdays, exhibited at their museum of computing as a pioneer, in exchange for a generous salary and unlimited expense account. Instead, she was hired as a full-time Principal Corporate Consulting Engineer, a tech-track SVP-equivalent. In this position, Hopper represented the company at industry forums, serving on various industry committees, along with other obligations. She retained that position until her death at age 85 in 1992.
At DEC Hopper served primarily as a goodwill ambassador. She lectured widely about the early days of computing, her career, and on efforts that computer vendors could take to make life easier for their users. She visited most of Digital's engineering facilities, where she generally received a standing ovation at the conclusion of her remarks. Although no longer a serving officer, she always wore her Navy full dress uniform to these lectures contrary to U.S. Department of Defense policy.
"The most important thing I've accomplished, other than building the compiler," she said, "is training young people. They come to me, you know, and say, 'Do you think we can do this?' I say, 'Try it.' And I back 'em up. They need that. I keep track of them as they get older and I stir 'em up at intervals so they don't forget to take chances."
Anecdotes
Throughout much of her later career, Hopper was much in demand as a speaker at various computer-related events. She was well known for her lively and irreverent speaking style, as well as a rich treasury of early war stories. She also received the nickname "Grandma COBOL".
While she was working on a Mark II Computer at Harvard University in 1947, her associates discovered a moth that was stuck in a relay and impeding the operation of the computer. Upon extraction, the insect was affixed to a log sheet for that day with the notation, “First actual case of a bug being found”. While neither she nor her crew members mentioned the exact phrase, "debugging", in their log entries, the case is held as a historical instance of "debugging" a computer and Hopper is credited with popularizing the term in computing. For many decades, the term "bug" for a malfunction had been in use in several fields before being applied to computers. The remains of the moth can be found taped into the group's log book at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.
Grace Hopper is famous for her nanoseconds visual aid. People (such as generals and admirals) used to ask her why satellite communication took so long. She started handing out pieces of wire that were just under one foot long——the distance that light travels in one nanosecond. She gave these pieces of wire the metonym "nanoseconds." She was careful to tell her audience that the length of her nanoseconds was actually the maximum speed the signals would travel in a vacuum, and that signals would travel more slowly through the actual wires that were her teaching aids. Later she used the same pieces of wire to illustrate why computers had to be small to be fast. At many of her talks and visits, she handed out "nanoseconds" to everyone in the audience, contrasting them with a coil of wire long, representing a microsecond. Later, while giving these lectures while working for DEC, she passed out packets of pepper, calling the individual grains of ground pepper picoseconds.
Jay Elliot described Grace Hopper as appearing to be " 'all Navy', but when you reach inside, you find a 'Pirate' dying to be released."
Death
On New Year's Day 1992, Hopper died in her sleep of natural causes at her home in Arlington, Virginia; she was 85 years of age. She was interred with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery.
Dates of rank
Awards and honors
Military awards
Other awards
1964: Hopper was awarded the Society of Women Engineers Achievement Award, the Society's highest honor, "In recognition of her significant contributions to the burgeoning computer industry as an engineering manager and originator of automatic programming systems." In May 1955, Hopper was one of the founding members of the Society of Women Engineers.
1969: Hopper was awarded the inaugural Data Processing Management Association Man of the Year award (now called the Distinguished Information Sciences Award).
1971: The annual Grace Murray Hopper Award for Outstanding Young Computer Professionals was established in 1971 by the Association for Computing Machinery.
1973: Elected to the U.S. National Academy of Engineering.
1973: First American and the first woman of any nationality to be made a Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society.
1981: Received an Honorary PhD from Clarkson University.
1982: American Association of University Women Achievement Award and an Honorary Doctor of Science from Marquette University.
1983: Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.
1985: Honorary Doctor of Letters from Western New England College (now Western New England University).
1986: Received the Defense Distinguished Service Medal at her retirement.
1986: Received an Honorary Doctor of Science from Syracuse University.
1987: She became the first Computer History Museum Fellow Award Recipient "for contributions to the development of programming languages, for standardization efforts, and for lifelong naval service."
1988: Received the Golden Gavel Award, Toastmasters International.
1991: National Medal of Technology.
1991: Elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
1992: The Society of Women Engineers established three annual, renewable, "Admiral Grace Murray Hopper Scholarships"
1994: Inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.
1996: was launched. Nicknamed Amazing Grace, it is on a very short list of U.S. military vessels named after women.
2001: Eavan Boland wrote a poem dedicated to Grace Hopper titled "Code" in her 2001 release Against Love Poetry.
2001: The Gracies, the Government Technology Leadership Award were named in her honor.
2009: The Department of Energy's National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center named its flagship system "Hopper".
2009: Office of Naval Intelligence creates the Grace Hopper Information Services Center.
2013: Google made the Google Doodle for Hopper's 107th birthday an animation of her sitting at a computer, using COBOL to print out her age. At the end of the animation, a moth flies out of the computer.
2016: On November 22, 2016, Hopper was posthumously awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom for her accomplishments in the field of computer science.
2017: Hopper College at Yale University was named in her honor.
2021: The Admiral Grace Hopper Award was established by the chancellor of the College of Information and Cyberspace (CIC) of the National Defense University to recognize leaders in the fields of information and cybersecurity throughout the National Security community.
Legacy
Grace Hopper was awarded 40 honorary degrees from universities worldwide during her lifetime.
Born with Curiosity: The Grace Hopper Story is an upcoming documentary film.
Nvidia is naming an upcoming GPU generation Hopper after Grace Hopper.
The Navy's Hopper Information Services Center is named for her.
The Navy named a guided-missile destroyer Hopper after her.
Places
Grace Hopper Avenue in Monterey, California, is the location of the Navy's Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center as well as the National Weather Service's San Francisco Bay Area forecast office.
Grace M. Hopper Navy Regional Data Automation Center at Naval Air Station, North Island, California.
Grace Murray Hopper Park, located on South Joyce Street in Arlington, Virginia, is a small memorial park in front of her former residence (River House Apartments) and is now owned by Arlington County, Virginia.
Brewster Academy, a school located in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, United States, dedicated their computer lab to her in 1985, calling it the Grace Murray Hopper Center for Computer Learning. The academy bestows a Grace Murray Hopper Prize to a graduate who excelled in the field of computer systems. Hopper had spent her childhood summers at a family home in Wolfeboro.
Grace Hopper College, one of the residential colleges of Yale University.
An administration building on Naval Support Activity Annapolis (previously known as Naval Station Annapolis) in Annapolis, Maryland is named the Grace Hopper Building in her honor.
Vice Admiral Walter E. "Ted" Carter announced on September 8, 2016 at the Athena Conference that the Naval Academy's newest Cyber Operations building would be named Hopper Hall after Admiral Grace Hopper. This is the first building at any service academy named after a woman. In his words, Grace Hopper was "the admiral of the cyber seas."
The US Naval Academy also owns a Cray XC-30 supercomputer named "Grace," hosted at the University of Maryland-College Park.
Building 1482 aboard Naval Air Station North Island, housing the Naval Computer and Telecommunication Station San Diego, is named the Grace Hopper Building, and also contains the History of Naval Communications Museum.
Building 6007, C2/CNT West in Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, is named after her.
The street outside of the Nathan Deal Georgia Cyber Innovation and Training Center in Augusta, Georgia, is named Grace Hopper Lane.
Grace Hopper Academy is a for-profit immersive programming school in New York City named in Grace Hopper's honor. It opened in January 2016 with the goal of increasing the proportion of women in software engineering careers.
A bridge over Goose Creek, to join the north and south sides of the Naval Support Activity Charleston side of Joint Base Charleston, South Carolina, is named the Grace Hopper Memorial Bridge in her honor.
Minor planet 5773 Hopper discovered by Eleanor Helin is named in her honor. The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on 8 November 2019 ().
Grace Hopper Hall, a community meeting hall in Orlando, Florida (located on the site of the former Orlando Naval Training Center) is named for her.
Programs
Women at Microsoft Corporation formed an employee group called Hoppers and established a scholarship in her honor.
Beginning in 2015, one of the nine competition fields at the FIRST Robotics Competition world championship is named for Hopper.
A named professorship in the Department of Computer Sciences was established at Yale University in her honor. Joan Feigenbaum was named to this chair in 2008.
In 2020, Google named its new undersea network cable 'Grace Hopper'. The cable will connect the US, UK and Spain and is estimated to be completed by 2022.
In popular culture
In his comic book series, Secret Coders by Gene Luen Yang, the main character is named Hopper Gracie-Hu.
Since 2013, Hopper's official portrait has been included in the matplotlib python library as sample data to replace the controversial Lenna image.
Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing
Her legacy was an inspiring factor in the creation of the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. Held yearly, this conference is designed to bring the research and career interests of women in computing to the forefront.
See also
Code: Debugging the Gender Gap
Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing
List of pioneers in computer science
Systems engineering
Women in computing
Women in the United States Navy
List of female United States military generals and flag officers
Timeline of women in science
Notes
Obituary notices
Betts, Mitch (Computerworld 26: 14, 1992)
Bromberg, Howard (IEEE Software 9: 103–104, 1992)
Danca, Richard A. (Federal Computer Week 6: 26–27, 1992)
Hancock, Bill (Digital Review 9: 40, 1992)
Power, Kevin (Government Computer News 11: 70, 1992)
Sammet, J. E. (Communications of the ACM 35 (4): 128–131, 1992)
Weiss, Eric A. (IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 14: 56–58, 1992)
References
Further reading
Williams' book focuses on the lives and contributions of four notable women scientists: Mary Sears (1905–1997); Florence van Straten (1913–1992); Grace Murray Hopper (1906–1992); Mina Spiegel Rees (1902–1997).
External links
Oral History of Captain Grace Hopper – Interviewed by: Angeline Pantages 1980, Naval Data Automation Command, Maryland.
from Chips, the United States Navy information technology magazine.
Grace Hopper: Navy to the Core, a Pirate at Heart (2014), To learn more about Hopper's story and Navy legacy navy.mil.
The Queen of Code (2015), a documentary film about Grace Hopper produced by FiveThirtyEight.
Norwood, Arlisha. "Grace Hopper". National Women's History Museum. 2017.
1906 births
1992 deaths
American computer programmers
American computer scientists
COBOL
Programming language designers
American women computer scientists
Women inventors
American women mathematicians
United States Navy rear admirals (lower half)
Female admirals of the United States Navy
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Fellows of the British Computer Society
National Medal of Technology recipients
Recipients of the Defense Distinguished Service Medal
Recipients of the Legion of Merit
Recipients of the Meritorious Service Medal (United States)
Harvard University people
Vassar College faculty
Military personnel from New York City
Vassar College alumni
Yale University alumni
American people of Dutch descent
American people of Scottish descent
Burials at Arlington National Cemetery
20th-century American engineers
20th-century American mathematicians
20th-century American scientists
20th-century American women scientists
Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients
Computer science educators
American software engineers
20th-century women mathematicians
Mathematicians from New York (state)
Wardlaw-Hartridge School alumni
WAVES personnel | true | [
"Laura Betterly, also known as Laura Betterly-Blom as the head of Data Resource Consulting, became notorious for sending large quantities of commercial e-mail in the early 21st century when she cracked as a joke, \"call me the Spam Queen\" to a Wall Street Journal reporter.\n\nPersonal life\nBetterly was born in Long Island, New York and lived there until 1995. She is now a resident of Clearwater, Florida. She has been married to Steven Blom, an officer in her corporation, since 2002. She has two children from her first marriage, Chris and Craig.\n\nCareer\nBefore starting Data Resource Consulting, she was president and co-founder of Visiosonic, later known as PCDJ.COM, an mp3 music company. She worked with celebrities such as Ice T, Nile Rodgers, Jam Master Jay and Chaka Kahn.\nShe has been a featured speaker at the Consumer Electronics Show and the Winter Music Conference.\n\nBulk mail or spam\nAt Data Resource Consulting, on a typical day, her firm would send out 8-10 million emails daily, charging clients $600–$1,000 per million emails and about half that amount for a sending a second time. She also charged clients for lead responses to emails. Unlike other mailers, Betterly said she did not forge headers, route messages through outside servers without permission, or use any of the other tricks that have drawn criticism of the spamming community. She also refused to send messages advertising adult products or services, or anything she believed to be illegal. She said that she only possessed the addresses of people who had expressed a desire to know more when signing up to other online services, and that she would honor any requests from recipients to unsubscribe from further mail.\n\nEstimates indicate she may have earned at least US$200,000 per year. She said that she was \"just trying to make a living like everyone else.\" Betterly publicly attacked those who were critical of her practices, “I have a beef against what I consider hate groups that are trying to shut down commercial e-mail” and referred to what she did as \"a win-win situation\". To those who objected to what she did for a living she said, \"I don't really care. As long as I'm not breaking any laws, you don't have to love me or like what I do for a living.\"\n\nData Resource Consulting lost a legal case in Kansas small claims court on 9 September 2003 for failing to follow the spam laws in that state.\n\nChange of business model\nIn September 2005, Betterly and the chairman of her corporation, Bob Cefail, \"fired\" their radio station in Clearwater, Florida where her program,\"The Profit Doctors\" aired, because the station management discontinued the toll-free call-in number for their listeners. The following year, the pair \"rehired\" the same radio station to air a new program called Scooopradio.\n\nBetterly took her company (In Touch Media Group) public and announced her retirement from the bulk commercial e-mail business on 10 October 2005, referring to spam as \"a four-letter word\" and stating that bulk emailing had deteriorated into \"a bunch of unprofessional, ineffective scams\" due to its negative image. She also attempted to distance herself from pro-spam statements that she made in earlier media interviews,\"I have never advocated spam or sending spam.\"\n\nIn Touch Media lost over $2 million. Their 8-K filing with the SEC reveals they received another $1 million in funding for expansion. Despite the investment, In Touch closed its doors in 2007.\n\nRecent activity\nSince 2007 Betterly has been running Yada Yada Marketing a boutique marketing firm that is Google certified for pay per click, and continues to speak at industry events.\n\nExternal links\n Betterly is interviewed by John Ydstie of National Public Radio\n\nReferences\n\nLiving people\nYear of birth missing (living people)\nAmerican businesspeople\nPeople from Long Island\nPeople from Clearwater, Florida\nAmerican women in business\n21st-century American women",
"Paging Emma is a 1999, English-language film written and directed by Roberto Busó-García. It is set in Puerto Rico.\n\nPlot summary\nThe film follows Emma Donne, who is left with nothing after witnessing the shooting and abduction of her husband. Lacking family and friends, she immerses herself in the only thing she has left: her work. As an operator at a paging company, Emma is a modern-day messenger. She begins to find solace by living vicariously through the message she relays... and what once was a dreadful chore becomes an obsession for her. Methodically, Emma retreats from the world around her and starts to substitute her basic need for human contact with these meaningless and impersonal messages. After months without a clue about her husband's disappearance, Emma starts receiving personal and intimate messages that only her husband could write. With nothing to lose but her life, Emma gets involved and follows the lead of the mystifying messages. Caught in an ever-widening web of lies and strange coincidences, Emma realizes that events are not always what they seem, as dark secrets about her previous \"perfect\" life begin to surface.\n\nThe 35mm feature film had a theatrical premiere at the Metro Cinema in Santurce, Puerto Rico, on Monday, November 8, 1999. It did not succeed in getting a distributor, and has never been released to the general public.\n\nSee also\nCinema of Puerto Rico\nList of films set in Puerto Rico\n\nExternal links\n \n \n \n \n \n\n Soundtrack CD on Discogs\n\n1999 films\nPuerto Rican films"
]
|
[
"Grace Hopper",
"Anecdotes",
"What can you tell me about her anecdotes?",
"Grace Hopper is famous for her nanoseconds visual aid.",
"How so?",
"She started handing out pieces of wire that were just under one foot long (11.80 inches = 300 millimeters)--",
"Why did she do this?",
"(11.80 inches = 300 millimeters)--the distance that light travels in one nanosecond.",
"What was she trying to convey to people?",
"Later she used the same pieces of wire to illustrate why computers had to be small to be fast.",
"What other messages did she have for the public?",
"she passed out packets of pepper, calling the individual grains of ground pepper picoseconds."
]
| C_f3d8fdd6d43946db9eb69a1841255eb2_0 | Was there any controversy with her methods or messages? | 6 | Was there any controversy with Grace Hopper's methods or messages? | Grace Hopper | Throughout much of her later career, Hopper was much in demand as a speaker at various computer-related events. She was well known for her lively and irreverent speaking style, as well as a rich treasury of early war stories. She also received the nickname "Grandma COBOL". While she was working on a Mark II Computer at a US Navy research lab in Dahlgren, Virginia in 1947, her associates discovered a moth that was stuck in a relay; the moth impeded the operation of the relay. While neither Hopper nor her crew mentioned the phrase "debugging" in their logs, the case was held as an instance of literal "debugging." For many years, the term bug had been in use in engineering. The remains of the moth can be found in the group's log book at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. Grace Hopper is famous for her nanoseconds visual aid. People (such as generals and admirals) used to ask her why satellite communication took so long. She started handing out pieces of wire that were just under one foot long (11.80 inches = 300 millimeters)--the distance that light travels in one nanosecond. She gave these pieces of wire the metonym "nanoseconds." She was careful to tell her audience that the length of her nanoseconds was actually the maximum speed the signals would travel in a vacuum, and that signals would travel more slowly through the actual wires that were her teaching aids. Later she used the same pieces of wire to illustrate why computers had to be small to be fast. At many of her talks and visits, she handed out "nanoseconds" to everyone in the audience, contrasting them with a coil of wire 984 feet long, representing a microsecond. Later, while giving these lectures while working for DEC, she passed out packets of pepper, calling the individual grains of ground pepper picoseconds. Jay Elliot described Grace Hopper as appearing to be "'all Navy', but when you reach inside, you find a 'Pirate' dying to be released". CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Grace Brewster Murray Hopper (; December 9, 1906 – January 1, 1992) was an American computer scientist and United States Navy rear admiral. One of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I computer, she was a pioneer of computer programming who invented one of the first linkers. Hopper was the first to devise the theory of machine-independent programming languages, and the FLOW-MATIC programming language she created using this theory was later extended to create COBOL, an early high-level programming language still in use today.
Prior to joining the Navy, Hopper earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from Yale University and was a professor of mathematics at Vassar College. Hopper attempted to enlist in the Navy during World War II but was rejected because she was 34 years old. She instead joined the Navy Reserves. Hopper began her computing career in 1944 when she worked on the Harvard Mark I team led by Howard H. Aiken. In 1949, she joined the Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation and was part of the team that developed the UNIVAC I computer. At Eckert–Mauchly she managed the development of one of the first COBOL compilers. She believed that a programming language based on English was possible. Her compiler converted English terms into machine code understood by computers. By 1952, Hopper had finished her program linker (originally called a compiler), which was written for the A-0 System. During her wartime service, she co-authored three papers based on her work on the Harvard Mark 1.
In 1954, Eckert–Mauchly chose Hopper to lead their department for automatic programming, and she led the release of some of the first compiled languages like FLOW-MATIC. In 1959, she participated in the CODASYL consortium, which consulted Hopper to guide them in creating a machine-independent programming language. This led to the COBOL language, which was inspired by her idea of a language being based on English words. In 1966, she retired from the Naval Reserve, but in 1967 the Navy recalled her to active duty. She retired from the Navy in 1986 and found work as a consultant for the Digital Equipment Corporation, sharing her computing experiences.
The U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyer was named for her, as was the Cray XE6 "Hopper" supercomputer at NERSC. During her lifetime, Hopper was awarded 40 honorary degrees from universities across the world. A college at Yale University was renamed in her honor. In 1991, she received the National Medal of Technology. On November 22, 2016, she was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama.
Early life and education
Grace Brewster Murray was born in New York City. She was the eldest of three children. Her parents, Walter Fletcher Murray and Mary Campbell Van Horne, were of Scottish and Dutch descent, and attended West End Collegiate Church. Her great-grandfather, Alexander Wilson Russell, an admiral in the US Navy, fought in the Battle of Mobile Bay during the Civil War.
Grace was very curious as a child; this was a lifelong trait. At the age of seven, she decided to determine how an alarm clock worked and dismantled seven alarm clocks before her mother realized what she was doing (she was then limited to one clock). For her preparatory school education, she attended the Hartridge School in Plainfield, New Jersey. Grace was initially rejected for early admission to Vassar College at age 16 (because her test scores in Latin were too low), but she was admitted the following year. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Vassar in 1928 with a bachelor's degree in mathematics and physics and earned her master's degree at Yale University in 1930.
In 1930 Grace Murray married New York University professor Vincent Foster Hopper (1906–1976); they divorced in 1945. Although she did not marry again, she retained his surname.
In 1934, Hopper earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from Yale under the direction of Øystein Ore. Her dissertation, "New Types of Irreducibility Criteria", was published that same year. She began teaching mathematics at Vassar in 1931, and was promoted to associate professor in 1941.
Career
World War II
Hopper tried to enlist in the Navy early in World War II. She was rejected for a few reasons. At age 34, she was too old to enlist, and her weight to height ratio was too low. She was also denied on the basis that her job as a mathematician and mathematics professor at Vassar College was valuable to the war effort. During the war in 1943, Hopper obtained a leave of absence from Vassar and was sworn into the United States Navy Reserve; she was one of many women who volunteered to serve in the WAVES. She had to get an exemption to enlist; she was below the Navy minimum weight of . She reported in December and trained at the Naval Reserve Midshipmen's School at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. Hopper graduated first in her class in 1944, and was assigned to the Bureau of Ships Computation Project at Harvard University as a lieutenant, junior grade. She served on the Mark I computer programming staff headed by Howard H. Aiken. Hopper and Aiken co-authored three papers on the Mark I, also known as the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator. Hopper's request to transfer to the regular Navy at the end of the war was declined due to her advanced age of 38. She continued to serve in the Navy Reserve. Hopper remained at the Harvard Computation Lab until 1949, turning down a full professorship at Vassar in favor of working as a research fellow under a Navy contract at Harvard.
UNIVAC
In 1949, Hopper became an employee of the Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation as a senior mathematician and joined the team developing the UNIVAC I. Hopper also served as UNIVAC director of Automatic Programming Development for Remington Rand. The UNIVAC was the first known large-scale electronic computer to be on the market in 1950, and was more competitive at processing information than the Mark I.
When Hopper recommended the development of a new programming language that would use entirely English words, she "was told very quickly that [she] couldn't do this because computers didn't understand English." Still, she persisted. "It's much easier for most people to write an English statement than it is to use symbols," she explained. "So I decided data processors ought to be able to write their programs in English, and the computers would translate them into machine code."
Her idea was not accepted for three years. In the meantime, she published her first paper on the subject, compilers, in 1952. In the early 1950s, the company was taken over by the Remington Rand corporation, and it was while she was working for them that her original compiler work was done. The program was known as the A compiler and its first version was A-0.
In 1952, she had an operational link-loader, which at the time was referred to as a compiler. She later said that "Nobody believed that," and that she "had a running compiler and nobody would touch it. They told me computers could only do arithmetic." She goes on to say that her compiler "translated mathematical notation into machine code. Manipulating symbols was fine for mathematicians but it was no good for data processors who were not symbol manipulators. Very few people are really symbol manipulators. If they are they become professional mathematicians, not data processors. It's much easier for most people to write an English statement than it is to use symbols. So I decided data processors ought to be able to write their programs in English, and the computers would translate them into machine code. That was the beginning of COBOL, a computer language for data processors. I could say 'Subtract income tax from pay' instead of trying to write that in octal code or using all kinds of symbols. COBOL is the major language used today in data processing."
In 1954 Hopper was named the company's first director of automatic programming, and her department released some of the first compiler-based programming languages, including MATH-MATIC and FLOW-MATIC.
COBOL
In the spring of 1959, computer experts from industry and government were brought together in a two-day conference known as the Conference on Data Systems Languages (CODASYL). Hopper served as a technical consultant to the committee, and many of her former employees served on the short-term committee that defined the new language COBOL (an acronym for COmmon Business-Oriented Language). The new language extended Hopper's FLOW-MATIC language with some ideas from the IBM equivalent, COMTRAN. Hopper's belief that programs should be written in a language that was close to English (rather than in machine code or in languages close to machine code, such as assembly languages) was captured in the new business language, and COBOL went on to be the most ubiquitous business language to date. Among the members of the committee that worked on COBOL was Mount Holyoke College alumna Jean E. Sammet.
From 1967 to 1977, Hopper served as the director of the Navy Programming Languages Group in the Navy's Office of Information Systems Planning and was promoted to the rank of captain in 1973. She developed validation software for COBOL and its compiler as part of a COBOL standardization program for the entire Navy.
Standards
In the 1970s, Hopper advocated for the Defense Department to replace large, centralized systems with networks of small, distributed computers. Any user on any computer node could access common databases located on the network. She developed the implementation of standards for testing computer systems and components, most significantly for early programming languages such as FORTRAN and COBOL. The Navy tests for conformance to these standards led to significant convergence among the programming language dialects of the major computer vendors. In the 1980s, these tests (and their official administration) were assumed by the National Bureau of Standards (NBS), known today as the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
Retirement
In accordance with Navy attrition regulations, Hopper retired from the Naval Reserve with the rank of commander at age 60 at the end of 1966. She was recalled to active duty in August 1967 for a six-month period that turned into an indefinite assignment. She again retired in 1971 but was again asked to return to active duty in 1972. She was promoted to captain in 1973 by Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt, Jr.
After Republican Representative Philip Crane saw her on a March 1983 segment of 60 Minutes, he championed , a joint resolution originating in the House of Representatives, which led to her promotion on 15 December 1983 to commodore by special Presidential appointment by President Ronald Reagan. She remained on active duty for several years beyond mandatory retirement by special approval of Congress. Effective November 8, 1985, the rank of commodore was renamed rear admiral (lower half) and Hopper became one of the Navy's few female admirals.
Following a career that spanned more than 42 years, Admiral Hopper took retirement from the Navy on August 14, 1986. At a celebration held in Boston on the to commemorate her retirement, Hopper was awarded the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, the highest non-combat decoration awarded by the Department of Defense.
At the time of her retirement, she was the oldest active-duty commissioned officer in the United States Navy (79 years, eight months and five days), and had her retirement ceremony aboard the oldest commissioned ship in the United States Navy (188 years, nine months and 23 days). Admirals William D. Leahy, Chester W. Nimitz, Hyman G. Rickover and Charles Stewart were the only other officers in the Navy's history to serve on active duty at a higher age. Leahy and Nimitz served on active duty for life due to their promotions to the rank of fleet admiral.
Post-retirement
Following her retirement from the Navy, she was hired as a senior consultant to Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). Hopper was initially offered a position by Rita Yavinsky, but she insisted on going through the typical formal interview process. She then proposed in jest that she would be willing to accept a position which made her available on alternating Thursdays, exhibited at their museum of computing as a pioneer, in exchange for a generous salary and unlimited expense account. Instead, she was hired as a full-time Principal Corporate Consulting Engineer, a tech-track SVP-equivalent. In this position, Hopper represented the company at industry forums, serving on various industry committees, along with other obligations. She retained that position until her death at age 85 in 1992.
At DEC Hopper served primarily as a goodwill ambassador. She lectured widely about the early days of computing, her career, and on efforts that computer vendors could take to make life easier for their users. She visited most of Digital's engineering facilities, where she generally received a standing ovation at the conclusion of her remarks. Although no longer a serving officer, she always wore her Navy full dress uniform to these lectures contrary to U.S. Department of Defense policy.
"The most important thing I've accomplished, other than building the compiler," she said, "is training young people. They come to me, you know, and say, 'Do you think we can do this?' I say, 'Try it.' And I back 'em up. They need that. I keep track of them as they get older and I stir 'em up at intervals so they don't forget to take chances."
Anecdotes
Throughout much of her later career, Hopper was much in demand as a speaker at various computer-related events. She was well known for her lively and irreverent speaking style, as well as a rich treasury of early war stories. She also received the nickname "Grandma COBOL".
While she was working on a Mark II Computer at Harvard University in 1947, her associates discovered a moth that was stuck in a relay and impeding the operation of the computer. Upon extraction, the insect was affixed to a log sheet for that day with the notation, “First actual case of a bug being found”. While neither she nor her crew members mentioned the exact phrase, "debugging", in their log entries, the case is held as a historical instance of "debugging" a computer and Hopper is credited with popularizing the term in computing. For many decades, the term "bug" for a malfunction had been in use in several fields before being applied to computers. The remains of the moth can be found taped into the group's log book at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.
Grace Hopper is famous for her nanoseconds visual aid. People (such as generals and admirals) used to ask her why satellite communication took so long. She started handing out pieces of wire that were just under one foot long——the distance that light travels in one nanosecond. She gave these pieces of wire the metonym "nanoseconds." She was careful to tell her audience that the length of her nanoseconds was actually the maximum speed the signals would travel in a vacuum, and that signals would travel more slowly through the actual wires that were her teaching aids. Later she used the same pieces of wire to illustrate why computers had to be small to be fast. At many of her talks and visits, she handed out "nanoseconds" to everyone in the audience, contrasting them with a coil of wire long, representing a microsecond. Later, while giving these lectures while working for DEC, she passed out packets of pepper, calling the individual grains of ground pepper picoseconds.
Jay Elliot described Grace Hopper as appearing to be " 'all Navy', but when you reach inside, you find a 'Pirate' dying to be released."
Death
On New Year's Day 1992, Hopper died in her sleep of natural causes at her home in Arlington, Virginia; she was 85 years of age. She was interred with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery.
Dates of rank
Awards and honors
Military awards
Other awards
1964: Hopper was awarded the Society of Women Engineers Achievement Award, the Society's highest honor, "In recognition of her significant contributions to the burgeoning computer industry as an engineering manager and originator of automatic programming systems." In May 1955, Hopper was one of the founding members of the Society of Women Engineers.
1969: Hopper was awarded the inaugural Data Processing Management Association Man of the Year award (now called the Distinguished Information Sciences Award).
1971: The annual Grace Murray Hopper Award for Outstanding Young Computer Professionals was established in 1971 by the Association for Computing Machinery.
1973: Elected to the U.S. National Academy of Engineering.
1973: First American and the first woman of any nationality to be made a Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society.
1981: Received an Honorary PhD from Clarkson University.
1982: American Association of University Women Achievement Award and an Honorary Doctor of Science from Marquette University.
1983: Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.
1985: Honorary Doctor of Letters from Western New England College (now Western New England University).
1986: Received the Defense Distinguished Service Medal at her retirement.
1986: Received an Honorary Doctor of Science from Syracuse University.
1987: She became the first Computer History Museum Fellow Award Recipient "for contributions to the development of programming languages, for standardization efforts, and for lifelong naval service."
1988: Received the Golden Gavel Award, Toastmasters International.
1991: National Medal of Technology.
1991: Elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
1992: The Society of Women Engineers established three annual, renewable, "Admiral Grace Murray Hopper Scholarships"
1994: Inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.
1996: was launched. Nicknamed Amazing Grace, it is on a very short list of U.S. military vessels named after women.
2001: Eavan Boland wrote a poem dedicated to Grace Hopper titled "Code" in her 2001 release Against Love Poetry.
2001: The Gracies, the Government Technology Leadership Award were named in her honor.
2009: The Department of Energy's National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center named its flagship system "Hopper".
2009: Office of Naval Intelligence creates the Grace Hopper Information Services Center.
2013: Google made the Google Doodle for Hopper's 107th birthday an animation of her sitting at a computer, using COBOL to print out her age. At the end of the animation, a moth flies out of the computer.
2016: On November 22, 2016, Hopper was posthumously awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom for her accomplishments in the field of computer science.
2017: Hopper College at Yale University was named in her honor.
2021: The Admiral Grace Hopper Award was established by the chancellor of the College of Information and Cyberspace (CIC) of the National Defense University to recognize leaders in the fields of information and cybersecurity throughout the National Security community.
Legacy
Grace Hopper was awarded 40 honorary degrees from universities worldwide during her lifetime.
Born with Curiosity: The Grace Hopper Story is an upcoming documentary film.
Nvidia is naming an upcoming GPU generation Hopper after Grace Hopper.
The Navy's Hopper Information Services Center is named for her.
The Navy named a guided-missile destroyer Hopper after her.
Places
Grace Hopper Avenue in Monterey, California, is the location of the Navy's Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center as well as the National Weather Service's San Francisco Bay Area forecast office.
Grace M. Hopper Navy Regional Data Automation Center at Naval Air Station, North Island, California.
Grace Murray Hopper Park, located on South Joyce Street in Arlington, Virginia, is a small memorial park in front of her former residence (River House Apartments) and is now owned by Arlington County, Virginia.
Brewster Academy, a school located in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, United States, dedicated their computer lab to her in 1985, calling it the Grace Murray Hopper Center for Computer Learning. The academy bestows a Grace Murray Hopper Prize to a graduate who excelled in the field of computer systems. Hopper had spent her childhood summers at a family home in Wolfeboro.
Grace Hopper College, one of the residential colleges of Yale University.
An administration building on Naval Support Activity Annapolis (previously known as Naval Station Annapolis) in Annapolis, Maryland is named the Grace Hopper Building in her honor.
Vice Admiral Walter E. "Ted" Carter announced on September 8, 2016 at the Athena Conference that the Naval Academy's newest Cyber Operations building would be named Hopper Hall after Admiral Grace Hopper. This is the first building at any service academy named after a woman. In his words, Grace Hopper was "the admiral of the cyber seas."
The US Naval Academy also owns a Cray XC-30 supercomputer named "Grace," hosted at the University of Maryland-College Park.
Building 1482 aboard Naval Air Station North Island, housing the Naval Computer and Telecommunication Station San Diego, is named the Grace Hopper Building, and also contains the History of Naval Communications Museum.
Building 6007, C2/CNT West in Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, is named after her.
The street outside of the Nathan Deal Georgia Cyber Innovation and Training Center in Augusta, Georgia, is named Grace Hopper Lane.
Grace Hopper Academy is a for-profit immersive programming school in New York City named in Grace Hopper's honor. It opened in January 2016 with the goal of increasing the proportion of women in software engineering careers.
A bridge over Goose Creek, to join the north and south sides of the Naval Support Activity Charleston side of Joint Base Charleston, South Carolina, is named the Grace Hopper Memorial Bridge in her honor.
Minor planet 5773 Hopper discovered by Eleanor Helin is named in her honor. The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on 8 November 2019 ().
Grace Hopper Hall, a community meeting hall in Orlando, Florida (located on the site of the former Orlando Naval Training Center) is named for her.
Programs
Women at Microsoft Corporation formed an employee group called Hoppers and established a scholarship in her honor.
Beginning in 2015, one of the nine competition fields at the FIRST Robotics Competition world championship is named for Hopper.
A named professorship in the Department of Computer Sciences was established at Yale University in her honor. Joan Feigenbaum was named to this chair in 2008.
In 2020, Google named its new undersea network cable 'Grace Hopper'. The cable will connect the US, UK and Spain and is estimated to be completed by 2022.
In popular culture
In his comic book series, Secret Coders by Gene Luen Yang, the main character is named Hopper Gracie-Hu.
Since 2013, Hopper's official portrait has been included in the matplotlib python library as sample data to replace the controversial Lenna image.
Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing
Her legacy was an inspiring factor in the creation of the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. Held yearly, this conference is designed to bring the research and career interests of women in computing to the forefront.
See also
Code: Debugging the Gender Gap
Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing
List of pioneers in computer science
Systems engineering
Women in computing
Women in the United States Navy
List of female United States military generals and flag officers
Timeline of women in science
Notes
Obituary notices
Betts, Mitch (Computerworld 26: 14, 1992)
Bromberg, Howard (IEEE Software 9: 103–104, 1992)
Danca, Richard A. (Federal Computer Week 6: 26–27, 1992)
Hancock, Bill (Digital Review 9: 40, 1992)
Power, Kevin (Government Computer News 11: 70, 1992)
Sammet, J. E. (Communications of the ACM 35 (4): 128–131, 1992)
Weiss, Eric A. (IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 14: 56–58, 1992)
References
Further reading
Williams' book focuses on the lives and contributions of four notable women scientists: Mary Sears (1905–1997); Florence van Straten (1913–1992); Grace Murray Hopper (1906–1992); Mina Spiegel Rees (1902–1997).
External links
Oral History of Captain Grace Hopper – Interviewed by: Angeline Pantages 1980, Naval Data Automation Command, Maryland.
from Chips, the United States Navy information technology magazine.
Grace Hopper: Navy to the Core, a Pirate at Heart (2014), To learn more about Hopper's story and Navy legacy navy.mil.
The Queen of Code (2015), a documentary film about Grace Hopper produced by FiveThirtyEight.
Norwood, Arlisha. "Grace Hopper". National Women's History Museum. 2017.
1906 births
1992 deaths
American computer programmers
American computer scientists
COBOL
Programming language designers
American women computer scientists
Women inventors
American women mathematicians
United States Navy rear admirals (lower half)
Female admirals of the United States Navy
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Fellows of the British Computer Society
National Medal of Technology recipients
Recipients of the Defense Distinguished Service Medal
Recipients of the Legion of Merit
Recipients of the Meritorious Service Medal (United States)
Harvard University people
Vassar College faculty
Military personnel from New York City
Vassar College alumni
Yale University alumni
American people of Dutch descent
American people of Scottish descent
Burials at Arlington National Cemetery
20th-century American engineers
20th-century American mathematicians
20th-century American scientists
20th-century American women scientists
Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients
Computer science educators
American software engineers
20th-century women mathematicians
Mathematicians from New York (state)
Wardlaw-Hartridge School alumni
WAVES personnel | false | [
"Mujahedeen Secrets (transliterated Arabic: Asrar al-Mujahedeen) is an encryption program for Microsoft Windows. It was publicly offered to supporters of Al-Qaeda as a tool to protect the confidentiality of their electronic messages.\n The authors of the software are anonymous.\n\nUses\nThe software allows users to encrypt and decrypt text messages and files with a range of encryption techniques. This is primarily to ensure that any parties intercepting the messages during transmission, such as via Internet e-mail or cellphone, cannot easily view the message's contents.\n\nSoftware releases\nFirst release: In 2007, the Global Islamic Media Front, the propaganda arm of Al Qaeda and other Islamic terrorist groups, announced the release of the Mujahedeen Secrets software.\nSecond release: In 2008, an updated version, Mujahideen Secrets 2, was released, offering further encryption methods.\n\nReferences\n\nCryptographic software\nAl-Qaeda\n2007 software",
"Jenny Nicholl was a woman who disappeared sometime on or after 30 June 2005 from the Richmond area, North Yorkshire, England. In February 2008, David Hodgson was convicted of her murder despite the lack of a body, crime scene or body deposition site. Hodgson was jailed for life, with a recommendation that he serve at least 18 years, after being convicted on DNA and fake text messaging evidence which involved his travelling many miles so as to appear that Nicholl was still alive and camping some distance away from her home town.\n\nDisappearance\nThe Nicholl family lived in Richmond, North Yorkshire, where Nicholl worked at the local supermarket and played guitar in pub bands. Nicholl's father was in the British Army and the family settled in Richmond when the eldest son also joined the army and was posted to Catterick. On the 30 June 2005, Nicholl told her parents that she was spending the night with friends, which was not uncommon for her, and took items with her that suggested she was going on a camping trip. She left the house at 6:00pm and that was the last confirmed sighting of Nicholl. Nicholl was reported missing by her parents on 4 July 2005 after they had had no contact with her over the previous days and her car (a white Rover 214i) was found parked in the Holly Hill Pub in Richmond.\n\nNine days later, North Yorkshire Police interviewed David Hodgson, who was 45 at the time of Nicholl's disappearance, was a married father of two, and who had been Nicholl’s boyfriend since she was 14 years old, though he maintained that their relationship was not sexual until she was 16 and that they had had sex only five times. Hodgson's two daughters had both attended the same school as Nicholl (St Francis Xavier School in Richmond). Around the time of the affair starting, it was said that there was some name-calling of Nicholl and eventually an assault in which the police were finally involved.\n\nDuring his first police interview, Hodgson denied having an affair with Nicholl and also denied anything to do with her disappearance. The next day, Nicholl's mobile phone was switched on and messages were sent which led her family and the police to believe she was alive and well. The text messages were later revealed to have been sent from locations as far afield as Carlisle in Cumbria and Jedburgh in the Scottish Borders. Later, the authenticity of these messages were put into doubt by the police when they stated in November 2005 that the inquiry had turned from a disappearance into a murder investigation. At the end of July 2005, police found David Hodgson in a hut near to Hudswell. He had taken an overdose of pills and wine. In later police interviews, Hodgson admitted that he and Nicholl were lovers, but that their affair had ended 12 months earlier.\n\nWhilst there was some initial hope with the mobile phone messages (Ann Nicholl went to both locations to search for her daughter), police still maintained an active search for Nicholl which lasted the rest of the summer of 2005 and involved searching over 150 areas, septic tanks at farms and also utilised soldiers from Catterick Garrison to help out.\n\nDuring the investigation it was revealed that Nicholl had also started seeing Hodgson's elder brother, Robert, in the weeks prior to her disappearance. Robert Hodgson was unaware of Nicholl's being linked with his younger brother, despite the two brothers' erecting the huts in Sandbeck Plantation that critical evidence was found at during and after the police searches. In December 2005, Ann Nicholl appeared on the BBC programme Crimewatch to appeal for help in finding her daughter and the conviction of her killer.\n\nIn May 2007, police formally charged David Hodgson, and he appeared that same month in Northallerton Magistrates Court where he was remanded in custody until a trial early in 2008.\n\nConviction\nThe case came to court in January 2008 where Hodgson denied taking Nicholl to any of his ramshackle huts hidden in the Sandbeck Plantation near to the A6136 road, south of Richmond. DNA evidence contradicted this as did the discovery of Nicholl's nightdress, teddy bear and cassette player at the same location. Police believed that Hodgson became jealous of his brother's relationship with Nicholl and he killed her on the night she disappeared. Hodgson's elder daughter stated in court that Nicholl was seen alive in Richmond two days after her disappearance and had been staying with Robert. Robert Hodgson denied this claim and stated in court he had not seen Nicholl for some time.\n\nAt court, the prosecution were able to establish that the text messages sent to family and friends days after her disappearance were not in the style that Nicholl would typically compose. The prosecution also submitted evidence that Hodgson had hired a car on 9 and 14 July 2005 and the distances travelled on those days fit the distances both there and back from Richmond to Carlisle and Richmond to Jedburgh. The dates also married up with the dates that the messages were sent from Nicholl's phone. The prosecution also said that David Hodgson was an intensely jealous man who was angry about Nicholl's new relationship with his brother, Robert.\n\nIn February 2008, David Hodgson was found guilty of Nicholl's murder at Teesside Crown Court.\n\nAftermath\nIn September 2008, the Council for the Registration of Forensic Practitioners recognised Forensic Linguistics as a speciality. The UK government body, which strives to promote excellence in forensic practice, recognised that evidence given in cases like those against Hodgson and Stuart Campbell (the murderer of Danielle Jones, whose body, like Nicholl's, has never been found) had a significant impact on each case.\n\nIn November 2009, a coroner ruled that Nicholl was dead and that her death was judged to be an unlawful killing.\n\nSee also\nList of murder convictions without a body\nList of people who disappeared\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nDetailed linguistic comparison between Hodgson and Nicholl texts\nBBC graphic comparing styles in the text messages\n\n1985 births\n2000s missing person cases\n2005 murders in the United Kingdom\n2005 deaths\n2005 in England\nCrime in Yorkshire\nFemale murder victims\nJune 2005 events in the United Kingdom\nMissing person cases in England\nMissing person cases in the United Kingdom\nMurder convictions without a body\nMurder in Yorkshire"
]
|
[
"Regine Velasquez",
"1986-1989: Career beginnings and Regine"
]
| C_37b88fd530a6472498feadbc43940518_1 | What was Regine's first experience singing? | 1 | What was Regine Velasquez's first experience singing? | Regine Velasquez | After winning Ang Bagong Kampeon, Velasquez was signed to OctoArts International (now PolyEast Records). She was introduced as 'Chona' Velasquez--her nickname--and recorded the single "Love Me Again", which was released in early 1986. However, the single was commercially unsuccessful. On February 16, 1986, at the behest of another OctoArts recording artist, Pops Fernandez, Velasquez was invited to appear on her live late night musical television show, The Penthouse Live! While she was rehearsing for the live show, the producer and talent manager Ronnie Henares showed interest and signed her. At the suggestion of Fernandez's husband and the show's co-host, Martin Nievera, Velasquez adopted the stage name "Regine". Under Henares' management, Velasquez was introduced to the head of VIVA Records, Vicente del Rosario Jr., who signed her and started production of her debut album. Del Rosario enlisted top songwriters, including Joaquin Francisco Sanchez, Vehnee Saturno and Christine Bendebel. He and Henares, who were both serving as executive producers, planned to market Velasquez as one of their main female pop artists, hoping to attain commercial success as they had done with Nora Aunor and Sharon Cuneta. After Velasquez completed her debut album, Regine, VIVA released the lead single "Kung Maibabalik Ko Lang" in 1987. Despite a weak start, the album gained mainstream appeal after Velasquez's promotional appearances on the ABS-CBN television variety shows Triple Treat and Teen Pan Alley. The album produced two more singles--"Urong Sulong" and "Isang Lahi". Two years after the release of her debut album, Velasquez represented the Philippines in the 1989 Asia Pacific Singing Contest. She was initially apprehensive and skeptical of the idea of participating in another competition at that stage in her career. At Henares' urging she agreed to compete and won the contest in Hong Kong, performing the songs "You'll Never Walk Alone" from the 1945 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Carousel and "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going" from the musical Dreamgirls. CANNOTANSWER | After winning Ang Bagong Kampeon, Velasquez was signed to OctoArts International (now PolyEast Records). | Regina Encarnacion Ansong Velasquez ( ; born April 22, 1970) is a Filipino singer, actress, and producer. She is known for her vocal range, belting technique, and the unorthodox voice training she received during her childhood, where she was immersed neck-deep in the sea. Velasquez rose to prominence after winning the television talent show Ang Bagong Kampeon in 1984 and the Asia Pacific Singing Contest in 1989. Under the name Chona, she signed a recording contract with OctoArts International in 1986 and released the single "Love Me Again", which was commercially unsuccessful. The following year, she adopted the stage name Regine Velasquez for her debut studio album, Regine (1987), under the guidance of Viva Records executive Vic del Rosario and producer Ronnie Henares. She explored Manila sound and kundiman genres on her second and third studio albums, Nineteen 90 (1990) and Tagala Talaga (1991).
After signing an international record deal with Polygram Records, Velasquez achieved commercial success in some Asian territories with her fifth album Listen Without Prejudice (1994), which sold more than 700,000 copies and became her highest-selling album to date, aided by its lead single "In Love With You". She experimented further with jazz and adult contemporary genres on My Love Emotion (1995), while she recorded covers on Retro (1997). After she left Polygram to sign with Mark J. Feists MJF Company in 1998, she released the R&B-influenced album Drawn. Velasquez's follow-up record, R2K (1999), was supported by remakes of "On the Wings of Love", "I'll Never Love This Way Again", and "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing", and was subsequently certified twelve-times platinum by the Philippine Association of the Record Industry (PARI).
Velasquez played leading roles in the romantic comedies Kailangan Ko'y Ikaw (2000) and Pangako Ikaw Lang (2001), and received the Box Office Entertainment Award for Box Office Queen for the latter. Her performance as an intellectually disabled woman in an episode of the anthology series Maalaala Mo Kaya (2002) earned her a Star Award for Best Actress. She also starred in the prime time television series Forever in My Heart (2004), Ako si Kim Samsoon (2008), Totoy Bato (2009), Diva (2010), I Heart You, Pare! (2011), and Poor Señorita (2016). Velasquez also won the Golden Screen Award for Best Actress for playing a document forger in the comedy film Of All the Things (2013). She expanded her career into reality television talent shows as a presenter on Star for a Night (2002), Pinoy Pop Superstar (2004), and The Clash (2018), and as a judge on StarStruck (2015) and Idol Philippines (2019).
Having sold more than seven million records domestically and 1.5 million in Asia, Velasquez is the best-selling Filipino music artist of all time. Her accolades include two Asian Television Awards, two MTV Asia Awards, 21 Awit Awards, 15 Aliw Awards (including 3 Entertainer of the Year wins), 22 Box Office Entertainment Awards, and 12 Star Awards for Music. Referred to as "Asia's songbird", she has consistently been credited with inspiring a generation of Filipino singers.
Early life
Regina Encarnacion Ansong Velasquez was born on April 22, 1970, in Tondo, Manila, to Teresita (née Ansong) and Gerardo Velasquez. She has three sisters—Cacai, Diane, and Deca—and a brother named Jojo. Her family moved to Hinundayan, Southern Leyte, where Velasquez spent the early years of her life. At age three, Velasquez became interested in music after listening to her father's lullabies. She would listen to her mother play guitar and piano while her father sang, and referenced Sharon Cuneta's "Mr. DJ" as one of the first songs she learned.
Velasquez started singing at age six; she underwent intensive vocal training with her father, who immersed her neck-deep in the sea and had her go through vocal runs. She credits this unorthodox method for strengthening her core and stomach muscles, and developing her lung capacity. Velasquez placed third in her first singing competition on Betty Mendez Livioco The Tita Betty's Children Show.
When Velasquez was nine, her family moved to Balagtas, Bulacan, where she attended St. Lawrence Academy and competed for her school at the annual Bulacan Private Schools Association singing competition. In 1984, at fourteen, Velasquez auditioned for the reality television series Ang Bagong Kampeon. She qualified and became the show's senior division winner, defending her spot for eight consecutive weeks. Velasquez won the competition and was signed to a record deal with OctoArts International.
Music career
1986–1989: Career beginnings and Regine
In 1986, Velasquez initially used the stage name Chona and released the single "Love Me Again", which was commercially unsuccessful. At the recommendation of another OctoArts recording artist, Pops Fernandez, she appeared on The Penthouse Live! While rehearsing for the show, Velasquez caught the attention of Ronnie Henares, a producer and talent manager who signed her to a management deal. Velasquez adopted the stage name Regine at the suggestion of Fernandez's husband and The Penthouse Live! co-host, .
Velasquez signed with Viva Records and released her debut album Regine in 1987. Henares served as an executive producer and worked with songwriters Joaquin Francisco Sanchez and Vehnee Saturno. Three singles were released in 1987: "Kung Maibabalik Ko Lang", " Urong Sulong", and "Isang Lahi". During this period, Velasquez appeared on the ABS-CBN television shows Triple Treat and Teen Pan Alley. Two years after Regine's release, Velasquez represented the Philippines in the 1989 Asia Pacific Singing Contest in Hong Kong and won, performing the songs "You'll Never Walk Alone" from the musical Carousel and "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going" from the musical Dreamgirls.
1990–1993: Nineteen 90 and Reason Enough
Velasquez released her second studio album Nineteen 90 in 1990. She worked with Louie Ocampo on the album's lead single "Narito Ako", which was originally recorded and performed by Maricris Bermont and written by Nonong Pedero for the 1978 Metro Manila Popular Music Festival. Later that year, she headlined her first major concert at the Folk Arts Theater. She recorded "Please Be Careful with My Heart" with Jose Mari Chan, who released the track on his album Constant Change; she also sang backing vocals on Gary Valenciano's "Each Passing Night", which appears on his album Faces of Love.
In 1991, Velasquez made her North American concert debut at Carnegie Hall in New York City, a first for an Asian solo artist. British theatrical producer Cameron Mackintosh later invited Velasquez to audition for the West End production of the musical Miss Saigon. She received a letter from the production offering to train her in London, which she declined: partly due to her lack of experience in musical theater, and because she wished to remain with her family.
Velasquez's third studio album Tagala Talaga was released in October 1991. It includes cover versions of recordings by National Artist for Music recipients Ryan Cayabyab, Lucio San Pedro, and Levi Celerio. The album's lead single, titled "Buhay Ng Buhay Ko", was originally recorded by Leah Navarro and was written by Pedero, with whom Velasquez had worked on Nineteen 90. Other notable singles from the album include "Anak and "Sa Ugoy Ng Duyan".
PolyGram Far East announced a joint-venture licensing deal in the Philippines in July 1993 with the formation of its subsidiary PolyCosmic Records. Velasquez recorded a duet titled "It's Hard to Say Goodbye" with Canadian singer Paul Anka, which became the new label's first release. The single was later included on her fourth studio album Reason Enough. David Gonzales of AllMusic described the album as "more attuned to international ears" and said Velasquez's vocals are "thin and unimpressive". One of its singles, "Sana Maulit Muli", won the Awit Award for Best Performance by a Female Recording Artist in 1994.
1994–1998: Listen Without Prejudice and My Love Emotion
Velasquez released her fifth studio album Listen Without Prejudice in 1994. She worked with songwriters, including Glenn Medeiros, Trina Belamide, and John Laudon. The album was released in several countries in Southeast and East Asia, including China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand. The album's lead single "In Love With You" features Cantonese singer Jacky Cheung. Gonzales commended the record's themes and said, "Cheung's presence on the duet had much to do with the overseas success". The album had sold more than 700,000 copies worldwide, including 100,000 in the Philippines, making it the best-selling album of Velasquez's career to date.
Velasquez's sixth studio album My Love Emotion was released in 1995. The title track, which was written by Southern Sons vocalist Phil Buckle, was described by Gonzales as a "triumph [and] an outstanding vehicle, containing a strong melody and hook in the chorus". The album made a combined regional and domestic sales of 250,000 copies.
For her seventh studio album Retro (1997), Velasquez recorded cover versions of popular music of the 1970s and 1980s from artists, including Donna Summer, Foreigner, and the Carpenters. The album's only original track, "Fly", is credited to Earth, Wind & Fire members Maurice White, Al McKay, and Allee Willis because the song interpolates the melody of their single "September". Velasquez left PolyCosmic in 1998, and signed a six-album contract with the MJF Company. That year, her ninth studio album Drawn was released. MJF head Mark J. Feist wrote and produced most of the tracks, including the lead single "How Could You Leave". Drawn sold more than 40,000 copies and was awarded a platinum certification within two weeks of its release.
1999–2003: R2K and Reigne
Velasquez produced most of her next album R2K, which was released on November 27, 1999. She recorded remakes of Jeffrey Osborne's "On the Wings of Love", Dionne Warwick's "I'll Never Love This Way Again", Aerosmith's "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing", and ABBA's Dancing Queen, among others. Gonzales criticized the record's "infatuation with Western popular music" and called Velasquez's singing "self-assured [but] also unimpressive". Commercially, R2K sold more than 40,000 copies in its second week of release, earning a platinum certification, and was certified four times platinum a year later. R2K has since been certified twelve times platinum, becoming the highest-selling album by a female artist in the Philippines. On December 31, 1999, Velasquez was a featured musical act in 2000 Today, a BBC millennium television special that attracted a worldwide audience of more than 800 million viewers with its core program broadcast across the world's time zones, which began with Kiribati Line Islands and ended in American Samoa.
Velasquez headlined and directed the R2K Concert at the Araneta Coliseum in April 2000, which won her Best Female Major Concert Act at the 13th Aliw Awards. Ricky Lo from The Philippine Star was generally impressed with the production and complimented Velasquez's "boundless energy and creativity". She also performed a concert at the Westin Philippine Plaza that year, which spawned the release of her first live album Regine Live: Songbird Sings the Classics in December 2000. Despite being criticized for the audio mixing, the album was certified six times platinum.
Velasquez worked with Filipino songwriters for material on her eleventh studio album Reigne. The album and its lead single "To Reach You" were released in December 2001. Other singles were Tats Faustino's "Dadalhin" and Janno Gibbs' "Sa Aking Pag-iisa". Gonzales called the album "an adventurous set" and praised the quality of the songwriting.
Velasquez won the inaugural MTV Asia Award for Favorite Artist Philippines in February 2002. She performed "Cry" with Mandy Moore to promote the theatrical release of Moore's film A Walk to Remember. In March, Velasquez hosted the first season of Star for a Night, which is based on the British talent show of the same name. In April, she headlined a benefit concert called One Night with Regine at the National Museum of the Philippines, which was a collaboration with ABS-CBN Foundation to benefit Bantay Bata Foundation's child abuse response fund. The show won Best Musical Program at the 7th Asian Television Awards.
At the 2003 MTV Asia Awards, Velasquez won her second consecutive award for Favorite Artist Philippines. In May 2003, she embarked on the Martin-Regine World Concert Tour with Nievera. The following month, Velasquez returned to host the second season of Search for a Star. That November, she had a concert residency named Songbird Sings Streisand, a tribute to American singer and actor Barbra Streisand, at Makati's Onstage Theatre.
2004–2007: Covers Vol. 1 and Vol. 2
In February 2004, Velasquez and Ogie Alcasid co-headlined a concert, The Songbird & The Songwriter, at the Araneta Coliseum, and embarked on a North American tour that April. At the 17th Aliw Awards, she won Best Female Performance in a Concert and was nominated for Entertainer of the Year for the collaboration. Velasquez hosted the reality talent show Pinoy Pop Superstar, which began airing on GMA Network that July. In October 2004, she released "Forevermore", the lead single from her twelfth studio album Covers, Vol. 1. Its songs were originally recorded by Filipino male artists and was her most expensive cover album to produce due in part to the cost of securing licensing rights for songs by local songwriters, including Ariel Rivera's "Minsan Lang Kita Iibigan", Basil Valdez's "Say That You Love Me", and Nonoy Zuñiga's "Araw Gabi". The album has since been certified six times platinum.
Later in November and December 2005, Velasquez had an eight-day concert residency named Reflections at the Aliw Theater. The sequel album Covers, Vol. 2 was released in February 2006. Unlike its predecessor, it contains songs by foreign artists, including Alanis Morissette's "Head Over Feet", Blondie's "Call Me", and Elvis Presley's "Blue Suede Shoes". Manila Bulletins Jojo Panaligan was generally impressed with Velasquez's "versatility" and the album tracks' "jazzy and blues-y interpretation". In October 2006, she performed a concert titled Twenty at the Araneta Coliseum, which won her Best Female Major Concert Act and Entertainer of the Year award at the 20th Aliw Awards. In 2007, she became co-host of the reality television show Celebrity Duets, an interactive music competition based on the eponymous original US show.
2008–2012: Low Key and professional hiatus
Velasquez developed other television projects in 2008. She appeared in Songbird, a weekly late-night musical television show that featured performances by a musical guest. She also featured in the musical television special The Best of Me, which was filmed at her residence in Quezon City. Velasquez signed a deal with Universal Records and released an album titled Low Key in December 2008. The album consists of cover versions of international songs that she described as "more relaxed, laid-back and restrained". It includes tracks such as Billy Joel's "She's Always a Woman", Dan Fogelberg's "Leader of the Band", and Janis Ian's "At Seventeen". The Philippine Daily Inquirer praised the album's maturity and wrote, "[Velasquez] no longer shrieks and shouts as much as she used to". The album sold more than 25,000 copies within two months of its release and was certified platinum. In May 2009, she appeared on the television documentary Roots to Riches, which chronicles her personal and professional struggles, and includes musical performances filmed in her hometown Malolos. Later that month, she hosted the television talent show Are You the Next Big Star?.
Velasquez's next album, a double CD set called Fantasy, was released in December 2010. The first disc is composed of Original Pilipino Music (OPM) recordings and the second includes covers of international singles such as Madonnas "Papa Don't Preach", Torontos "What About Love", and the Eagles' "Love Will Keep Us Alive". The Philippine Daily Inquirer called the album "vocally sumptuous" and was generally impressed with Velasquez's vocals and range. Fantasy received a platinum certification and earned three nominations at the 3rd Star Awards for Music. After receiving the Magna Award at the Myx Music Awards 2011, and the confirmation of her pregnancy, Velasquez took a hiatus from public engagements. She returned to television on October 6, 2012 with Sarap Diva, a weekly lifestyle talk show. On November 16, 2012, Velasquez performed a concert titled Silver at the Mall of Asia Arena, which was cut short after she lost her voice due to a viral infection.
2013–2016: Silver Rewind and Hulog Ka Ng Langit
After Silver's cancellation, Velasquez restaged the concert on January 5, 2013. The concert received generally favorable reviews; Manila Bulletin Jojo Panaligan called it a "redemption of reputation", while Dolly Anne Carvajal of the Philippine Daily Inquirer said Velasquez did not fail to make up for the initial cancellation of the show. The following month, she co-headlined in Foursome alongside Alcasid, Fernandez, and Nievera. For both shows, Velasquez received four nominations at the 5th Star Awards for Music, winning Best Female Major Concert Act for "Silver" and Concert of the Year for "Foursome".
In November 2013, Velasquez's album Hulog Ka Ng Langit was released; it received a platinum certification for two-week sales of 15,000 copies. She won Best Inspirational Record for "Nathaniel (Gift of God)" and Best Christmas Recording for "Hele ni Inay" at the 27th Awit Awards, while Hulog Ka Ng Langit won Album Cover of the Year at the 6th Star Awards for Music. In 2014, she worked with Nievera in a one-night show titled Voices of Love, with Gloc-9 on "Takipsilim", and with Vice Ganda on "Push Mo Yan Teh".
In February 2015, Velasquez appeared alongside Nievera, Valenciano, and Lani Misalucha in a concert titled Ultimate at the Mall of Asia Arena. She received accolades at the 47th Box Office Entertainment Awards, 7th Star Awards for Music, and 5th Edukcircle Awards for the production. In the same year, Velasquez served as a judge on the sixth season of the reality talent television show StarStruck. In November 2015, Velasquez headlined a four-date concert residency called Regine at the Theater, which featured songs from musicals.
For a third consecutive year, Velasquez appeared in a co-headlining concert at the Mall of Asia Arena in February 2016. The two-night show, Royals, reunited her with Nievera and also features Angeline Quinto and Erik Santos. Due to the concert's positive critical reception, Velasquez won Best Female Concert Performer at the 48th Box Office Entertainment Awards and Most Influential Concert Performer of the Year at the 6th Edukcircle Awards. In December 2016, People Asia magazine included Velasquez on its annual People of the Year list.
2017–present: R3.0, television projects and Freedom
Velasquez hosted Full House Tonight, which ran from February to May 2017. The following month, she announced her return to Viva Records and that she had begun production of a new studio album called R3.0. In August 2017, a cover of Up Dharma Down's 2010 song "Tadhana" was released as a promotional single. An original track called "Hugot" was released as the album's lead single the following month. In November, she headlined the R3.0 Concert at the Mall of Asia Arena and two months later, with Alcasid, she played a four-date U.S. concert series titled "Mr. and Mrs. A."
In 2018, Velasquez hosted the television talent show The Clash, served as a judge on ABS-CBN's revival of the Idol franchise series Idol Philippines, and hosted the musical variety show ASAP Natin' To. In November, she staged a three-date concert series titled "Regine at the Movies" at the New Frontier Theater.
Sharon Cuneta and Velasquez co-headlined a concert, Iconic, in October 2019. For the show, Velasquez won the awards for Best Collaboration in a Concert and Entertainer of the Year at the 32nd Aliw Awards, having won the latter honor in 2007 and 2009. The following month, she released a collaborative single with Moira Dela Torre called "Unbreakable", which was recorded for the soundtrack of the film of the same name. Velasquez appeared as the face of Australian beauty brand BYS and released the promotional single "I Am Beautiful" for the brand's "Be Your Own Expert" campaign. She released the soundtrack singles "Ikaw Ang Aking Mahal" for the action television series The General's Daughter (2019) and "Mahal Ko O Mahal Ako" for the drama series Love Thy Woman (2020).
Velasquez organized virtual benefit concerts in support of relief efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. She curated One Night with Regine, a collaboration with ABS-CBN to support Bantay Bata Foundation's COVID-19 response fund in April, and appeared in Joy From Home, which raised funds to support Jollibee Groups food aid program in June. On February 28, 2021, she was featured in an online streaming concert titled Freedom.
Acting career
Velasquez made her cinema debut with a minor role in the 1988 comedy film The Untouchable Family. Its soundtrack includes her single "Urong Sulong". She continued to appear in a series of supporting roles in comedies, including Pik Pak Boom (1988) and Elvis and James 2 (1990).
Velasquez began working with composer Ryan Cayabyab in 1995 on the musical theater version of José Rizals Noli Me Tángere, where she played the female lead, María Clara. Vic Del Rosario, head of Viva Entertainment's film production arm, saw Velasquez in one of her performances and offered her a starring role in a film. Her first leading role was a music teacher in the romantic comedy Wanted: Perfect Mother (1996). Nievera and Ocampo co-wrote the song "You Are My Song" for the film's soundtrack. Later in 1996, she starred alongside Donna Cruz and Mikee Cojuangco in the musical comedy Do Re Mi. Velasquez continued to play leading roles in romantic comedies, appearing in Honey Nasa Langit Na Ba Ako (1998) with Janno Gibbs and Dahil May Isang Ikaw (1999) with Aga Muhlach. Her first television role came in 2000 in an episode of the IBC-13s weekly drama series Habang May Buhay as Piolo Pascuals cancer-stricken love interest.
A key point in Velasquez's film career came when she was cast in Joyce Bernals Kailangan Ko'y Ikaw (2000) opposite Robin Padilla. Film critic Noel Vera criticized the film's formula as "the nth variation of Roman Holiday", but wrote that Velasquez "[brought] her own public persona and charisma and sense of humor to the role". Her next film role was in Pangako Ikaw Lang (2001), which reunited her with Bernal and Muhlach. Vera was impressed with the film's direction and writing, and described Velasquez's performance as "sunny good nature [with a] light comic touch". Pangako Ikaw Lang became the highest-grossing Filipino film of 2001. Velasquez was awarded the Box Office Queen title at the 32nd Box Office Entertainment Awards due to the film's commercial performance.
Her next television appearance was in an episode of ABS-CBN's weekly drama series Maalaala Mo Kaya (2001), playing a woman with autism. The role won her the Best Actress award at the 16th Star Awards for Television. She portrayed a mundane and undesirable mail sorter in the drama Ikaw Lamang Hanggang Ngayon (2002) opposite Richard Gomez, while Pangarap Ko Ang Ibigin Ka (2003) reunited her with Christopher de Leon of Wanted: Perfect Mother, which premiered at the Manila Film Festival in July 2003. In December, Velasquez next starred alongside Bong Revilla in the superhero film Captain Barbell.
Although Velasquez did not make any film appearances in 2004, she made her primetime television debut in the drama series Forever in My Heart, in which she was reunited with Gomez, and worked alongside Ariel Rivera. She next starred in romantic dramas, reuniting with Padilla in Till I Met You (2006) and with Pascual in Paano Kita Iibigin (2007). For the latter film, Velasquez received FAMAS and Luna nominations for Best Actress. In 2008, she returned to television, playing the titular character in the comedy series Ako si Kim Samsoon, an adaption of a South Korean television show. Velasquez also voiced the eponymous character in the animated film Urduja (2008).
During 2009, Velasquez made cameo appearances in the comedies Kimmy Dora, OMG (Oh, My Girl!), and Yaya and Angelina: The Spoiled Brat Movie. In March 2010, Velasquez appeared in the musical television series Diva as a facially disfigured ghost singer. The following year, she collaborated with Dingdong Dantes in the television series I Heart You, Pare! (2011). She left the show for health reasons and was replaced by Iza Calzado.
In the 2012 film Of All The Things, Velasquez worked with Bernal and Muhlach for the third time. Philbert Dy of ClickTheCity called the film a "tedious, unfocused mess that forces chemistry where none really exists". Despite the film's negative review, Velasquez's performance won the 10th Golden Screen award for Best Actress. She next starred in the independent film Mrs. Recto (2015), a comedy-drama set principally on Recto Avenue. She then portrayed a socialite who is stripped of her wealth in the television comedy series Poor Señorita (2016). Her only acting appearance in 2017 was a supporting role in Mulawin vs. Ravena, the sequel to the 2004 television series Mulawin.
Velasquez played a widow obsessed with a pop star in Nigel Santos' independent film Yours Truly, Shirley. The film premiered at the 2019 Cinema One Originals Film Festival. In January 2020, she briefly appeared in the iWant comedy series My Single Lady.
Artistry
Influences
As a child, Velasquez enjoyed listening to her father singing classic songs to lull her to sleep; she was drawn to traditional songs rather than nursery rhymes because of this routine. Since her childhood, Velasquez has considered Sharon Cuneta a role model and credits Cuneta as a key inspiration who led her to pursue a musical career.
Velasquez's music is influenced by artists such as Sheena Easton, Angela Bofill, Whitney Houston, and Mariah Carey in her early years. She admires Houston for her "style and R&B influence" and Carey's songwriting. On several occasions, Velasquez has cited Barbra Streisand as her main influence and musical inspiration, saying, "I look up to [Streisand] not just because of her enormous talent, but because of her fearlessness and dedication to excellence, her willingness to take risks and to be different." Streisand's music has frequently featured in Velasquez's repertoire throughout her career, including a series of concerts paying homage to Streisand, which Velasquez described as "a pleasure" to perform. Velasquez has also been influenced by many Filipino artists; early in her career, she cited Kuh Ledesma, Joey Albert, Gary Valenciano, Martin Nievera, and Pops Fernandez as her role models. She has also paid tribute to Filipino songwriters, including George Canseco, Rey Valera, Basil Valdez, Ryan Cayabyab, and Willy Cruz.
Musical style and themes
Velasquez's early-career music includes elements of traditional OPM love songs. She described how she developed her musical style, saying, "I was only 16 and people didn't know what to do with me. When they want me to sing love songs, they had to explain to me what it meant because I didn't know the feeling yet." Her debut album Regine includes ballads and bubblegum pop love songs; its themes revolve around feelings of "excitement and uncertainty", as well as "missed chances and regrets". Elvin Luciano from CNN Philippines wrote: "During her [initial] phase, she proved that Filipino love songs don't have to come pre-packaged in the kundiman-rooted love ballad." Her later releases, including Nineteen 90 and Tagala Talaga, capitalized on her popularity; they are dominated by Filipino love songs. Velasquez began working with foreign songwriters while planning her first regional album Listen Without Prejudice, which according to AllMusic is "oriented towards easy-listening love songs with adventurous, contemporary touches". The album features tracks with syncopated backbeats and hip-hop influences.
During the mid-1990s and the early 2000s, Velasquez's albums consisted primarily of cover versions of international material because of its commercial viability, and Filipinos' preference for American music. According to CNN Philippines, "Regine has a knack for choosing songs which at first, may not fit her, but eventually become her own." Many of her songs, particularly in Retro, Drawn, and R2K contained R&B, soul, and hip-hop elements. Reigne is an OPM album that she described as "songs influenced by the music, artists, and genres that I enjoy listening to," and included tracks that are melancholic, sensual, and poetic. Her crossover to film saw significant use of contemporary love ballads in her catalog of soundtrack themes, describing the music as "straightforward, earnest, and lyrically simple".
Voice and timbre
Velasquez is known for her use of vocal belting, and credits the vocal training she received from her father as a child:
Velasquez is a soprano and is often praised for her range and technical ability. Luciano of CNN Philippines complimented her "trademark and sometimes melismatic vocals" while Gonzales adds her singing is "strong, emotive, and confident". She has often been criticized, however, for the excessive use of belting and oversinging. Gonzales described Velasquez's timbre as "thin, unimpressive and unappealing at times", and said her singing is "aiming for a higher [note], [which] she did all too often". Velasquez said, "I don't mean to make any songs hard. It's just that when I'm on stage, with the adrenaline rush and all, you get excited. I do try to hold back [because] otherwise I'd be screaming the whole show, that's not good."
Legacy and influence
Velasquez's vocal style and singing ability have significantly impacted Philippine popular and contemporary music. Critics have called her "Asia's songbird" and she is often cited as one of Filipino music's most influential artists. According to Allan Policarpio of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, "Regine needed only to open her mouth and that celebrated voice would come out. She could sing seated, lying down or hoisted up in the air with a harness—no problem. And even when she was so sick she couldn't speak, she could still sing." Velasquez has also been recognized for playing a pivotal role in creating the "blue print" for becoming a "singing icon". Many critics complimented her work, often singling out Velasquez's influence. Luciano, writing for CNN Philippines, described her "legitimacy" as "enough to secure a space in pop culture" and said her musical career "continues to influence generations of OPM patrons and songbird wannabes up to this day", while according to The Philippine Star, "If one were to go by records and distinctions made, Regine Velasquez would win, hands down". She has often been regarded as a powerhouse for her performances and musical content.
Velasquez's use of vocal belting has been subject to scrutiny because young singers, including contestants on television talent shows, have imitated her singing technique. According to Nestor Torre of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, "The popularity of 'birit' [belting] started here with the amateur singing contests ... Then came Regine Velasquez, who also launched her own singing career the 'birit' way ... Trouble is, Regine's belting became so popular that her successor[s] ... imitated her." Manila Bulletin said, "Most of our top selling new female singers are still and mere parrots of [Velasquez] in terms of vocal acrobatics and predilection to show off her high range". According to Boy Abunda, "Most of the young female singers currently making waves in the industry are cut from the same biritera [belter] cloth as Regine Velasquez."
Filipino pop, hip-hop, and R&B artists Aicelle Santos, Charice, Erik Santos, Jona Viray, Julie Anne San Jose, KZ Tandingan, Kyla, Mark Bautista, Morissette Amon, , and Yeng Constantino—among others—have cited Velasquez as an influence.
Velasquez's music has broadly influenced a younger generation of performers from reality television talent shows; Sarah Geronimo has stated Velasquez made her realize the value of hard work while Rachelle Ann Go and Angeline Quinto have both said Velasquez inspired them during their early years as aspiring singers. American Idol finalists Ramiele Malubay, Thia Megia, and Jessica Sanchez have expressed a desire to emulate Velasquez.
Velasquez has also been credited for her work and performances with international artists, including 98 Degrees, Alicia Keys, Coco Lee, Peabo Bryson, and Stephen Bishop. French composer Michel Legrand described working with Velasquez, saying "It's tough to sing a song after Barbra Streisand, I will tell you. But to sing with Regine is, I'm in heaven. She sings so well, she has such an extraordinary technical voice ... sensitive voice and talented expression." American singer Brian McKnight who co-headlined a concert with Velasquez, has complimented her singing, stating; "I got to sing onstage with Regine and it was one of the best experiences ever because she's one of the best singers I've ever heard."
Other activities
Philanthropy
Velasquez has been involved with several charitable organizations. She became associated with the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in 2001 and worked on a documentary titled Speak Your Mind, which is about homeless children in Payatas, Quezon City, one of the Philippines' largest open dumpsites. The program was nominated for the UNICEF Child Rights Award.
One of Velasquez's highest-profile benefit concert appearances was in One Night with Regine, which she performed at the National Museum of the Philippines in support of the Bantay Bata Foundation, a child welfare organization. In 2005, Velasquez appeared in an episode of the lifestyle talk show Mel and Joey, and donated proceeds from an auction of her gowns to the GMA Kapuso Foundation's Christmas Give-a-Gift project. In 2009, Velasquez headlined a benefit television special called After The Rain: A Hopeful Christmas in the aftermath of Typhoon Ketsana (Ondoy). In October 2010, she became an ambassador for Operation Smile, a nonprofit organization that provides cleft lip and palate repair surgery to children worldwide. She recorded the theme "S.M.I.L.E.", which was written for the project and appears on her studio album Fantasy. In November 2013, proceeds from the sales of her album Hulog Ka Ng Langit were donated to the Philippine Red Cross in support of the Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda) relief.
Product endorsements
Velasquez has been involved in brand marketing initiatives for American fast food restaurant chains Wendy's and KFC. She has signed advertising deals with several other brands, including Digitel, Lux, Nestlé Philippines, Nokia, and Smart Communications. Throughout 2005, she appeared as the face of the Department of Tourism's travel promotion campaign. In August 2009, Velasquez released a line of women's perfume called "Reigne" and "Songbird" for the clothing brand Bench. In February 2020, she collaborated with beauty brand BYS and launched a line of makeup called "Reigne".
Personal life
Velasquez announced her relationship with singer-songwriter Ogie Alcasid in an article published by Yes! magazine in June 2007. On August 8, 2010, the couple announced their engagement, and in December, they married in Nasugbu, Batangas. She gave birth to their son, Nathaniel James, via caesarean section on November 8, 2011.
Velasquez is a born-again Christian. In March 2016, she said she had suffered a miscarriage prior to her marriage to Alcasid and cited it as her reason for converting. She also said she had been attending Victory Christian Fellowship.
Awards and recognition
Throughout her career, Velasquez has received many honors and awards, including MTV Asia's Favorite Artist Philippines in 2002 and 2003, and the Aliw Awards' Entertainer of the Year in 2007, 2009, and 2019. She has been the recipient of lifetime achievement awards, including the Awit Awards Dangal ng Musikang Pilipino, the Star Awards for Music's Pilita Corrales Lifetime Achievement and Natatanging Alagad Ng Musika, FAMAS Awards' Golden Artist, and Myx Music's Magna Award.
Velasquez has sold more than seven million records in the Philippines and 1.5 million in Asia, making her the biggest-selling Filipino artist of all time. Eight of her albums have each sold over 200,000 copies. She was ranked first in Female Networks 2011 countdown of the "Top 25 Best Filipina Singers" and was included in Top 10 Asia magazine's list of "Ten Most Admired Female Singers in Asia". Velasquez has also received recognition for her work in television and film, such as the Box Office Queen award in 2002, the Star Awards for Television's Best Actress in 2002, and the Golden Screen Awards' Best Actress in 2013. She has received a total of 21 Awit Awards, 22 Box Office Entertainment Awards, 15 Aliw Awards, and 12 Star Awards for Music. In December 2007, Velasquez was honored with a star on the Philippines' Walk of Fame.
Discography
Regine (1987)
Nineteen '90 (1990)
Tagala Talaga (1991)
Reason Enough (1993)
Listen Without Prejudice (1994)
My Love Emotion (1995)
Retro (1997)
Drawn (1998)
R2K (1999)
Reigne (2001)
Covers, Vol. 1 (2004)
Covers, Vol. 2 (2006)
Low Key (2008)
Fantasy (2010)
Hulog Ka Ng Langit (2013)
R3.0 (2017)
Filmography
Wanted Perfect Mother (1996)
Do Re Mi (1996)
Dahil May Isang Ikaw (1998)
Kailangan Ko'y Ikaw (2000)
Pangako Ikaw Lang (2001)
Ikaw Lamang Hanggang Ngayon (2002)
Pangarap Ko Ang Ibigin Ka (2003)
Till I Met You (2006)
Paano Kita Iibigin (2007)
Of All The Things (2012)
Mrs. Recto (2015)
Yours Truly, Shirley (2019)
Concerts
Headlining concerts
Narito Ako! (1990)
In Season (1991)
Music and Me (1993)
Isang Pasasalamat (1996)
Retro (1997)
Drawn (1998)
R2K The Concert (2000)
Songbird Sings the Classics (2001)
R-15 (2001)
One Night with Regine (2002)
Reigning Still (2004)
Twenty (2006)
Silver (2013)
R3.0 (2017)
Freedom (2021)
Co-headlining concerts
Power of Two (with Kuh Ledesma) (1996)
Celebration of Love (with Peabo Bryson and Jeffrey Osborne) (2000)
Independent Women (with Jaya) (2001)
Two for the Knight (with Brian McKnight) (2002)
Songbird Sings Legrand (with Michel Legrand) (2003)
Martin & Regine: The World Concert (with Martin Nievera) (2003)
The Songbird & The Songwriter (with Ogie Alcasid) (2004)
Queens on Fire (with Pops Fernandez) (2005)
Iconic (with Sharon Cuneta) (2019)
Unified (with Sarah Geronimo) (2020)
Concert residencies
Regine at the Movies (2001; 2018)
Songbird Sings (2002)
Songbird Sings Streisand (2003)
Reflections (2005)
Regine at the Theater (2015)
See also
List of best-selling albums in the Philippines
List of Filipino singers
List of Filipino actresses
Music of the Philippines
Philippine Association of the Record Industry
Notes
References
Citations
Book sources
External links
1970 births
Intercontinental Broadcasting Corporation personalities
Universal Records (Philippines) artists
Filipino dance musicians
Filipino women pop singers
Filipino record producers
Filipino Protestants
Filipino Christians
Filipino television actresses
Filipino film actresses
English-language singers from the Philippines
Living people
People from Tondo, Manila
Singers from Manila
Actresses from Manila
Tagalog people
Filipino sopranos
ABS-CBN personalities
GMA Network personalities
TV5 (Philippine TV network) personalities
21st-century Filipino women singers
Women record producers | false | [
"Regine is the first studio album by Filipino singer-actress Regine Velasquez, released in 1987 by Viva Records in the Philippines in CD and cassette format and later released on 2002 in digital download. The album was produced by Ronnie Henares, also her manager then. It was composed of original Filipino compositions by Christine Bendebel, Vehnee Saturno and OPM 1980s singer-composer Keno among others, except for \"Ebb Tide\" originally by Frank Chacksfield & His Orchestra composed by Robert Maxwell and Carl Sigman. The carrier single released is \"Kung Maibabalik Ko Lang\" together with \"Maybe Now, Maybe Then\".\n\nBackground\nRegine is Velasquez's first full studio album released after winning champion at RPN 9's Ang Bagong Kampeon singing competition. Although she recorded a song before the album titled \"Love Me Again\" released through OctoArts, but with her name \"Chona Velasquez\". However, in 1986 after performing in Martin Nievera's late night TV program \"The Penthouse Live!\" aired over GMA Radio Television Arts, Nievera suggested that she use her own name which is \"Regine\" than her nickname. It was then that under new management with Ronnie Henares got her a recording contract to Viva Records owned by Mr. Vic del Rosario. All of the songs in the album were produced by Ronnie Henares. The song \"Isang Lahi\" was later used in the film Gabi Na, Kumander. \"Kung Maibabalik Ko Lang\" is also used as the theme song of the 1989 movie of the same title starring Maricel Soriano (under Regal Films) and later turned into a Friday segment of Teysi ng Tahanan, which aired by ABS-CBN from 1991 to 1997 hosted by Tessie Tomas.\n\nTrack listing\n\nReferences\n\nSee also\n Regine Velasquez discography\n List of best-selling albums in the Philippines\n\nRegine Velasquez albums\n1987 debut albums",
"Daniel Surian Tan (born July 29, 1959), simply known as Danny Tan, is a Filipino musician known for his songwriting and musical directing for the Philippine movie, television, theatre, and recording industries. He is associated with Ryan Cayabyab, Raul Mitra, and Regine Velasquez. He was a student of National Artist Lucio San Pedro at the University of the Philippines College of Music. He was among those Filipino artists commissioned for the 2019 Southeast Asian Games opening performance, under the direction of Floy Quintos.\n\nCareer\nIn 1989, Tan did the musical arrangements for Regine Velasquez at the 2nd Asia Pacific Song Festival held in Hong Kong where Velasquez emerged as champion. In 1991, Tan arranged the Jose Javier Reyes-composed song \"Hindi Sapat ang Lahat\" for the movie The Real Life of Pacita M starring Nora Aunor. The musical score won him a 1991 Metro Manila Film Festival award and a 1992 Star Award.\n\nFor the Philippine millennium celebration covered by BBC in 2000, Tan composed the song \"Written in the Sand\" which was sung by Regine Velasquez at the fountain area The Peninsula Manila Hotel, along with 2,000 children. The event was televised in 67 broadcast networks globally, and was aired live through GMA Network in the Philippines.\n\nIn 2007, GMA Network produced a singing competition for the younger age bracket Popstar Kids, hosted by Kyla, and aired it on QTV 11 (now GMA News TV). Tan was its musical director and consequently become manager of the music group SugarPop. The group was consisted of the top 5 finalists of the reality singing contest: Rita Iringan, Julie Anne San Jose, Vanessa Rangadhol, Pocholo Bismonte, and Renzo Almario.\n\nIn 2008, GMA Network produced the second incarnation of the Idol franchise in the Philippines with Pinoy Idol, where Tan served as musical director.\n\nIn 2009, Tan served as one of the judges of GMA 7's reality singing competition Are You The Next Big Star? along with Pops Fernandez, Randy Santiago, Mon Faustino, and Annie Faustino. The show was hosted by Regine Velasquez.\n\nHe was nominated with Sherwin Castillo for Asintado in the category Best Musical Score at the 2015 FAMAS Awards\n\nHe is a pet industry entrepreneur in the Philippines, starting in 2000.\n\nAwards\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n \n\n1959 births\nFilipino songwriters\nFilipino musicians\nPeople from Sulu\nLiving people"
]
|
[
"Regine Velasquez",
"1986-1989: Career beginnings and Regine",
"What was Regine's first experience singing?",
"After winning Ang Bagong Kampeon, Velasquez was signed to OctoArts International (now PolyEast Records)."
]
| C_37b88fd530a6472498feadbc43940518_1 | How old was she when she won that award? | 2 | How old was Regine Velasquez when she won Ang Bagong Kampeon? | Regine Velasquez | After winning Ang Bagong Kampeon, Velasquez was signed to OctoArts International (now PolyEast Records). She was introduced as 'Chona' Velasquez--her nickname--and recorded the single "Love Me Again", which was released in early 1986. However, the single was commercially unsuccessful. On February 16, 1986, at the behest of another OctoArts recording artist, Pops Fernandez, Velasquez was invited to appear on her live late night musical television show, The Penthouse Live! While she was rehearsing for the live show, the producer and talent manager Ronnie Henares showed interest and signed her. At the suggestion of Fernandez's husband and the show's co-host, Martin Nievera, Velasquez adopted the stage name "Regine". Under Henares' management, Velasquez was introduced to the head of VIVA Records, Vicente del Rosario Jr., who signed her and started production of her debut album. Del Rosario enlisted top songwriters, including Joaquin Francisco Sanchez, Vehnee Saturno and Christine Bendebel. He and Henares, who were both serving as executive producers, planned to market Velasquez as one of their main female pop artists, hoping to attain commercial success as they had done with Nora Aunor and Sharon Cuneta. After Velasquez completed her debut album, Regine, VIVA released the lead single "Kung Maibabalik Ko Lang" in 1987. Despite a weak start, the album gained mainstream appeal after Velasquez's promotional appearances on the ABS-CBN television variety shows Triple Treat and Teen Pan Alley. The album produced two more singles--"Urong Sulong" and "Isang Lahi". Two years after the release of her debut album, Velasquez represented the Philippines in the 1989 Asia Pacific Singing Contest. She was initially apprehensive and skeptical of the idea of participating in another competition at that stage in her career. At Henares' urging she agreed to compete and won the contest in Hong Kong, performing the songs "You'll Never Walk Alone" from the 1945 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Carousel and "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going" from the musical Dreamgirls. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Regina Encarnacion Ansong Velasquez ( ; born April 22, 1970) is a Filipino singer, actress, and producer. She is known for her vocal range, belting technique, and the unorthodox voice training she received during her childhood, where she was immersed neck-deep in the sea. Velasquez rose to prominence after winning the television talent show Ang Bagong Kampeon in 1984 and the Asia Pacific Singing Contest in 1989. Under the name Chona, she signed a recording contract with OctoArts International in 1986 and released the single "Love Me Again", which was commercially unsuccessful. The following year, she adopted the stage name Regine Velasquez for her debut studio album, Regine (1987), under the guidance of Viva Records executive Vic del Rosario and producer Ronnie Henares. She explored Manila sound and kundiman genres on her second and third studio albums, Nineteen 90 (1990) and Tagala Talaga (1991).
After signing an international record deal with Polygram Records, Velasquez achieved commercial success in some Asian territories with her fifth album Listen Without Prejudice (1994), which sold more than 700,000 copies and became her highest-selling album to date, aided by its lead single "In Love With You". She experimented further with jazz and adult contemporary genres on My Love Emotion (1995), while she recorded covers on Retro (1997). After she left Polygram to sign with Mark J. Feists MJF Company in 1998, she released the R&B-influenced album Drawn. Velasquez's follow-up record, R2K (1999), was supported by remakes of "On the Wings of Love", "I'll Never Love This Way Again", and "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing", and was subsequently certified twelve-times platinum by the Philippine Association of the Record Industry (PARI).
Velasquez played leading roles in the romantic comedies Kailangan Ko'y Ikaw (2000) and Pangako Ikaw Lang (2001), and received the Box Office Entertainment Award for Box Office Queen for the latter. Her performance as an intellectually disabled woman in an episode of the anthology series Maalaala Mo Kaya (2002) earned her a Star Award for Best Actress. She also starred in the prime time television series Forever in My Heart (2004), Ako si Kim Samsoon (2008), Totoy Bato (2009), Diva (2010), I Heart You, Pare! (2011), and Poor Señorita (2016). Velasquez also won the Golden Screen Award for Best Actress for playing a document forger in the comedy film Of All the Things (2013). She expanded her career into reality television talent shows as a presenter on Star for a Night (2002), Pinoy Pop Superstar (2004), and The Clash (2018), and as a judge on StarStruck (2015) and Idol Philippines (2019).
Having sold more than seven million records domestically and 1.5 million in Asia, Velasquez is the best-selling Filipino music artist of all time. Her accolades include two Asian Television Awards, two MTV Asia Awards, 21 Awit Awards, 15 Aliw Awards (including 3 Entertainer of the Year wins), 22 Box Office Entertainment Awards, and 12 Star Awards for Music. Referred to as "Asia's songbird", she has consistently been credited with inspiring a generation of Filipino singers.
Early life
Regina Encarnacion Ansong Velasquez was born on April 22, 1970, in Tondo, Manila, to Teresita (née Ansong) and Gerardo Velasquez. She has three sisters—Cacai, Diane, and Deca—and a brother named Jojo. Her family moved to Hinundayan, Southern Leyte, where Velasquez spent the early years of her life. At age three, Velasquez became interested in music after listening to her father's lullabies. She would listen to her mother play guitar and piano while her father sang, and referenced Sharon Cuneta's "Mr. DJ" as one of the first songs she learned.
Velasquez started singing at age six; she underwent intensive vocal training with her father, who immersed her neck-deep in the sea and had her go through vocal runs. She credits this unorthodox method for strengthening her core and stomach muscles, and developing her lung capacity. Velasquez placed third in her first singing competition on Betty Mendez Livioco The Tita Betty's Children Show.
When Velasquez was nine, her family moved to Balagtas, Bulacan, where she attended St. Lawrence Academy and competed for her school at the annual Bulacan Private Schools Association singing competition. In 1984, at fourteen, Velasquez auditioned for the reality television series Ang Bagong Kampeon. She qualified and became the show's senior division winner, defending her spot for eight consecutive weeks. Velasquez won the competition and was signed to a record deal with OctoArts International.
Music career
1986–1989: Career beginnings and Regine
In 1986, Velasquez initially used the stage name Chona and released the single "Love Me Again", which was commercially unsuccessful. At the recommendation of another OctoArts recording artist, Pops Fernandez, she appeared on The Penthouse Live! While rehearsing for the show, Velasquez caught the attention of Ronnie Henares, a producer and talent manager who signed her to a management deal. Velasquez adopted the stage name Regine at the suggestion of Fernandez's husband and The Penthouse Live! co-host, .
Velasquez signed with Viva Records and released her debut album Regine in 1987. Henares served as an executive producer and worked with songwriters Joaquin Francisco Sanchez and Vehnee Saturno. Three singles were released in 1987: "Kung Maibabalik Ko Lang", " Urong Sulong", and "Isang Lahi". During this period, Velasquez appeared on the ABS-CBN television shows Triple Treat and Teen Pan Alley. Two years after Regine's release, Velasquez represented the Philippines in the 1989 Asia Pacific Singing Contest in Hong Kong and won, performing the songs "You'll Never Walk Alone" from the musical Carousel and "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going" from the musical Dreamgirls.
1990–1993: Nineteen 90 and Reason Enough
Velasquez released her second studio album Nineteen 90 in 1990. She worked with Louie Ocampo on the album's lead single "Narito Ako", which was originally recorded and performed by Maricris Bermont and written by Nonong Pedero for the 1978 Metro Manila Popular Music Festival. Later that year, she headlined her first major concert at the Folk Arts Theater. She recorded "Please Be Careful with My Heart" with Jose Mari Chan, who released the track on his album Constant Change; she also sang backing vocals on Gary Valenciano's "Each Passing Night", which appears on his album Faces of Love.
In 1991, Velasquez made her North American concert debut at Carnegie Hall in New York City, a first for an Asian solo artist. British theatrical producer Cameron Mackintosh later invited Velasquez to audition for the West End production of the musical Miss Saigon. She received a letter from the production offering to train her in London, which she declined: partly due to her lack of experience in musical theater, and because she wished to remain with her family.
Velasquez's third studio album Tagala Talaga was released in October 1991. It includes cover versions of recordings by National Artist for Music recipients Ryan Cayabyab, Lucio San Pedro, and Levi Celerio. The album's lead single, titled "Buhay Ng Buhay Ko", was originally recorded by Leah Navarro and was written by Pedero, with whom Velasquez had worked on Nineteen 90. Other notable singles from the album include "Anak and "Sa Ugoy Ng Duyan".
PolyGram Far East announced a joint-venture licensing deal in the Philippines in July 1993 with the formation of its subsidiary PolyCosmic Records. Velasquez recorded a duet titled "It's Hard to Say Goodbye" with Canadian singer Paul Anka, which became the new label's first release. The single was later included on her fourth studio album Reason Enough. David Gonzales of AllMusic described the album as "more attuned to international ears" and said Velasquez's vocals are "thin and unimpressive". One of its singles, "Sana Maulit Muli", won the Awit Award for Best Performance by a Female Recording Artist in 1994.
1994–1998: Listen Without Prejudice and My Love Emotion
Velasquez released her fifth studio album Listen Without Prejudice in 1994. She worked with songwriters, including Glenn Medeiros, Trina Belamide, and John Laudon. The album was released in several countries in Southeast and East Asia, including China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand. The album's lead single "In Love With You" features Cantonese singer Jacky Cheung. Gonzales commended the record's themes and said, "Cheung's presence on the duet had much to do with the overseas success". The album had sold more than 700,000 copies worldwide, including 100,000 in the Philippines, making it the best-selling album of Velasquez's career to date.
Velasquez's sixth studio album My Love Emotion was released in 1995. The title track, which was written by Southern Sons vocalist Phil Buckle, was described by Gonzales as a "triumph [and] an outstanding vehicle, containing a strong melody and hook in the chorus". The album made a combined regional and domestic sales of 250,000 copies.
For her seventh studio album Retro (1997), Velasquez recorded cover versions of popular music of the 1970s and 1980s from artists, including Donna Summer, Foreigner, and the Carpenters. The album's only original track, "Fly", is credited to Earth, Wind & Fire members Maurice White, Al McKay, and Allee Willis because the song interpolates the melody of their single "September". Velasquez left PolyCosmic in 1998, and signed a six-album contract with the MJF Company. That year, her ninth studio album Drawn was released. MJF head Mark J. Feist wrote and produced most of the tracks, including the lead single "How Could You Leave". Drawn sold more than 40,000 copies and was awarded a platinum certification within two weeks of its release.
1999–2003: R2K and Reigne
Velasquez produced most of her next album R2K, which was released on November 27, 1999. She recorded remakes of Jeffrey Osborne's "On the Wings of Love", Dionne Warwick's "I'll Never Love This Way Again", Aerosmith's "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing", and ABBA's Dancing Queen, among others. Gonzales criticized the record's "infatuation with Western popular music" and called Velasquez's singing "self-assured [but] also unimpressive". Commercially, R2K sold more than 40,000 copies in its second week of release, earning a platinum certification, and was certified four times platinum a year later. R2K has since been certified twelve times platinum, becoming the highest-selling album by a female artist in the Philippines. On December 31, 1999, Velasquez was a featured musical act in 2000 Today, a BBC millennium television special that attracted a worldwide audience of more than 800 million viewers with its core program broadcast across the world's time zones, which began with Kiribati Line Islands and ended in American Samoa.
Velasquez headlined and directed the R2K Concert at the Araneta Coliseum in April 2000, which won her Best Female Major Concert Act at the 13th Aliw Awards. Ricky Lo from The Philippine Star was generally impressed with the production and complimented Velasquez's "boundless energy and creativity". She also performed a concert at the Westin Philippine Plaza that year, which spawned the release of her first live album Regine Live: Songbird Sings the Classics in December 2000. Despite being criticized for the audio mixing, the album was certified six times platinum.
Velasquez worked with Filipino songwriters for material on her eleventh studio album Reigne. The album and its lead single "To Reach You" were released in December 2001. Other singles were Tats Faustino's "Dadalhin" and Janno Gibbs' "Sa Aking Pag-iisa". Gonzales called the album "an adventurous set" and praised the quality of the songwriting.
Velasquez won the inaugural MTV Asia Award for Favorite Artist Philippines in February 2002. She performed "Cry" with Mandy Moore to promote the theatrical release of Moore's film A Walk to Remember. In March, Velasquez hosted the first season of Star for a Night, which is based on the British talent show of the same name. In April, she headlined a benefit concert called One Night with Regine at the National Museum of the Philippines, which was a collaboration with ABS-CBN Foundation to benefit Bantay Bata Foundation's child abuse response fund. The show won Best Musical Program at the 7th Asian Television Awards.
At the 2003 MTV Asia Awards, Velasquez won her second consecutive award for Favorite Artist Philippines. In May 2003, she embarked on the Martin-Regine World Concert Tour with Nievera. The following month, Velasquez returned to host the second season of Search for a Star. That November, she had a concert residency named Songbird Sings Streisand, a tribute to American singer and actor Barbra Streisand, at Makati's Onstage Theatre.
2004–2007: Covers Vol. 1 and Vol. 2
In February 2004, Velasquez and Ogie Alcasid co-headlined a concert, The Songbird & The Songwriter, at the Araneta Coliseum, and embarked on a North American tour that April. At the 17th Aliw Awards, she won Best Female Performance in a Concert and was nominated for Entertainer of the Year for the collaboration. Velasquez hosted the reality talent show Pinoy Pop Superstar, which began airing on GMA Network that July. In October 2004, she released "Forevermore", the lead single from her twelfth studio album Covers, Vol. 1. Its songs were originally recorded by Filipino male artists and was her most expensive cover album to produce due in part to the cost of securing licensing rights for songs by local songwriters, including Ariel Rivera's "Minsan Lang Kita Iibigan", Basil Valdez's "Say That You Love Me", and Nonoy Zuñiga's "Araw Gabi". The album has since been certified six times platinum.
Later in November and December 2005, Velasquez had an eight-day concert residency named Reflections at the Aliw Theater. The sequel album Covers, Vol. 2 was released in February 2006. Unlike its predecessor, it contains songs by foreign artists, including Alanis Morissette's "Head Over Feet", Blondie's "Call Me", and Elvis Presley's "Blue Suede Shoes". Manila Bulletins Jojo Panaligan was generally impressed with Velasquez's "versatility" and the album tracks' "jazzy and blues-y interpretation". In October 2006, she performed a concert titled Twenty at the Araneta Coliseum, which won her Best Female Major Concert Act and Entertainer of the Year award at the 20th Aliw Awards. In 2007, she became co-host of the reality television show Celebrity Duets, an interactive music competition based on the eponymous original US show.
2008–2012: Low Key and professional hiatus
Velasquez developed other television projects in 2008. She appeared in Songbird, a weekly late-night musical television show that featured performances by a musical guest. She also featured in the musical television special The Best of Me, which was filmed at her residence in Quezon City. Velasquez signed a deal with Universal Records and released an album titled Low Key in December 2008. The album consists of cover versions of international songs that she described as "more relaxed, laid-back and restrained". It includes tracks such as Billy Joel's "She's Always a Woman", Dan Fogelberg's "Leader of the Band", and Janis Ian's "At Seventeen". The Philippine Daily Inquirer praised the album's maturity and wrote, "[Velasquez] no longer shrieks and shouts as much as she used to". The album sold more than 25,000 copies within two months of its release and was certified platinum. In May 2009, she appeared on the television documentary Roots to Riches, which chronicles her personal and professional struggles, and includes musical performances filmed in her hometown Malolos. Later that month, she hosted the television talent show Are You the Next Big Star?.
Velasquez's next album, a double CD set called Fantasy, was released in December 2010. The first disc is composed of Original Pilipino Music (OPM) recordings and the second includes covers of international singles such as Madonnas "Papa Don't Preach", Torontos "What About Love", and the Eagles' "Love Will Keep Us Alive". The Philippine Daily Inquirer called the album "vocally sumptuous" and was generally impressed with Velasquez's vocals and range. Fantasy received a platinum certification and earned three nominations at the 3rd Star Awards for Music. After receiving the Magna Award at the Myx Music Awards 2011, and the confirmation of her pregnancy, Velasquez took a hiatus from public engagements. She returned to television on October 6, 2012 with Sarap Diva, a weekly lifestyle talk show. On November 16, 2012, Velasquez performed a concert titled Silver at the Mall of Asia Arena, which was cut short after she lost her voice due to a viral infection.
2013–2016: Silver Rewind and Hulog Ka Ng Langit
After Silver's cancellation, Velasquez restaged the concert on January 5, 2013. The concert received generally favorable reviews; Manila Bulletin Jojo Panaligan called it a "redemption of reputation", while Dolly Anne Carvajal of the Philippine Daily Inquirer said Velasquez did not fail to make up for the initial cancellation of the show. The following month, she co-headlined in Foursome alongside Alcasid, Fernandez, and Nievera. For both shows, Velasquez received four nominations at the 5th Star Awards for Music, winning Best Female Major Concert Act for "Silver" and Concert of the Year for "Foursome".
In November 2013, Velasquez's album Hulog Ka Ng Langit was released; it received a platinum certification for two-week sales of 15,000 copies. She won Best Inspirational Record for "Nathaniel (Gift of God)" and Best Christmas Recording for "Hele ni Inay" at the 27th Awit Awards, while Hulog Ka Ng Langit won Album Cover of the Year at the 6th Star Awards for Music. In 2014, she worked with Nievera in a one-night show titled Voices of Love, with Gloc-9 on "Takipsilim", and with Vice Ganda on "Push Mo Yan Teh".
In February 2015, Velasquez appeared alongside Nievera, Valenciano, and Lani Misalucha in a concert titled Ultimate at the Mall of Asia Arena. She received accolades at the 47th Box Office Entertainment Awards, 7th Star Awards for Music, and 5th Edukcircle Awards for the production. In the same year, Velasquez served as a judge on the sixth season of the reality talent television show StarStruck. In November 2015, Velasquez headlined a four-date concert residency called Regine at the Theater, which featured songs from musicals.
For a third consecutive year, Velasquez appeared in a co-headlining concert at the Mall of Asia Arena in February 2016. The two-night show, Royals, reunited her with Nievera and also features Angeline Quinto and Erik Santos. Due to the concert's positive critical reception, Velasquez won Best Female Concert Performer at the 48th Box Office Entertainment Awards and Most Influential Concert Performer of the Year at the 6th Edukcircle Awards. In December 2016, People Asia magazine included Velasquez on its annual People of the Year list.
2017–present: R3.0, television projects and Freedom
Velasquez hosted Full House Tonight, which ran from February to May 2017. The following month, she announced her return to Viva Records and that she had begun production of a new studio album called R3.0. In August 2017, a cover of Up Dharma Down's 2010 song "Tadhana" was released as a promotional single. An original track called "Hugot" was released as the album's lead single the following month. In November, she headlined the R3.0 Concert at the Mall of Asia Arena and two months later, with Alcasid, she played a four-date U.S. concert series titled "Mr. and Mrs. A."
In 2018, Velasquez hosted the television talent show The Clash, served as a judge on ABS-CBN's revival of the Idol franchise series Idol Philippines, and hosted the musical variety show ASAP Natin' To. In November, she staged a three-date concert series titled "Regine at the Movies" at the New Frontier Theater.
Sharon Cuneta and Velasquez co-headlined a concert, Iconic, in October 2019. For the show, Velasquez won the awards for Best Collaboration in a Concert and Entertainer of the Year at the 32nd Aliw Awards, having won the latter honor in 2007 and 2009. The following month, she released a collaborative single with Moira Dela Torre called "Unbreakable", which was recorded for the soundtrack of the film of the same name. Velasquez appeared as the face of Australian beauty brand BYS and released the promotional single "I Am Beautiful" for the brand's "Be Your Own Expert" campaign. She released the soundtrack singles "Ikaw Ang Aking Mahal" for the action television series The General's Daughter (2019) and "Mahal Ko O Mahal Ako" for the drama series Love Thy Woman (2020).
Velasquez organized virtual benefit concerts in support of relief efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. She curated One Night with Regine, a collaboration with ABS-CBN to support Bantay Bata Foundation's COVID-19 response fund in April, and appeared in Joy From Home, which raised funds to support Jollibee Groups food aid program in June. On February 28, 2021, she was featured in an online streaming concert titled Freedom.
Acting career
Velasquez made her cinema debut with a minor role in the 1988 comedy film The Untouchable Family. Its soundtrack includes her single "Urong Sulong". She continued to appear in a series of supporting roles in comedies, including Pik Pak Boom (1988) and Elvis and James 2 (1990).
Velasquez began working with composer Ryan Cayabyab in 1995 on the musical theater version of José Rizals Noli Me Tángere, where she played the female lead, María Clara. Vic Del Rosario, head of Viva Entertainment's film production arm, saw Velasquez in one of her performances and offered her a starring role in a film. Her first leading role was a music teacher in the romantic comedy Wanted: Perfect Mother (1996). Nievera and Ocampo co-wrote the song "You Are My Song" for the film's soundtrack. Later in 1996, she starred alongside Donna Cruz and Mikee Cojuangco in the musical comedy Do Re Mi. Velasquez continued to play leading roles in romantic comedies, appearing in Honey Nasa Langit Na Ba Ako (1998) with Janno Gibbs and Dahil May Isang Ikaw (1999) with Aga Muhlach. Her first television role came in 2000 in an episode of the IBC-13s weekly drama series Habang May Buhay as Piolo Pascuals cancer-stricken love interest.
A key point in Velasquez's film career came when she was cast in Joyce Bernals Kailangan Ko'y Ikaw (2000) opposite Robin Padilla. Film critic Noel Vera criticized the film's formula as "the nth variation of Roman Holiday", but wrote that Velasquez "[brought] her own public persona and charisma and sense of humor to the role". Her next film role was in Pangako Ikaw Lang (2001), which reunited her with Bernal and Muhlach. Vera was impressed with the film's direction and writing, and described Velasquez's performance as "sunny good nature [with a] light comic touch". Pangako Ikaw Lang became the highest-grossing Filipino film of 2001. Velasquez was awarded the Box Office Queen title at the 32nd Box Office Entertainment Awards due to the film's commercial performance.
Her next television appearance was in an episode of ABS-CBN's weekly drama series Maalaala Mo Kaya (2001), playing a woman with autism. The role won her the Best Actress award at the 16th Star Awards for Television. She portrayed a mundane and undesirable mail sorter in the drama Ikaw Lamang Hanggang Ngayon (2002) opposite Richard Gomez, while Pangarap Ko Ang Ibigin Ka (2003) reunited her with Christopher de Leon of Wanted: Perfect Mother, which premiered at the Manila Film Festival in July 2003. In December, Velasquez next starred alongside Bong Revilla in the superhero film Captain Barbell.
Although Velasquez did not make any film appearances in 2004, she made her primetime television debut in the drama series Forever in My Heart, in which she was reunited with Gomez, and worked alongside Ariel Rivera. She next starred in romantic dramas, reuniting with Padilla in Till I Met You (2006) and with Pascual in Paano Kita Iibigin (2007). For the latter film, Velasquez received FAMAS and Luna nominations for Best Actress. In 2008, she returned to television, playing the titular character in the comedy series Ako si Kim Samsoon, an adaption of a South Korean television show. Velasquez also voiced the eponymous character in the animated film Urduja (2008).
During 2009, Velasquez made cameo appearances in the comedies Kimmy Dora, OMG (Oh, My Girl!), and Yaya and Angelina: The Spoiled Brat Movie. In March 2010, Velasquez appeared in the musical television series Diva as a facially disfigured ghost singer. The following year, she collaborated with Dingdong Dantes in the television series I Heart You, Pare! (2011). She left the show for health reasons and was replaced by Iza Calzado.
In the 2012 film Of All The Things, Velasquez worked with Bernal and Muhlach for the third time. Philbert Dy of ClickTheCity called the film a "tedious, unfocused mess that forces chemistry where none really exists". Despite the film's negative review, Velasquez's performance won the 10th Golden Screen award for Best Actress. She next starred in the independent film Mrs. Recto (2015), a comedy-drama set principally on Recto Avenue. She then portrayed a socialite who is stripped of her wealth in the television comedy series Poor Señorita (2016). Her only acting appearance in 2017 was a supporting role in Mulawin vs. Ravena, the sequel to the 2004 television series Mulawin.
Velasquez played a widow obsessed with a pop star in Nigel Santos' independent film Yours Truly, Shirley. The film premiered at the 2019 Cinema One Originals Film Festival. In January 2020, she briefly appeared in the iWant comedy series My Single Lady.
Artistry
Influences
As a child, Velasquez enjoyed listening to her father singing classic songs to lull her to sleep; she was drawn to traditional songs rather than nursery rhymes because of this routine. Since her childhood, Velasquez has considered Sharon Cuneta a role model and credits Cuneta as a key inspiration who led her to pursue a musical career.
Velasquez's music is influenced by artists such as Sheena Easton, Angela Bofill, Whitney Houston, and Mariah Carey in her early years. She admires Houston for her "style and R&B influence" and Carey's songwriting. On several occasions, Velasquez has cited Barbra Streisand as her main influence and musical inspiration, saying, "I look up to [Streisand] not just because of her enormous talent, but because of her fearlessness and dedication to excellence, her willingness to take risks and to be different." Streisand's music has frequently featured in Velasquez's repertoire throughout her career, including a series of concerts paying homage to Streisand, which Velasquez described as "a pleasure" to perform. Velasquez has also been influenced by many Filipino artists; early in her career, she cited Kuh Ledesma, Joey Albert, Gary Valenciano, Martin Nievera, and Pops Fernandez as her role models. She has also paid tribute to Filipino songwriters, including George Canseco, Rey Valera, Basil Valdez, Ryan Cayabyab, and Willy Cruz.
Musical style and themes
Velasquez's early-career music includes elements of traditional OPM love songs. She described how she developed her musical style, saying, "I was only 16 and people didn't know what to do with me. When they want me to sing love songs, they had to explain to me what it meant because I didn't know the feeling yet." Her debut album Regine includes ballads and bubblegum pop love songs; its themes revolve around feelings of "excitement and uncertainty", as well as "missed chances and regrets". Elvin Luciano from CNN Philippines wrote: "During her [initial] phase, she proved that Filipino love songs don't have to come pre-packaged in the kundiman-rooted love ballad." Her later releases, including Nineteen 90 and Tagala Talaga, capitalized on her popularity; they are dominated by Filipino love songs. Velasquez began working with foreign songwriters while planning her first regional album Listen Without Prejudice, which according to AllMusic is "oriented towards easy-listening love songs with adventurous, contemporary touches". The album features tracks with syncopated backbeats and hip-hop influences.
During the mid-1990s and the early 2000s, Velasquez's albums consisted primarily of cover versions of international material because of its commercial viability, and Filipinos' preference for American music. According to CNN Philippines, "Regine has a knack for choosing songs which at first, may not fit her, but eventually become her own." Many of her songs, particularly in Retro, Drawn, and R2K contained R&B, soul, and hip-hop elements. Reigne is an OPM album that she described as "songs influenced by the music, artists, and genres that I enjoy listening to," and included tracks that are melancholic, sensual, and poetic. Her crossover to film saw significant use of contemporary love ballads in her catalog of soundtrack themes, describing the music as "straightforward, earnest, and lyrically simple".
Voice and timbre
Velasquez is known for her use of vocal belting, and credits the vocal training she received from her father as a child:
Velasquez is a soprano and is often praised for her range and technical ability. Luciano of CNN Philippines complimented her "trademark and sometimes melismatic vocals" while Gonzales adds her singing is "strong, emotive, and confident". She has often been criticized, however, for the excessive use of belting and oversinging. Gonzales described Velasquez's timbre as "thin, unimpressive and unappealing at times", and said her singing is "aiming for a higher [note], [which] she did all too often". Velasquez said, "I don't mean to make any songs hard. It's just that when I'm on stage, with the adrenaline rush and all, you get excited. I do try to hold back [because] otherwise I'd be screaming the whole show, that's not good."
Legacy and influence
Velasquez's vocal style and singing ability have significantly impacted Philippine popular and contemporary music. Critics have called her "Asia's songbird" and she is often cited as one of Filipino music's most influential artists. According to Allan Policarpio of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, "Regine needed only to open her mouth and that celebrated voice would come out. She could sing seated, lying down or hoisted up in the air with a harness—no problem. And even when she was so sick she couldn't speak, she could still sing." Velasquez has also been recognized for playing a pivotal role in creating the "blue print" for becoming a "singing icon". Many critics complimented her work, often singling out Velasquez's influence. Luciano, writing for CNN Philippines, described her "legitimacy" as "enough to secure a space in pop culture" and said her musical career "continues to influence generations of OPM patrons and songbird wannabes up to this day", while according to The Philippine Star, "If one were to go by records and distinctions made, Regine Velasquez would win, hands down". She has often been regarded as a powerhouse for her performances and musical content.
Velasquez's use of vocal belting has been subject to scrutiny because young singers, including contestants on television talent shows, have imitated her singing technique. According to Nestor Torre of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, "The popularity of 'birit' [belting] started here with the amateur singing contests ... Then came Regine Velasquez, who also launched her own singing career the 'birit' way ... Trouble is, Regine's belting became so popular that her successor[s] ... imitated her." Manila Bulletin said, "Most of our top selling new female singers are still and mere parrots of [Velasquez] in terms of vocal acrobatics and predilection to show off her high range". According to Boy Abunda, "Most of the young female singers currently making waves in the industry are cut from the same biritera [belter] cloth as Regine Velasquez."
Filipino pop, hip-hop, and R&B artists Aicelle Santos, Charice, Erik Santos, Jona Viray, Julie Anne San Jose, KZ Tandingan, Kyla, Mark Bautista, Morissette Amon, , and Yeng Constantino—among others—have cited Velasquez as an influence.
Velasquez's music has broadly influenced a younger generation of performers from reality television talent shows; Sarah Geronimo has stated Velasquez made her realize the value of hard work while Rachelle Ann Go and Angeline Quinto have both said Velasquez inspired them during their early years as aspiring singers. American Idol finalists Ramiele Malubay, Thia Megia, and Jessica Sanchez have expressed a desire to emulate Velasquez.
Velasquez has also been credited for her work and performances with international artists, including 98 Degrees, Alicia Keys, Coco Lee, Peabo Bryson, and Stephen Bishop. French composer Michel Legrand described working with Velasquez, saying "It's tough to sing a song after Barbra Streisand, I will tell you. But to sing with Regine is, I'm in heaven. She sings so well, she has such an extraordinary technical voice ... sensitive voice and talented expression." American singer Brian McKnight who co-headlined a concert with Velasquez, has complimented her singing, stating; "I got to sing onstage with Regine and it was one of the best experiences ever because she's one of the best singers I've ever heard."
Other activities
Philanthropy
Velasquez has been involved with several charitable organizations. She became associated with the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in 2001 and worked on a documentary titled Speak Your Mind, which is about homeless children in Payatas, Quezon City, one of the Philippines' largest open dumpsites. The program was nominated for the UNICEF Child Rights Award.
One of Velasquez's highest-profile benefit concert appearances was in One Night with Regine, which she performed at the National Museum of the Philippines in support of the Bantay Bata Foundation, a child welfare organization. In 2005, Velasquez appeared in an episode of the lifestyle talk show Mel and Joey, and donated proceeds from an auction of her gowns to the GMA Kapuso Foundation's Christmas Give-a-Gift project. In 2009, Velasquez headlined a benefit television special called After The Rain: A Hopeful Christmas in the aftermath of Typhoon Ketsana (Ondoy). In October 2010, she became an ambassador for Operation Smile, a nonprofit organization that provides cleft lip and palate repair surgery to children worldwide. She recorded the theme "S.M.I.L.E.", which was written for the project and appears on her studio album Fantasy. In November 2013, proceeds from the sales of her album Hulog Ka Ng Langit were donated to the Philippine Red Cross in support of the Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda) relief.
Product endorsements
Velasquez has been involved in brand marketing initiatives for American fast food restaurant chains Wendy's and KFC. She has signed advertising deals with several other brands, including Digitel, Lux, Nestlé Philippines, Nokia, and Smart Communications. Throughout 2005, she appeared as the face of the Department of Tourism's travel promotion campaign. In August 2009, Velasquez released a line of women's perfume called "Reigne" and "Songbird" for the clothing brand Bench. In February 2020, she collaborated with beauty brand BYS and launched a line of makeup called "Reigne".
Personal life
Velasquez announced her relationship with singer-songwriter Ogie Alcasid in an article published by Yes! magazine in June 2007. On August 8, 2010, the couple announced their engagement, and in December, they married in Nasugbu, Batangas. She gave birth to their son, Nathaniel James, via caesarean section on November 8, 2011.
Velasquez is a born-again Christian. In March 2016, she said she had suffered a miscarriage prior to her marriage to Alcasid and cited it as her reason for converting. She also said she had been attending Victory Christian Fellowship.
Awards and recognition
Throughout her career, Velasquez has received many honors and awards, including MTV Asia's Favorite Artist Philippines in 2002 and 2003, and the Aliw Awards' Entertainer of the Year in 2007, 2009, and 2019. She has been the recipient of lifetime achievement awards, including the Awit Awards Dangal ng Musikang Pilipino, the Star Awards for Music's Pilita Corrales Lifetime Achievement and Natatanging Alagad Ng Musika, FAMAS Awards' Golden Artist, and Myx Music's Magna Award.
Velasquez has sold more than seven million records in the Philippines and 1.5 million in Asia, making her the biggest-selling Filipino artist of all time. Eight of her albums have each sold over 200,000 copies. She was ranked first in Female Networks 2011 countdown of the "Top 25 Best Filipina Singers" and was included in Top 10 Asia magazine's list of "Ten Most Admired Female Singers in Asia". Velasquez has also received recognition for her work in television and film, such as the Box Office Queen award in 2002, the Star Awards for Television's Best Actress in 2002, and the Golden Screen Awards' Best Actress in 2013. She has received a total of 21 Awit Awards, 22 Box Office Entertainment Awards, 15 Aliw Awards, and 12 Star Awards for Music. In December 2007, Velasquez was honored with a star on the Philippines' Walk of Fame.
Discography
Regine (1987)
Nineteen '90 (1990)
Tagala Talaga (1991)
Reason Enough (1993)
Listen Without Prejudice (1994)
My Love Emotion (1995)
Retro (1997)
Drawn (1998)
R2K (1999)
Reigne (2001)
Covers, Vol. 1 (2004)
Covers, Vol. 2 (2006)
Low Key (2008)
Fantasy (2010)
Hulog Ka Ng Langit (2013)
R3.0 (2017)
Filmography
Wanted Perfect Mother (1996)
Do Re Mi (1996)
Dahil May Isang Ikaw (1998)
Kailangan Ko'y Ikaw (2000)
Pangako Ikaw Lang (2001)
Ikaw Lamang Hanggang Ngayon (2002)
Pangarap Ko Ang Ibigin Ka (2003)
Till I Met You (2006)
Paano Kita Iibigin (2007)
Of All The Things (2012)
Mrs. Recto (2015)
Yours Truly, Shirley (2019)
Concerts
Headlining concerts
Narito Ako! (1990)
In Season (1991)
Music and Me (1993)
Isang Pasasalamat (1996)
Retro (1997)
Drawn (1998)
R2K The Concert (2000)
Songbird Sings the Classics (2001)
R-15 (2001)
One Night with Regine (2002)
Reigning Still (2004)
Twenty (2006)
Silver (2013)
R3.0 (2017)
Freedom (2021)
Co-headlining concerts
Power of Two (with Kuh Ledesma) (1996)
Celebration of Love (with Peabo Bryson and Jeffrey Osborne) (2000)
Independent Women (with Jaya) (2001)
Two for the Knight (with Brian McKnight) (2002)
Songbird Sings Legrand (with Michel Legrand) (2003)
Martin & Regine: The World Concert (with Martin Nievera) (2003)
The Songbird & The Songwriter (with Ogie Alcasid) (2004)
Queens on Fire (with Pops Fernandez) (2005)
Iconic (with Sharon Cuneta) (2019)
Unified (with Sarah Geronimo) (2020)
Concert residencies
Regine at the Movies (2001; 2018)
Songbird Sings (2002)
Songbird Sings Streisand (2003)
Reflections (2005)
Regine at the Theater (2015)
See also
List of best-selling albums in the Philippines
List of Filipino singers
List of Filipino actresses
Music of the Philippines
Philippine Association of the Record Industry
Notes
References
Citations
Book sources
External links
1970 births
Intercontinental Broadcasting Corporation personalities
Universal Records (Philippines) artists
Filipino dance musicians
Filipino women pop singers
Filipino record producers
Filipino Protestants
Filipino Christians
Filipino television actresses
Filipino film actresses
English-language singers from the Philippines
Living people
People from Tondo, Manila
Singers from Manila
Actresses from Manila
Tagalog people
Filipino sopranos
ABS-CBN personalities
GMA Network personalities
TV5 (Philippine TV network) personalities
21st-century Filipino women singers
Women record producers | false | [
"Souvankham Thammavongsa is a Canadian poet and short story writer. In 2019, she won an O. Henry Award for her short story, \"Slingshot\", which was published in Harper's Magazine, and in 2020 her short story collection How to Pronounce Knife won the Giller Prize.\n\nLife\nThammavongsa was born in the Lao refugee camp in Nong Khai, Thailand in 1978. She and her parents were sponsored by a family in Canada when she was one year old. She was raised and educated in Toronto, Ontario. \n\nShe has never taken an MFA course, and says that she has learned to write by reading. Some of her favorite authors are Alice Munro, Carson McCullers, Flannery O’Connor, and Tennessee Williams. \n\nHer first book, Small Arguments, won a ReLit Award in 2004. Her second book, Found, was made into a short film by Paramita Nath. Her third book, Light, won the Trillium Book Award for Poetry in 2014. Her short story \"How to Pronounce Knife\" was shortlisted for the 2015 Commonwealth Short Story Prize out of 4,000 entries. In 2016, two of her stories, \"Mani Pedi\" and \"Paris,\" were longlisted for the Journey Prize.\n\nHer first short story collection, How to Pronounce Knife, was published in 2020. Australian literary critic Kerryn Goldsworthy wrote of the stories that \"their language is economical but they are emotional timebombs.\" In the book, she draws upon her childhood as the daughter of Laotian immigrants to tell fourteen stories, each an exploration of foreignness and belonging. The book was shortlisted for the Giller Prize, and won the award on November 9, 2020. In 2021, the book was awarded the $20,000 (Canadian) Trillium Book Award, and was a shortlisted finalist for the Danuta Gleed Literary Award in 2021.\n\nThammavongsa was a judge for the 2021 Griffin Poetry Prize. She was guest editor for 2021 Best Canadian Poetry (Biblioasis).\n\nWorks\n\nPoetry collections\n Small Arguments (Pedlar Press, 2003)\n Found (Pedlar Press, 2007)\n Light (Pedlar Press, 2013)\n Cluster (McClelland & Stewart/Penguin Random House, 2019)\n\nShort stories\n \"Ewwrrrkk\" (Joyland Magazine, 2015)\n \"Mani Pedi\" (The Puritan, 2015)\n How to Pronounce Knife. (Granta, #141 special Canada, 2017, pp 168 – 173, with a photo of her and her family 1983)\n How to Pronounce Knife. Stories. Penguin (2020, 192 pp)\n \"Good-Looking\" (The New Yorker, 2021)\n\nReferences\n\n1978 births\nCanadian women poets\n21st-century Canadian poets\nCanadian writers of Asian descent\nCanadian people of Laotian descent\nLiving people\nWriters from Toronto\n21st-century Canadian women writers\nLaotian women writers\n21st-century Canadian short story writers\nCanadian women short story writers\nLaotian poets\nLaotian short story writers\nLaotian women poets",
"Makiko Mori was a Japanese novelist. She won the 1980 Izumi Kyōka Prize for Literature for her book .\n\nEarly life and education \nMori was born Eiko Matsuura on December 19, 1934 in Sakata, Japan. She was the second of three children. Her father was a physician and died when she was six years old. Mori began suffering from rheumatism when she was 10 years old. She graduated from Yamagata Prefectural Sakata Higashi High School in 1953. Her mother died when she was 19 years old. Mori left home after her mother's death and moved to Kobe, then Tokyo. She began reading a lot, especially the works of Jean-Paul Sartre, Franz Kafka, Kōbō Abe, and Yutaka Haniya.\n\nCareer \nMori made her debut as a writer in 1965 with the novel , which won the Bungakukai New Writer's Award and was nominated for the Akutagawa Prize. Several of her other books were also nominated for this award, such as in 1965, in 1969, and in 1971. Three of her works were nominated for the Women's Literature Award. In 1980 her book won the Izumi Kyōka Prize for Literature.\n\nMori lived a solitary life. Her death was discovered on November 17, 1992. Throughout her career she wrote nine books. later wrote a book about her life titled .\n\nStyle \nMori's style was known for her isolated female protagonists who live depressing lives with nihilistic outlooks. They are often emotionally adrift and wander with little sense of identity. Many of her works are about isolation and the inevitability of death.\n\nReferences \n\n1934 births\n1992 deaths\n20th-century Japanese novelists\n\nPeople from Yamagata Prefecture\nWriters from Yamagata Prefecture"
]
|
[
"Regine Velasquez",
"1986-1989: Career beginnings and Regine",
"What was Regine's first experience singing?",
"After winning Ang Bagong Kampeon, Velasquez was signed to OctoArts International (now PolyEast Records).",
"How old was she when she won that award?",
"I don't know."
]
| C_37b88fd530a6472498feadbc43940518_1 | What was her first work with OctoArts? | 3 | What was Regine Velasquez's first work with OctoArts? | Regine Velasquez | After winning Ang Bagong Kampeon, Velasquez was signed to OctoArts International (now PolyEast Records). She was introduced as 'Chona' Velasquez--her nickname--and recorded the single "Love Me Again", which was released in early 1986. However, the single was commercially unsuccessful. On February 16, 1986, at the behest of another OctoArts recording artist, Pops Fernandez, Velasquez was invited to appear on her live late night musical television show, The Penthouse Live! While she was rehearsing for the live show, the producer and talent manager Ronnie Henares showed interest and signed her. At the suggestion of Fernandez's husband and the show's co-host, Martin Nievera, Velasquez adopted the stage name "Regine". Under Henares' management, Velasquez was introduced to the head of VIVA Records, Vicente del Rosario Jr., who signed her and started production of her debut album. Del Rosario enlisted top songwriters, including Joaquin Francisco Sanchez, Vehnee Saturno and Christine Bendebel. He and Henares, who were both serving as executive producers, planned to market Velasquez as one of their main female pop artists, hoping to attain commercial success as they had done with Nora Aunor and Sharon Cuneta. After Velasquez completed her debut album, Regine, VIVA released the lead single "Kung Maibabalik Ko Lang" in 1987. Despite a weak start, the album gained mainstream appeal after Velasquez's promotional appearances on the ABS-CBN television variety shows Triple Treat and Teen Pan Alley. The album produced two more singles--"Urong Sulong" and "Isang Lahi". Two years after the release of her debut album, Velasquez represented the Philippines in the 1989 Asia Pacific Singing Contest. She was initially apprehensive and skeptical of the idea of participating in another competition at that stage in her career. At Henares' urging she agreed to compete and won the contest in Hong Kong, performing the songs "You'll Never Walk Alone" from the 1945 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Carousel and "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going" from the musical Dreamgirls. CANNOTANSWER | She was introduced as 'Chona' Velasquez--her nickname--and recorded the single "Love Me Again", which was released in early 1986. | Regina Encarnacion Ansong Velasquez ( ; born April 22, 1970) is a Filipino singer, actress, and producer. She is known for her vocal range, belting technique, and the unorthodox voice training she received during her childhood, where she was immersed neck-deep in the sea. Velasquez rose to prominence after winning the television talent show Ang Bagong Kampeon in 1984 and the Asia Pacific Singing Contest in 1989. Under the name Chona, she signed a recording contract with OctoArts International in 1986 and released the single "Love Me Again", which was commercially unsuccessful. The following year, she adopted the stage name Regine Velasquez for her debut studio album, Regine (1987), under the guidance of Viva Records executive Vic del Rosario and producer Ronnie Henares. She explored Manila sound and kundiman genres on her second and third studio albums, Nineteen 90 (1990) and Tagala Talaga (1991).
After signing an international record deal with Polygram Records, Velasquez achieved commercial success in some Asian territories with her fifth album Listen Without Prejudice (1994), which sold more than 700,000 copies and became her highest-selling album to date, aided by its lead single "In Love With You". She experimented further with jazz and adult contemporary genres on My Love Emotion (1995), while she recorded covers on Retro (1997). After she left Polygram to sign with Mark J. Feists MJF Company in 1998, she released the R&B-influenced album Drawn. Velasquez's follow-up record, R2K (1999), was supported by remakes of "On the Wings of Love", "I'll Never Love This Way Again", and "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing", and was subsequently certified twelve-times platinum by the Philippine Association of the Record Industry (PARI).
Velasquez played leading roles in the romantic comedies Kailangan Ko'y Ikaw (2000) and Pangako Ikaw Lang (2001), and received the Box Office Entertainment Award for Box Office Queen for the latter. Her performance as an intellectually disabled woman in an episode of the anthology series Maalaala Mo Kaya (2002) earned her a Star Award for Best Actress. She also starred in the prime time television series Forever in My Heart (2004), Ako si Kim Samsoon (2008), Totoy Bato (2009), Diva (2010), I Heart You, Pare! (2011), and Poor Señorita (2016). Velasquez also won the Golden Screen Award for Best Actress for playing a document forger in the comedy film Of All the Things (2013). She expanded her career into reality television talent shows as a presenter on Star for a Night (2002), Pinoy Pop Superstar (2004), and The Clash (2018), and as a judge on StarStruck (2015) and Idol Philippines (2019).
Having sold more than seven million records domestically and 1.5 million in Asia, Velasquez is the best-selling Filipino music artist of all time. Her accolades include two Asian Television Awards, two MTV Asia Awards, 21 Awit Awards, 15 Aliw Awards (including 3 Entertainer of the Year wins), 22 Box Office Entertainment Awards, and 12 Star Awards for Music. Referred to as "Asia's songbird", she has consistently been credited with inspiring a generation of Filipino singers.
Early life
Regina Encarnacion Ansong Velasquez was born on April 22, 1970, in Tondo, Manila, to Teresita (née Ansong) and Gerardo Velasquez. She has three sisters—Cacai, Diane, and Deca—and a brother named Jojo. Her family moved to Hinundayan, Southern Leyte, where Velasquez spent the early years of her life. At age three, Velasquez became interested in music after listening to her father's lullabies. She would listen to her mother play guitar and piano while her father sang, and referenced Sharon Cuneta's "Mr. DJ" as one of the first songs she learned.
Velasquez started singing at age six; she underwent intensive vocal training with her father, who immersed her neck-deep in the sea and had her go through vocal runs. She credits this unorthodox method for strengthening her core and stomach muscles, and developing her lung capacity. Velasquez placed third in her first singing competition on Betty Mendez Livioco The Tita Betty's Children Show.
When Velasquez was nine, her family moved to Balagtas, Bulacan, where she attended St. Lawrence Academy and competed for her school at the annual Bulacan Private Schools Association singing competition. In 1984, at fourteen, Velasquez auditioned for the reality television series Ang Bagong Kampeon. She qualified and became the show's senior division winner, defending her spot for eight consecutive weeks. Velasquez won the competition and was signed to a record deal with OctoArts International.
Music career
1986–1989: Career beginnings and Regine
In 1986, Velasquez initially used the stage name Chona and released the single "Love Me Again", which was commercially unsuccessful. At the recommendation of another OctoArts recording artist, Pops Fernandez, she appeared on The Penthouse Live! While rehearsing for the show, Velasquez caught the attention of Ronnie Henares, a producer and talent manager who signed her to a management deal. Velasquez adopted the stage name Regine at the suggestion of Fernandez's husband and The Penthouse Live! co-host, .
Velasquez signed with Viva Records and released her debut album Regine in 1987. Henares served as an executive producer and worked with songwriters Joaquin Francisco Sanchez and Vehnee Saturno. Three singles were released in 1987: "Kung Maibabalik Ko Lang", " Urong Sulong", and "Isang Lahi". During this period, Velasquez appeared on the ABS-CBN television shows Triple Treat and Teen Pan Alley. Two years after Regine's release, Velasquez represented the Philippines in the 1989 Asia Pacific Singing Contest in Hong Kong and won, performing the songs "You'll Never Walk Alone" from the musical Carousel and "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going" from the musical Dreamgirls.
1990–1993: Nineteen 90 and Reason Enough
Velasquez released her second studio album Nineteen 90 in 1990. She worked with Louie Ocampo on the album's lead single "Narito Ako", which was originally recorded and performed by Maricris Bermont and written by Nonong Pedero for the 1978 Metro Manila Popular Music Festival. Later that year, she headlined her first major concert at the Folk Arts Theater. She recorded "Please Be Careful with My Heart" with Jose Mari Chan, who released the track on his album Constant Change; she also sang backing vocals on Gary Valenciano's "Each Passing Night", which appears on his album Faces of Love.
In 1991, Velasquez made her North American concert debut at Carnegie Hall in New York City, a first for an Asian solo artist. British theatrical producer Cameron Mackintosh later invited Velasquez to audition for the West End production of the musical Miss Saigon. She received a letter from the production offering to train her in London, which she declined: partly due to her lack of experience in musical theater, and because she wished to remain with her family.
Velasquez's third studio album Tagala Talaga was released in October 1991. It includes cover versions of recordings by National Artist for Music recipients Ryan Cayabyab, Lucio San Pedro, and Levi Celerio. The album's lead single, titled "Buhay Ng Buhay Ko", was originally recorded by Leah Navarro and was written by Pedero, with whom Velasquez had worked on Nineteen 90. Other notable singles from the album include "Anak and "Sa Ugoy Ng Duyan".
PolyGram Far East announced a joint-venture licensing deal in the Philippines in July 1993 with the formation of its subsidiary PolyCosmic Records. Velasquez recorded a duet titled "It's Hard to Say Goodbye" with Canadian singer Paul Anka, which became the new label's first release. The single was later included on her fourth studio album Reason Enough. David Gonzales of AllMusic described the album as "more attuned to international ears" and said Velasquez's vocals are "thin and unimpressive". One of its singles, "Sana Maulit Muli", won the Awit Award for Best Performance by a Female Recording Artist in 1994.
1994–1998: Listen Without Prejudice and My Love Emotion
Velasquez released her fifth studio album Listen Without Prejudice in 1994. She worked with songwriters, including Glenn Medeiros, Trina Belamide, and John Laudon. The album was released in several countries in Southeast and East Asia, including China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand. The album's lead single "In Love With You" features Cantonese singer Jacky Cheung. Gonzales commended the record's themes and said, "Cheung's presence on the duet had much to do with the overseas success". The album had sold more than 700,000 copies worldwide, including 100,000 in the Philippines, making it the best-selling album of Velasquez's career to date.
Velasquez's sixth studio album My Love Emotion was released in 1995. The title track, which was written by Southern Sons vocalist Phil Buckle, was described by Gonzales as a "triumph [and] an outstanding vehicle, containing a strong melody and hook in the chorus". The album made a combined regional and domestic sales of 250,000 copies.
For her seventh studio album Retro (1997), Velasquez recorded cover versions of popular music of the 1970s and 1980s from artists, including Donna Summer, Foreigner, and the Carpenters. The album's only original track, "Fly", is credited to Earth, Wind & Fire members Maurice White, Al McKay, and Allee Willis because the song interpolates the melody of their single "September". Velasquez left PolyCosmic in 1998, and signed a six-album contract with the MJF Company. That year, her ninth studio album Drawn was released. MJF head Mark J. Feist wrote and produced most of the tracks, including the lead single "How Could You Leave". Drawn sold more than 40,000 copies and was awarded a platinum certification within two weeks of its release.
1999–2003: R2K and Reigne
Velasquez produced most of her next album R2K, which was released on November 27, 1999. She recorded remakes of Jeffrey Osborne's "On the Wings of Love", Dionne Warwick's "I'll Never Love This Way Again", Aerosmith's "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing", and ABBA's Dancing Queen, among others. Gonzales criticized the record's "infatuation with Western popular music" and called Velasquez's singing "self-assured [but] also unimpressive". Commercially, R2K sold more than 40,000 copies in its second week of release, earning a platinum certification, and was certified four times platinum a year later. R2K has since been certified twelve times platinum, becoming the highest-selling album by a female artist in the Philippines. On December 31, 1999, Velasquez was a featured musical act in 2000 Today, a BBC millennium television special that attracted a worldwide audience of more than 800 million viewers with its core program broadcast across the world's time zones, which began with Kiribati Line Islands and ended in American Samoa.
Velasquez headlined and directed the R2K Concert at the Araneta Coliseum in April 2000, which won her Best Female Major Concert Act at the 13th Aliw Awards. Ricky Lo from The Philippine Star was generally impressed with the production and complimented Velasquez's "boundless energy and creativity". She also performed a concert at the Westin Philippine Plaza that year, which spawned the release of her first live album Regine Live: Songbird Sings the Classics in December 2000. Despite being criticized for the audio mixing, the album was certified six times platinum.
Velasquez worked with Filipino songwriters for material on her eleventh studio album Reigne. The album and its lead single "To Reach You" were released in December 2001. Other singles were Tats Faustino's "Dadalhin" and Janno Gibbs' "Sa Aking Pag-iisa". Gonzales called the album "an adventurous set" and praised the quality of the songwriting.
Velasquez won the inaugural MTV Asia Award for Favorite Artist Philippines in February 2002. She performed "Cry" with Mandy Moore to promote the theatrical release of Moore's film A Walk to Remember. In March, Velasquez hosted the first season of Star for a Night, which is based on the British talent show of the same name. In April, she headlined a benefit concert called One Night with Regine at the National Museum of the Philippines, which was a collaboration with ABS-CBN Foundation to benefit Bantay Bata Foundation's child abuse response fund. The show won Best Musical Program at the 7th Asian Television Awards.
At the 2003 MTV Asia Awards, Velasquez won her second consecutive award for Favorite Artist Philippines. In May 2003, she embarked on the Martin-Regine World Concert Tour with Nievera. The following month, Velasquez returned to host the second season of Search for a Star. That November, she had a concert residency named Songbird Sings Streisand, a tribute to American singer and actor Barbra Streisand, at Makati's Onstage Theatre.
2004–2007: Covers Vol. 1 and Vol. 2
In February 2004, Velasquez and Ogie Alcasid co-headlined a concert, The Songbird & The Songwriter, at the Araneta Coliseum, and embarked on a North American tour that April. At the 17th Aliw Awards, she won Best Female Performance in a Concert and was nominated for Entertainer of the Year for the collaboration. Velasquez hosted the reality talent show Pinoy Pop Superstar, which began airing on GMA Network that July. In October 2004, she released "Forevermore", the lead single from her twelfth studio album Covers, Vol. 1. Its songs were originally recorded by Filipino male artists and was her most expensive cover album to produce due in part to the cost of securing licensing rights for songs by local songwriters, including Ariel Rivera's "Minsan Lang Kita Iibigan", Basil Valdez's "Say That You Love Me", and Nonoy Zuñiga's "Araw Gabi". The album has since been certified six times platinum.
Later in November and December 2005, Velasquez had an eight-day concert residency named Reflections at the Aliw Theater. The sequel album Covers, Vol. 2 was released in February 2006. Unlike its predecessor, it contains songs by foreign artists, including Alanis Morissette's "Head Over Feet", Blondie's "Call Me", and Elvis Presley's "Blue Suede Shoes". Manila Bulletins Jojo Panaligan was generally impressed with Velasquez's "versatility" and the album tracks' "jazzy and blues-y interpretation". In October 2006, she performed a concert titled Twenty at the Araneta Coliseum, which won her Best Female Major Concert Act and Entertainer of the Year award at the 20th Aliw Awards. In 2007, she became co-host of the reality television show Celebrity Duets, an interactive music competition based on the eponymous original US show.
2008–2012: Low Key and professional hiatus
Velasquez developed other television projects in 2008. She appeared in Songbird, a weekly late-night musical television show that featured performances by a musical guest. She also featured in the musical television special The Best of Me, which was filmed at her residence in Quezon City. Velasquez signed a deal with Universal Records and released an album titled Low Key in December 2008. The album consists of cover versions of international songs that she described as "more relaxed, laid-back and restrained". It includes tracks such as Billy Joel's "She's Always a Woman", Dan Fogelberg's "Leader of the Band", and Janis Ian's "At Seventeen". The Philippine Daily Inquirer praised the album's maturity and wrote, "[Velasquez] no longer shrieks and shouts as much as she used to". The album sold more than 25,000 copies within two months of its release and was certified platinum. In May 2009, she appeared on the television documentary Roots to Riches, which chronicles her personal and professional struggles, and includes musical performances filmed in her hometown Malolos. Later that month, she hosted the television talent show Are You the Next Big Star?.
Velasquez's next album, a double CD set called Fantasy, was released in December 2010. The first disc is composed of Original Pilipino Music (OPM) recordings and the second includes covers of international singles such as Madonnas "Papa Don't Preach", Torontos "What About Love", and the Eagles' "Love Will Keep Us Alive". The Philippine Daily Inquirer called the album "vocally sumptuous" and was generally impressed with Velasquez's vocals and range. Fantasy received a platinum certification and earned three nominations at the 3rd Star Awards for Music. After receiving the Magna Award at the Myx Music Awards 2011, and the confirmation of her pregnancy, Velasquez took a hiatus from public engagements. She returned to television on October 6, 2012 with Sarap Diva, a weekly lifestyle talk show. On November 16, 2012, Velasquez performed a concert titled Silver at the Mall of Asia Arena, which was cut short after she lost her voice due to a viral infection.
2013–2016: Silver Rewind and Hulog Ka Ng Langit
After Silver's cancellation, Velasquez restaged the concert on January 5, 2013. The concert received generally favorable reviews; Manila Bulletin Jojo Panaligan called it a "redemption of reputation", while Dolly Anne Carvajal of the Philippine Daily Inquirer said Velasquez did not fail to make up for the initial cancellation of the show. The following month, she co-headlined in Foursome alongside Alcasid, Fernandez, and Nievera. For both shows, Velasquez received four nominations at the 5th Star Awards for Music, winning Best Female Major Concert Act for "Silver" and Concert of the Year for "Foursome".
In November 2013, Velasquez's album Hulog Ka Ng Langit was released; it received a platinum certification for two-week sales of 15,000 copies. She won Best Inspirational Record for "Nathaniel (Gift of God)" and Best Christmas Recording for "Hele ni Inay" at the 27th Awit Awards, while Hulog Ka Ng Langit won Album Cover of the Year at the 6th Star Awards for Music. In 2014, she worked with Nievera in a one-night show titled Voices of Love, with Gloc-9 on "Takipsilim", and with Vice Ganda on "Push Mo Yan Teh".
In February 2015, Velasquez appeared alongside Nievera, Valenciano, and Lani Misalucha in a concert titled Ultimate at the Mall of Asia Arena. She received accolades at the 47th Box Office Entertainment Awards, 7th Star Awards for Music, and 5th Edukcircle Awards for the production. In the same year, Velasquez served as a judge on the sixth season of the reality talent television show StarStruck. In November 2015, Velasquez headlined a four-date concert residency called Regine at the Theater, which featured songs from musicals.
For a third consecutive year, Velasquez appeared in a co-headlining concert at the Mall of Asia Arena in February 2016. The two-night show, Royals, reunited her with Nievera and also features Angeline Quinto and Erik Santos. Due to the concert's positive critical reception, Velasquez won Best Female Concert Performer at the 48th Box Office Entertainment Awards and Most Influential Concert Performer of the Year at the 6th Edukcircle Awards. In December 2016, People Asia magazine included Velasquez on its annual People of the Year list.
2017–present: R3.0, television projects and Freedom
Velasquez hosted Full House Tonight, which ran from February to May 2017. The following month, she announced her return to Viva Records and that she had begun production of a new studio album called R3.0. In August 2017, a cover of Up Dharma Down's 2010 song "Tadhana" was released as a promotional single. An original track called "Hugot" was released as the album's lead single the following month. In November, she headlined the R3.0 Concert at the Mall of Asia Arena and two months later, with Alcasid, she played a four-date U.S. concert series titled "Mr. and Mrs. A."
In 2018, Velasquez hosted the television talent show The Clash, served as a judge on ABS-CBN's revival of the Idol franchise series Idol Philippines, and hosted the musical variety show ASAP Natin' To. In November, she staged a three-date concert series titled "Regine at the Movies" at the New Frontier Theater.
Sharon Cuneta and Velasquez co-headlined a concert, Iconic, in October 2019. For the show, Velasquez won the awards for Best Collaboration in a Concert and Entertainer of the Year at the 32nd Aliw Awards, having won the latter honor in 2007 and 2009. The following month, she released a collaborative single with Moira Dela Torre called "Unbreakable", which was recorded for the soundtrack of the film of the same name. Velasquez appeared as the face of Australian beauty brand BYS and released the promotional single "I Am Beautiful" for the brand's "Be Your Own Expert" campaign. She released the soundtrack singles "Ikaw Ang Aking Mahal" for the action television series The General's Daughter (2019) and "Mahal Ko O Mahal Ako" for the drama series Love Thy Woman (2020).
Velasquez organized virtual benefit concerts in support of relief efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. She curated One Night with Regine, a collaboration with ABS-CBN to support Bantay Bata Foundation's COVID-19 response fund in April, and appeared in Joy From Home, which raised funds to support Jollibee Groups food aid program in June. On February 28, 2021, she was featured in an online streaming concert titled Freedom.
Acting career
Velasquez made her cinema debut with a minor role in the 1988 comedy film The Untouchable Family. Its soundtrack includes her single "Urong Sulong". She continued to appear in a series of supporting roles in comedies, including Pik Pak Boom (1988) and Elvis and James 2 (1990).
Velasquez began working with composer Ryan Cayabyab in 1995 on the musical theater version of José Rizals Noli Me Tángere, where she played the female lead, María Clara. Vic Del Rosario, head of Viva Entertainment's film production arm, saw Velasquez in one of her performances and offered her a starring role in a film. Her first leading role was a music teacher in the romantic comedy Wanted: Perfect Mother (1996). Nievera and Ocampo co-wrote the song "You Are My Song" for the film's soundtrack. Later in 1996, she starred alongside Donna Cruz and Mikee Cojuangco in the musical comedy Do Re Mi. Velasquez continued to play leading roles in romantic comedies, appearing in Honey Nasa Langit Na Ba Ako (1998) with Janno Gibbs and Dahil May Isang Ikaw (1999) with Aga Muhlach. Her first television role came in 2000 in an episode of the IBC-13s weekly drama series Habang May Buhay as Piolo Pascuals cancer-stricken love interest.
A key point in Velasquez's film career came when she was cast in Joyce Bernals Kailangan Ko'y Ikaw (2000) opposite Robin Padilla. Film critic Noel Vera criticized the film's formula as "the nth variation of Roman Holiday", but wrote that Velasquez "[brought] her own public persona and charisma and sense of humor to the role". Her next film role was in Pangako Ikaw Lang (2001), which reunited her with Bernal and Muhlach. Vera was impressed with the film's direction and writing, and described Velasquez's performance as "sunny good nature [with a] light comic touch". Pangako Ikaw Lang became the highest-grossing Filipino film of 2001. Velasquez was awarded the Box Office Queen title at the 32nd Box Office Entertainment Awards due to the film's commercial performance.
Her next television appearance was in an episode of ABS-CBN's weekly drama series Maalaala Mo Kaya (2001), playing a woman with autism. The role won her the Best Actress award at the 16th Star Awards for Television. She portrayed a mundane and undesirable mail sorter in the drama Ikaw Lamang Hanggang Ngayon (2002) opposite Richard Gomez, while Pangarap Ko Ang Ibigin Ka (2003) reunited her with Christopher de Leon of Wanted: Perfect Mother, which premiered at the Manila Film Festival in July 2003. In December, Velasquez next starred alongside Bong Revilla in the superhero film Captain Barbell.
Although Velasquez did not make any film appearances in 2004, she made her primetime television debut in the drama series Forever in My Heart, in which she was reunited with Gomez, and worked alongside Ariel Rivera. She next starred in romantic dramas, reuniting with Padilla in Till I Met You (2006) and with Pascual in Paano Kita Iibigin (2007). For the latter film, Velasquez received FAMAS and Luna nominations for Best Actress. In 2008, she returned to television, playing the titular character in the comedy series Ako si Kim Samsoon, an adaption of a South Korean television show. Velasquez also voiced the eponymous character in the animated film Urduja (2008).
During 2009, Velasquez made cameo appearances in the comedies Kimmy Dora, OMG (Oh, My Girl!), and Yaya and Angelina: The Spoiled Brat Movie. In March 2010, Velasquez appeared in the musical television series Diva as a facially disfigured ghost singer. The following year, she collaborated with Dingdong Dantes in the television series I Heart You, Pare! (2011). She left the show for health reasons and was replaced by Iza Calzado.
In the 2012 film Of All The Things, Velasquez worked with Bernal and Muhlach for the third time. Philbert Dy of ClickTheCity called the film a "tedious, unfocused mess that forces chemistry where none really exists". Despite the film's negative review, Velasquez's performance won the 10th Golden Screen award for Best Actress. She next starred in the independent film Mrs. Recto (2015), a comedy-drama set principally on Recto Avenue. She then portrayed a socialite who is stripped of her wealth in the television comedy series Poor Señorita (2016). Her only acting appearance in 2017 was a supporting role in Mulawin vs. Ravena, the sequel to the 2004 television series Mulawin.
Velasquez played a widow obsessed with a pop star in Nigel Santos' independent film Yours Truly, Shirley. The film premiered at the 2019 Cinema One Originals Film Festival. In January 2020, she briefly appeared in the iWant comedy series My Single Lady.
Artistry
Influences
As a child, Velasquez enjoyed listening to her father singing classic songs to lull her to sleep; she was drawn to traditional songs rather than nursery rhymes because of this routine. Since her childhood, Velasquez has considered Sharon Cuneta a role model and credits Cuneta as a key inspiration who led her to pursue a musical career.
Velasquez's music is influenced by artists such as Sheena Easton, Angela Bofill, Whitney Houston, and Mariah Carey in her early years. She admires Houston for her "style and R&B influence" and Carey's songwriting. On several occasions, Velasquez has cited Barbra Streisand as her main influence and musical inspiration, saying, "I look up to [Streisand] not just because of her enormous talent, but because of her fearlessness and dedication to excellence, her willingness to take risks and to be different." Streisand's music has frequently featured in Velasquez's repertoire throughout her career, including a series of concerts paying homage to Streisand, which Velasquez described as "a pleasure" to perform. Velasquez has also been influenced by many Filipino artists; early in her career, she cited Kuh Ledesma, Joey Albert, Gary Valenciano, Martin Nievera, and Pops Fernandez as her role models. She has also paid tribute to Filipino songwriters, including George Canseco, Rey Valera, Basil Valdez, Ryan Cayabyab, and Willy Cruz.
Musical style and themes
Velasquez's early-career music includes elements of traditional OPM love songs. She described how she developed her musical style, saying, "I was only 16 and people didn't know what to do with me. When they want me to sing love songs, they had to explain to me what it meant because I didn't know the feeling yet." Her debut album Regine includes ballads and bubblegum pop love songs; its themes revolve around feelings of "excitement and uncertainty", as well as "missed chances and regrets". Elvin Luciano from CNN Philippines wrote: "During her [initial] phase, she proved that Filipino love songs don't have to come pre-packaged in the kundiman-rooted love ballad." Her later releases, including Nineteen 90 and Tagala Talaga, capitalized on her popularity; they are dominated by Filipino love songs. Velasquez began working with foreign songwriters while planning her first regional album Listen Without Prejudice, which according to AllMusic is "oriented towards easy-listening love songs with adventurous, contemporary touches". The album features tracks with syncopated backbeats and hip-hop influences.
During the mid-1990s and the early 2000s, Velasquez's albums consisted primarily of cover versions of international material because of its commercial viability, and Filipinos' preference for American music. According to CNN Philippines, "Regine has a knack for choosing songs which at first, may not fit her, but eventually become her own." Many of her songs, particularly in Retro, Drawn, and R2K contained R&B, soul, and hip-hop elements. Reigne is an OPM album that she described as "songs influenced by the music, artists, and genres that I enjoy listening to," and included tracks that are melancholic, sensual, and poetic. Her crossover to film saw significant use of contemporary love ballads in her catalog of soundtrack themes, describing the music as "straightforward, earnest, and lyrically simple".
Voice and timbre
Velasquez is known for her use of vocal belting, and credits the vocal training she received from her father as a child:
Velasquez is a soprano and is often praised for her range and technical ability. Luciano of CNN Philippines complimented her "trademark and sometimes melismatic vocals" while Gonzales adds her singing is "strong, emotive, and confident". She has often been criticized, however, for the excessive use of belting and oversinging. Gonzales described Velasquez's timbre as "thin, unimpressive and unappealing at times", and said her singing is "aiming for a higher [note], [which] she did all too often". Velasquez said, "I don't mean to make any songs hard. It's just that when I'm on stage, with the adrenaline rush and all, you get excited. I do try to hold back [because] otherwise I'd be screaming the whole show, that's not good."
Legacy and influence
Velasquez's vocal style and singing ability have significantly impacted Philippine popular and contemporary music. Critics have called her "Asia's songbird" and she is often cited as one of Filipino music's most influential artists. According to Allan Policarpio of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, "Regine needed only to open her mouth and that celebrated voice would come out. She could sing seated, lying down or hoisted up in the air with a harness—no problem. And even when she was so sick she couldn't speak, she could still sing." Velasquez has also been recognized for playing a pivotal role in creating the "blue print" for becoming a "singing icon". Many critics complimented her work, often singling out Velasquez's influence. Luciano, writing for CNN Philippines, described her "legitimacy" as "enough to secure a space in pop culture" and said her musical career "continues to influence generations of OPM patrons and songbird wannabes up to this day", while according to The Philippine Star, "If one were to go by records and distinctions made, Regine Velasquez would win, hands down". She has often been regarded as a powerhouse for her performances and musical content.
Velasquez's use of vocal belting has been subject to scrutiny because young singers, including contestants on television talent shows, have imitated her singing technique. According to Nestor Torre of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, "The popularity of 'birit' [belting] started here with the amateur singing contests ... Then came Regine Velasquez, who also launched her own singing career the 'birit' way ... Trouble is, Regine's belting became so popular that her successor[s] ... imitated her." Manila Bulletin said, "Most of our top selling new female singers are still and mere parrots of [Velasquez] in terms of vocal acrobatics and predilection to show off her high range". According to Boy Abunda, "Most of the young female singers currently making waves in the industry are cut from the same biritera [belter] cloth as Regine Velasquez."
Filipino pop, hip-hop, and R&B artists Aicelle Santos, Charice, Erik Santos, Jona Viray, Julie Anne San Jose, KZ Tandingan, Kyla, Mark Bautista, Morissette Amon, , and Yeng Constantino—among others—have cited Velasquez as an influence.
Velasquez's music has broadly influenced a younger generation of performers from reality television talent shows; Sarah Geronimo has stated Velasquez made her realize the value of hard work while Rachelle Ann Go and Angeline Quinto have both said Velasquez inspired them during their early years as aspiring singers. American Idol finalists Ramiele Malubay, Thia Megia, and Jessica Sanchez have expressed a desire to emulate Velasquez.
Velasquez has also been credited for her work and performances with international artists, including 98 Degrees, Alicia Keys, Coco Lee, Peabo Bryson, and Stephen Bishop. French composer Michel Legrand described working with Velasquez, saying "It's tough to sing a song after Barbra Streisand, I will tell you. But to sing with Regine is, I'm in heaven. She sings so well, she has such an extraordinary technical voice ... sensitive voice and talented expression." American singer Brian McKnight who co-headlined a concert with Velasquez, has complimented her singing, stating; "I got to sing onstage with Regine and it was one of the best experiences ever because she's one of the best singers I've ever heard."
Other activities
Philanthropy
Velasquez has been involved with several charitable organizations. She became associated with the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in 2001 and worked on a documentary titled Speak Your Mind, which is about homeless children in Payatas, Quezon City, one of the Philippines' largest open dumpsites. The program was nominated for the UNICEF Child Rights Award.
One of Velasquez's highest-profile benefit concert appearances was in One Night with Regine, which she performed at the National Museum of the Philippines in support of the Bantay Bata Foundation, a child welfare organization. In 2005, Velasquez appeared in an episode of the lifestyle talk show Mel and Joey, and donated proceeds from an auction of her gowns to the GMA Kapuso Foundation's Christmas Give-a-Gift project. In 2009, Velasquez headlined a benefit television special called After The Rain: A Hopeful Christmas in the aftermath of Typhoon Ketsana (Ondoy). In October 2010, she became an ambassador for Operation Smile, a nonprofit organization that provides cleft lip and palate repair surgery to children worldwide. She recorded the theme "S.M.I.L.E.", which was written for the project and appears on her studio album Fantasy. In November 2013, proceeds from the sales of her album Hulog Ka Ng Langit were donated to the Philippine Red Cross in support of the Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda) relief.
Product endorsements
Velasquez has been involved in brand marketing initiatives for American fast food restaurant chains Wendy's and KFC. She has signed advertising deals with several other brands, including Digitel, Lux, Nestlé Philippines, Nokia, and Smart Communications. Throughout 2005, she appeared as the face of the Department of Tourism's travel promotion campaign. In August 2009, Velasquez released a line of women's perfume called "Reigne" and "Songbird" for the clothing brand Bench. In February 2020, she collaborated with beauty brand BYS and launched a line of makeup called "Reigne".
Personal life
Velasquez announced her relationship with singer-songwriter Ogie Alcasid in an article published by Yes! magazine in June 2007. On August 8, 2010, the couple announced their engagement, and in December, they married in Nasugbu, Batangas. She gave birth to their son, Nathaniel James, via caesarean section on November 8, 2011.
Velasquez is a born-again Christian. In March 2016, she said she had suffered a miscarriage prior to her marriage to Alcasid and cited it as her reason for converting. She also said she had been attending Victory Christian Fellowship.
Awards and recognition
Throughout her career, Velasquez has received many honors and awards, including MTV Asia's Favorite Artist Philippines in 2002 and 2003, and the Aliw Awards' Entertainer of the Year in 2007, 2009, and 2019. She has been the recipient of lifetime achievement awards, including the Awit Awards Dangal ng Musikang Pilipino, the Star Awards for Music's Pilita Corrales Lifetime Achievement and Natatanging Alagad Ng Musika, FAMAS Awards' Golden Artist, and Myx Music's Magna Award.
Velasquez has sold more than seven million records in the Philippines and 1.5 million in Asia, making her the biggest-selling Filipino artist of all time. Eight of her albums have each sold over 200,000 copies. She was ranked first in Female Networks 2011 countdown of the "Top 25 Best Filipina Singers" and was included in Top 10 Asia magazine's list of "Ten Most Admired Female Singers in Asia". Velasquez has also received recognition for her work in television and film, such as the Box Office Queen award in 2002, the Star Awards for Television's Best Actress in 2002, and the Golden Screen Awards' Best Actress in 2013. She has received a total of 21 Awit Awards, 22 Box Office Entertainment Awards, 15 Aliw Awards, and 12 Star Awards for Music. In December 2007, Velasquez was honored with a star on the Philippines' Walk of Fame.
Discography
Regine (1987)
Nineteen '90 (1990)
Tagala Talaga (1991)
Reason Enough (1993)
Listen Without Prejudice (1994)
My Love Emotion (1995)
Retro (1997)
Drawn (1998)
R2K (1999)
Reigne (2001)
Covers, Vol. 1 (2004)
Covers, Vol. 2 (2006)
Low Key (2008)
Fantasy (2010)
Hulog Ka Ng Langit (2013)
R3.0 (2017)
Filmography
Wanted Perfect Mother (1996)
Do Re Mi (1996)
Dahil May Isang Ikaw (1998)
Kailangan Ko'y Ikaw (2000)
Pangako Ikaw Lang (2001)
Ikaw Lamang Hanggang Ngayon (2002)
Pangarap Ko Ang Ibigin Ka (2003)
Till I Met You (2006)
Paano Kita Iibigin (2007)
Of All The Things (2012)
Mrs. Recto (2015)
Yours Truly, Shirley (2019)
Concerts
Headlining concerts
Narito Ako! (1990)
In Season (1991)
Music and Me (1993)
Isang Pasasalamat (1996)
Retro (1997)
Drawn (1998)
R2K The Concert (2000)
Songbird Sings the Classics (2001)
R-15 (2001)
One Night with Regine (2002)
Reigning Still (2004)
Twenty (2006)
Silver (2013)
R3.0 (2017)
Freedom (2021)
Co-headlining concerts
Power of Two (with Kuh Ledesma) (1996)
Celebration of Love (with Peabo Bryson and Jeffrey Osborne) (2000)
Independent Women (with Jaya) (2001)
Two for the Knight (with Brian McKnight) (2002)
Songbird Sings Legrand (with Michel Legrand) (2003)
Martin & Regine: The World Concert (with Martin Nievera) (2003)
The Songbird & The Songwriter (with Ogie Alcasid) (2004)
Queens on Fire (with Pops Fernandez) (2005)
Iconic (with Sharon Cuneta) (2019)
Unified (with Sarah Geronimo) (2020)
Concert residencies
Regine at the Movies (2001; 2018)
Songbird Sings (2002)
Songbird Sings Streisand (2003)
Reflections (2005)
Regine at the Theater (2015)
See also
List of best-selling albums in the Philippines
List of Filipino singers
List of Filipino actresses
Music of the Philippines
Philippine Association of the Record Industry
Notes
References
Citations
Book sources
External links
1970 births
Intercontinental Broadcasting Corporation personalities
Universal Records (Philippines) artists
Filipino dance musicians
Filipino women pop singers
Filipino record producers
Filipino Protestants
Filipino Christians
Filipino television actresses
Filipino film actresses
English-language singers from the Philippines
Living people
People from Tondo, Manila
Singers from Manila
Actresses from Manila
Tagalog people
Filipino sopranos
ABS-CBN personalities
GMA Network personalities
TV5 (Philippine TV network) personalities
21st-century Filipino women singers
Women record producers | false | [
"PolyEast Records (formerly EMI Philippines) is a record label in the Philippines. It is a member of the Philippine Association of the Record Industry and from 2008 until 2013, the international licensee of EMI.\n\nHistory \nPolyEast Records was established in 1977 as Canary Records by Orly Ilacad after leaving Vicor Music Corporation due to a major conflict with co-founder and then co-owner Vic del Rosario. Canary Records became OctoArts International in 1978. It was the first record company that introduced \"minus one\" (music used for karaoke) in the market.\n\nDuring the 1970s, the releases of EMI Records were distributed in the Philippines by Dyna Records under the name Dyna EMI (later remained in 1992 as Dyna EMI Virgin as a result of EMI's purchase of Virgin Records). OctoArts at that time was the distributor of Sony Music's international releases. In 1995, OctoArts began a distribution deal with EMI and became OctoArts-EMI, leading to the establishment of Sony Music Philippines. In 2002, after a series of restructure, Orly Ilacad sells their stake in the label to EMI full time and it became EMI Philippines, while Ilacad later brought Orbit Music and it eventually becomes OctoArts-Orbit Music.\n\nThe PolyEast Records label initially started as a sublabel of PolyGram Philippines (later became part of Universal Music Philippines) until it was eventually acquired by EMI Philippines. It continued being an imprint of the label until 2008 when EMI withdrew from the Southeast Asian market, it became simply PolyEast Records as a joint venture between EMI itself and Piper Paper Corporation.\n\nIn the period of 2012–2013, PolyEast became independent for the second time after EMI was absorbed into Universal Music Group (MCA Music for the Filipino market).\n\nPartnerships \n Universal Records (Philippines)\n Universal Music Group\n\nSee also \n OctoArts Films\n List of record labels\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n\n1977 establishments in the Philippines\nEMI\nPhilippine record labels\nPop record labels\nRock record labels\nCompanies based in Quezon City\nRecord labels established in 1977",
"Richelle Ann Mallari Loyola-Avanzado (born January 31, 1979), better known by her stage name Jessa Zaragoza, is a Filipina commercial model, singer and actress. She is known as the \"Phenomenal Diva\" and \"Jukebox Queen of the 90s\" for her first studio album Just Can't Help Feelin in 1997 with the hit carrier single \"Bakit Pa?,\" which became a number one ballad in the Philippines and a top 40 hit during 1997–1999. The album also was certified by PARI and certified platinum. Its carrier single \"Bakit Pa?\" was also released by OctoArts Films and GMA Films (now GMA Pictures) as a Valentine's Day film offering directed by multi-awarded film Director Jose Javier Reyes. She collaborated with award winning film director Mel Chionglo in Malikot na Mundo with actors Lara Morena, Raymond Bagatsing, and Patrick Guzman, her last film with OctoArts Films. In 2000, she also released her fourth studio album and first for Star Music Ibigay Mo Na. She released Kahit Na Ilang Umaga in 2004. She sang a cover of \"Sana'y Wala Nang Wakas\" for the hit prime time series of the same name. In 2002–2003, she played Andromeda on the hit series Bituin with Nora Aunor and Cherie Gil.\n\nIn 2008 she sang a revival of Didith Reyes' hit song \"Bakit Ako Mahihiya\" for the critically acclaimed series Eva Fonda starring Cristine Reyes. She released her album Jessa Sings the Great Musical Icons under MCA Music in 2009. In 2012, she released her seventh studio album entitled Pag Wala Na ang Ulan with GMA Music. From 2012 to present, she has been appearing on the weekly comedy show Pepito Manaloto as DeeDee alongside veteran comedian Nova Villa. This is Zaragoza's return to comedy after the 2001 sitcom Attagirl on ABS-CBN.\n\nIn 2021, she is one of the Jukebosses in the hit karaoke TV show Sing Galing with other singers and songwriters Rey Valera, Randy Santiago and K Brosas on TV5.\n\nBiography\nZaragoza was a GMA Network talent using her real name Richelle Ann Loyola when she auditioned for Little Miss Philippines in Eat Bulaga! in 1987. In the early 1990s, she was part of German Moreno's longest running variety show, That's Entertainment. She was also part of comedy shows Alabang Girls on ABC (now TV5) from 1992 to 1994.She did guesting stints for GMA and Viva Entertainment TV programs in the mid 90s she has guest starred in Bubble Gang Beh Bote Nga And AttaGirl in 2001 for ABS-CBN 2\n\nZaragoza is also a singer. She signed a contract with OctoArts EMI Philippines (now PolyEast Records). Her first album Just Can't Help Feelin''' was released in 1997. Her second album Phenomonal was released in 1999. She later transferred to rival network ABS-CBN from 2000 to 2004, and signed a deal with its recording company Star Records, releasing her next two albums Ibigay Mo Na (2000) and Kahit Na Ilang Umaga (2004). She also sang the theme songs for soap operas and TV series of ABS-CBN and GMA.\n\nAmong her most popular songs is \"Bakit Pa,\" which was the soundtrack to a romantic comedy film she starred in, also entitled Bakit Pa? with Troy Montero and Diether Ocampo as her leading men. The film was released in theaters on February 3, 1999, as a Valentine's movie presentation of Octoarts and GMA Films. She was also part of a soap opera that ran from May to October 1999 on GMA Network entitled Di Ba't Ikaw.\n\nIn 2000, she released new hit singles such as \"Ibigay Mo Na\", \"Siya Ba Ang Dahilan\" and \"Kung Kailan Pa\". Ibigay Mo Na was controversial for its album layout and sexually themed song, which was criticized for being painfully harmful but a heartfelt ballad.\n\nIn 2001, Zaragoza sang the theme song of the ABS-CBN afternoon soap, Recuerdo de Amor which ran from 2001 to 2003. She was also cast in another ABS-CBN soap which starred Nora Aunor, Carol Banawa and Desiree del Valle entitled Bituin. She also starred on the hit sitcom Attagirl alongside Vanessa Del Bianco, Andrea del Rosario and Desiree del Valle which ran for three seasons.\n\nIn 2003, she sang the theme song of ABS-CBN's Sana'y Wala Nang Wakas. The song was featured on her album Kahit Na Ilang Umaga, released by Star Records.\n\nIn 2004, she participated at the Himig Handog Songwriting Contest interpreting the song \"Hindi Na Bale\" composed by Jimmy Antiporda.\n\nIn 2006, she collaborated with her singer-songwriter husband, Dingdong Avanzado on the duet album, Laging Ikaw, released under Universal Records. During the 2006 period she had worked with fellow friends comedian Marissa Sanchez, and actress Ara Mina on a worldwide concert tour called The Divas Tour. It was produced by Dingdong Avanzado and was a successful concert, running for six months in different parts of the world.\n\nIn 2007, controversy erupted between her and Rufa Mae Quinto when Quinto allegedly interpreted and stated that Zaragoza was the reason of hers and Dingdong's breakup. It became one of Philippine showbiz's most memorable breakups. Zaragoza defended herself against the allegations on a live interview on GMA's Startalk. Quinto appeared on YES magazine as a featured artist on the front cover, and in the article she talked about her personal life and past relationships.\n\nIn 2009, after a series of shows in the U.S. together with Avanzado, Zaragoza came back on prime time television in the remake of the Mexican telenovela Rosalinda. She also released an album that featured all cover versions on Jessa Sings the Great Musical Icons. The album paid tribute to such musical legends such as Elvis Presley, the Beatles, Tina Turner, Sting and the Police, Madonna and Stevie Wonder.\n\nIn 2010, she went back to ABS-CBN to be part of the short-lived prime time television series, 1DOL. She then made several guest TV appearances, performing renditions of songs with Avanzado.\n\nZaragoza also appeared in an episode of Wansapanataym: Super Kikay and the Flying Pagong with Kim Chiu.\n\nIn 2012, she portrayed Angela in the afternoon soap based on the 1989 film produced by Seiko Films' Ruben Marcelino, Kokak as the mother to title protagonist Sarah Lahbati. In July of that year, her album Pag Wala Na Ang Ulan was released under GMA Records. The album includes the song \"Nasaan\" from the TV series Kung Aagawin Mo Ang Langit on GMA.\n\nOn August 3, 2013, she released a digital single called \"Missing You\" in two different languages; Tagalog and English.\n\nOn August 7, 2014, Zaragoza interpreted \"Bumabalik Ang Nagdaan\" with Star Music (formerly known as Star Records) for the Himig Handog P-Pop Love Songs. This is her third time to interpret a song for the Himig Handog Love Song Contest, together with her former singles \"Susubukan Kong Muli\" (2001) and \"Hindi Na Bale\" (2005) were released during those years. Hindi Na Bale was also her second time working with Jimmy Antiporda and was also revived by Bugoy Drillon in 2010. This Is her comeback to the recording company after 9 years for the Interpretation of the song her previous works were the albums Ibigay Mo Na (2000) and Kahit Na Ilang Umaga (2003–2004) album.\n\nThe year 2017 marked a peak Zaragoza's career when she and her husband Avanzado launched their 20/30 album, a revival and commemorative album.\n\nPersonal life\nZaragoza is married to singer Dingdong Avanzado. The wedding happened on March 18, 2001 and was highly publicized in newspapers and television talk shows. They have a daughter named Jayda. They were called the prince of pop and jukebox queen of the Philippines when they lived in Vallejo, California, in 2007.\n\nFilmography\nTelevision\n\nDiscography\n 1997: Just Can't Help Feelin' (first album with OctoArts EMI Philippines, now called Polyeast Records) the debut album of Jessa Zaragaosa that start her music career. The album includes her 4 successful singles such as Bakit Pa?, Pa'no Kaya?, Di Bat Ikaw and the album title Just Can't Help Feelin.\n 1998: Phenomenal 1998: Siya Ba Ang Dahilan? (final album with OctoArts EMI Philippines)\n 1998: The Best Of (compilation album of best hits produced by OctoArts EMI Philippines)\n 2000: Ibigay Mo Na(first album produced with Star Music, second album of the year released in 2000)\n 2004: Kahit Na Ilang Umaga (final album produced and released in 2004–2005 with Star Music)\n 2005: Laging Ikaw (duet album with Dingdong Avanzado, including duets of best hits)\n 2009: Sings the Great Musical Icons I (an all-cover album with Universal Records)\n 2012: Pag Wala Na Ang Ulan'' (GMA Music)\n\nSongs sampled from Dingdong Avanzado \nMaghihintay Sayo (2000) in Ibigay Mo Na\nKung Maibabalik (2003) in Kahit Ana Ilang Umaga\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nOfficial website\n\n1979 births\nLiving people\nFilipino film actresses\nFilipino child actresses\nFilipino television actresses\nThat's Entertainment Tuesday Group Members\nThat's Entertainment (Philippine TV series)\nSparkle GMA Artist Center\n20th-century Filipino actresses\n21st-century Filipino actresses\nStar Music artists\nGMA Music artists\n21st-century Filipino singers\n21st-century Filipino women singers"
]
|
[
"Regine Velasquez",
"1986-1989: Career beginnings and Regine",
"What was Regine's first experience singing?",
"After winning Ang Bagong Kampeon, Velasquez was signed to OctoArts International (now PolyEast Records).",
"How old was she when she won that award?",
"I don't know.",
"What was her first work with OctoArts?",
"She was introduced as 'Chona' Velasquez--her nickname--and recorded the single \"Love Me Again\", which was released in early 1986."
]
| C_37b88fd530a6472498feadbc43940518_1 | What that single a success? | 4 | What Regine Velasquez's single "Love Me Again" a success? | Regine Velasquez | After winning Ang Bagong Kampeon, Velasquez was signed to OctoArts International (now PolyEast Records). She was introduced as 'Chona' Velasquez--her nickname--and recorded the single "Love Me Again", which was released in early 1986. However, the single was commercially unsuccessful. On February 16, 1986, at the behest of another OctoArts recording artist, Pops Fernandez, Velasquez was invited to appear on her live late night musical television show, The Penthouse Live! While she was rehearsing for the live show, the producer and talent manager Ronnie Henares showed interest and signed her. At the suggestion of Fernandez's husband and the show's co-host, Martin Nievera, Velasquez adopted the stage name "Regine". Under Henares' management, Velasquez was introduced to the head of VIVA Records, Vicente del Rosario Jr., who signed her and started production of her debut album. Del Rosario enlisted top songwriters, including Joaquin Francisco Sanchez, Vehnee Saturno and Christine Bendebel. He and Henares, who were both serving as executive producers, planned to market Velasquez as one of their main female pop artists, hoping to attain commercial success as they had done with Nora Aunor and Sharon Cuneta. After Velasquez completed her debut album, Regine, VIVA released the lead single "Kung Maibabalik Ko Lang" in 1987. Despite a weak start, the album gained mainstream appeal after Velasquez's promotional appearances on the ABS-CBN television variety shows Triple Treat and Teen Pan Alley. The album produced two more singles--"Urong Sulong" and "Isang Lahi". Two years after the release of her debut album, Velasquez represented the Philippines in the 1989 Asia Pacific Singing Contest. She was initially apprehensive and skeptical of the idea of participating in another competition at that stage in her career. At Henares' urging she agreed to compete and won the contest in Hong Kong, performing the songs "You'll Never Walk Alone" from the 1945 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Carousel and "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going" from the musical Dreamgirls. CANNOTANSWER | the single was commercially unsuccessful. | Regina Encarnacion Ansong Velasquez ( ; born April 22, 1970) is a Filipino singer, actress, and producer. She is known for her vocal range, belting technique, and the unorthodox voice training she received during her childhood, where she was immersed neck-deep in the sea. Velasquez rose to prominence after winning the television talent show Ang Bagong Kampeon in 1984 and the Asia Pacific Singing Contest in 1989. Under the name Chona, she signed a recording contract with OctoArts International in 1986 and released the single "Love Me Again", which was commercially unsuccessful. The following year, she adopted the stage name Regine Velasquez for her debut studio album, Regine (1987), under the guidance of Viva Records executive Vic del Rosario and producer Ronnie Henares. She explored Manila sound and kundiman genres on her second and third studio albums, Nineteen 90 (1990) and Tagala Talaga (1991).
After signing an international record deal with Polygram Records, Velasquez achieved commercial success in some Asian territories with her fifth album Listen Without Prejudice (1994), which sold more than 700,000 copies and became her highest-selling album to date, aided by its lead single "In Love With You". She experimented further with jazz and adult contemporary genres on My Love Emotion (1995), while she recorded covers on Retro (1997). After she left Polygram to sign with Mark J. Feists MJF Company in 1998, she released the R&B-influenced album Drawn. Velasquez's follow-up record, R2K (1999), was supported by remakes of "On the Wings of Love", "I'll Never Love This Way Again", and "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing", and was subsequently certified twelve-times platinum by the Philippine Association of the Record Industry (PARI).
Velasquez played leading roles in the romantic comedies Kailangan Ko'y Ikaw (2000) and Pangako Ikaw Lang (2001), and received the Box Office Entertainment Award for Box Office Queen for the latter. Her performance as an intellectually disabled woman in an episode of the anthology series Maalaala Mo Kaya (2002) earned her a Star Award for Best Actress. She also starred in the prime time television series Forever in My Heart (2004), Ako si Kim Samsoon (2008), Totoy Bato (2009), Diva (2010), I Heart You, Pare! (2011), and Poor Señorita (2016). Velasquez also won the Golden Screen Award for Best Actress for playing a document forger in the comedy film Of All the Things (2013). She expanded her career into reality television talent shows as a presenter on Star for a Night (2002), Pinoy Pop Superstar (2004), and The Clash (2018), and as a judge on StarStruck (2015) and Idol Philippines (2019).
Having sold more than seven million records domestically and 1.5 million in Asia, Velasquez is the best-selling Filipino music artist of all time. Her accolades include two Asian Television Awards, two MTV Asia Awards, 21 Awit Awards, 15 Aliw Awards (including 3 Entertainer of the Year wins), 22 Box Office Entertainment Awards, and 12 Star Awards for Music. Referred to as "Asia's songbird", she has consistently been credited with inspiring a generation of Filipino singers.
Early life
Regina Encarnacion Ansong Velasquez was born on April 22, 1970, in Tondo, Manila, to Teresita (née Ansong) and Gerardo Velasquez. She has three sisters—Cacai, Diane, and Deca—and a brother named Jojo. Her family moved to Hinundayan, Southern Leyte, where Velasquez spent the early years of her life. At age three, Velasquez became interested in music after listening to her father's lullabies. She would listen to her mother play guitar and piano while her father sang, and referenced Sharon Cuneta's "Mr. DJ" as one of the first songs she learned.
Velasquez started singing at age six; she underwent intensive vocal training with her father, who immersed her neck-deep in the sea and had her go through vocal runs. She credits this unorthodox method for strengthening her core and stomach muscles, and developing her lung capacity. Velasquez placed third in her first singing competition on Betty Mendez Livioco The Tita Betty's Children Show.
When Velasquez was nine, her family moved to Balagtas, Bulacan, where she attended St. Lawrence Academy and competed for her school at the annual Bulacan Private Schools Association singing competition. In 1984, at fourteen, Velasquez auditioned for the reality television series Ang Bagong Kampeon. She qualified and became the show's senior division winner, defending her spot for eight consecutive weeks. Velasquez won the competition and was signed to a record deal with OctoArts International.
Music career
1986–1989: Career beginnings and Regine
In 1986, Velasquez initially used the stage name Chona and released the single "Love Me Again", which was commercially unsuccessful. At the recommendation of another OctoArts recording artist, Pops Fernandez, she appeared on The Penthouse Live! While rehearsing for the show, Velasquez caught the attention of Ronnie Henares, a producer and talent manager who signed her to a management deal. Velasquez adopted the stage name Regine at the suggestion of Fernandez's husband and The Penthouse Live! co-host, .
Velasquez signed with Viva Records and released her debut album Regine in 1987. Henares served as an executive producer and worked with songwriters Joaquin Francisco Sanchez and Vehnee Saturno. Three singles were released in 1987: "Kung Maibabalik Ko Lang", " Urong Sulong", and "Isang Lahi". During this period, Velasquez appeared on the ABS-CBN television shows Triple Treat and Teen Pan Alley. Two years after Regine's release, Velasquez represented the Philippines in the 1989 Asia Pacific Singing Contest in Hong Kong and won, performing the songs "You'll Never Walk Alone" from the musical Carousel and "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going" from the musical Dreamgirls.
1990–1993: Nineteen 90 and Reason Enough
Velasquez released her second studio album Nineteen 90 in 1990. She worked with Louie Ocampo on the album's lead single "Narito Ako", which was originally recorded and performed by Maricris Bermont and written by Nonong Pedero for the 1978 Metro Manila Popular Music Festival. Later that year, she headlined her first major concert at the Folk Arts Theater. She recorded "Please Be Careful with My Heart" with Jose Mari Chan, who released the track on his album Constant Change; she also sang backing vocals on Gary Valenciano's "Each Passing Night", which appears on his album Faces of Love.
In 1991, Velasquez made her North American concert debut at Carnegie Hall in New York City, a first for an Asian solo artist. British theatrical producer Cameron Mackintosh later invited Velasquez to audition for the West End production of the musical Miss Saigon. She received a letter from the production offering to train her in London, which she declined: partly due to her lack of experience in musical theater, and because she wished to remain with her family.
Velasquez's third studio album Tagala Talaga was released in October 1991. It includes cover versions of recordings by National Artist for Music recipients Ryan Cayabyab, Lucio San Pedro, and Levi Celerio. The album's lead single, titled "Buhay Ng Buhay Ko", was originally recorded by Leah Navarro and was written by Pedero, with whom Velasquez had worked on Nineteen 90. Other notable singles from the album include "Anak and "Sa Ugoy Ng Duyan".
PolyGram Far East announced a joint-venture licensing deal in the Philippines in July 1993 with the formation of its subsidiary PolyCosmic Records. Velasquez recorded a duet titled "It's Hard to Say Goodbye" with Canadian singer Paul Anka, which became the new label's first release. The single was later included on her fourth studio album Reason Enough. David Gonzales of AllMusic described the album as "more attuned to international ears" and said Velasquez's vocals are "thin and unimpressive". One of its singles, "Sana Maulit Muli", won the Awit Award for Best Performance by a Female Recording Artist in 1994.
1994–1998: Listen Without Prejudice and My Love Emotion
Velasquez released her fifth studio album Listen Without Prejudice in 1994. She worked with songwriters, including Glenn Medeiros, Trina Belamide, and John Laudon. The album was released in several countries in Southeast and East Asia, including China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand. The album's lead single "In Love With You" features Cantonese singer Jacky Cheung. Gonzales commended the record's themes and said, "Cheung's presence on the duet had much to do with the overseas success". The album had sold more than 700,000 copies worldwide, including 100,000 in the Philippines, making it the best-selling album of Velasquez's career to date.
Velasquez's sixth studio album My Love Emotion was released in 1995. The title track, which was written by Southern Sons vocalist Phil Buckle, was described by Gonzales as a "triumph [and] an outstanding vehicle, containing a strong melody and hook in the chorus". The album made a combined regional and domestic sales of 250,000 copies.
For her seventh studio album Retro (1997), Velasquez recorded cover versions of popular music of the 1970s and 1980s from artists, including Donna Summer, Foreigner, and the Carpenters. The album's only original track, "Fly", is credited to Earth, Wind & Fire members Maurice White, Al McKay, and Allee Willis because the song interpolates the melody of their single "September". Velasquez left PolyCosmic in 1998, and signed a six-album contract with the MJF Company. That year, her ninth studio album Drawn was released. MJF head Mark J. Feist wrote and produced most of the tracks, including the lead single "How Could You Leave". Drawn sold more than 40,000 copies and was awarded a platinum certification within two weeks of its release.
1999–2003: R2K and Reigne
Velasquez produced most of her next album R2K, which was released on November 27, 1999. She recorded remakes of Jeffrey Osborne's "On the Wings of Love", Dionne Warwick's "I'll Never Love This Way Again", Aerosmith's "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing", and ABBA's Dancing Queen, among others. Gonzales criticized the record's "infatuation with Western popular music" and called Velasquez's singing "self-assured [but] also unimpressive". Commercially, R2K sold more than 40,000 copies in its second week of release, earning a platinum certification, and was certified four times platinum a year later. R2K has since been certified twelve times platinum, becoming the highest-selling album by a female artist in the Philippines. On December 31, 1999, Velasquez was a featured musical act in 2000 Today, a BBC millennium television special that attracted a worldwide audience of more than 800 million viewers with its core program broadcast across the world's time zones, which began with Kiribati Line Islands and ended in American Samoa.
Velasquez headlined and directed the R2K Concert at the Araneta Coliseum in April 2000, which won her Best Female Major Concert Act at the 13th Aliw Awards. Ricky Lo from The Philippine Star was generally impressed with the production and complimented Velasquez's "boundless energy and creativity". She also performed a concert at the Westin Philippine Plaza that year, which spawned the release of her first live album Regine Live: Songbird Sings the Classics in December 2000. Despite being criticized for the audio mixing, the album was certified six times platinum.
Velasquez worked with Filipino songwriters for material on her eleventh studio album Reigne. The album and its lead single "To Reach You" were released in December 2001. Other singles were Tats Faustino's "Dadalhin" and Janno Gibbs' "Sa Aking Pag-iisa". Gonzales called the album "an adventurous set" and praised the quality of the songwriting.
Velasquez won the inaugural MTV Asia Award for Favorite Artist Philippines in February 2002. She performed "Cry" with Mandy Moore to promote the theatrical release of Moore's film A Walk to Remember. In March, Velasquez hosted the first season of Star for a Night, which is based on the British talent show of the same name. In April, she headlined a benefit concert called One Night with Regine at the National Museum of the Philippines, which was a collaboration with ABS-CBN Foundation to benefit Bantay Bata Foundation's child abuse response fund. The show won Best Musical Program at the 7th Asian Television Awards.
At the 2003 MTV Asia Awards, Velasquez won her second consecutive award for Favorite Artist Philippines. In May 2003, she embarked on the Martin-Regine World Concert Tour with Nievera. The following month, Velasquez returned to host the second season of Search for a Star. That November, she had a concert residency named Songbird Sings Streisand, a tribute to American singer and actor Barbra Streisand, at Makati's Onstage Theatre.
2004–2007: Covers Vol. 1 and Vol. 2
In February 2004, Velasquez and Ogie Alcasid co-headlined a concert, The Songbird & The Songwriter, at the Araneta Coliseum, and embarked on a North American tour that April. At the 17th Aliw Awards, she won Best Female Performance in a Concert and was nominated for Entertainer of the Year for the collaboration. Velasquez hosted the reality talent show Pinoy Pop Superstar, which began airing on GMA Network that July. In October 2004, she released "Forevermore", the lead single from her twelfth studio album Covers, Vol. 1. Its songs were originally recorded by Filipino male artists and was her most expensive cover album to produce due in part to the cost of securing licensing rights for songs by local songwriters, including Ariel Rivera's "Minsan Lang Kita Iibigan", Basil Valdez's "Say That You Love Me", and Nonoy Zuñiga's "Araw Gabi". The album has since been certified six times platinum.
Later in November and December 2005, Velasquez had an eight-day concert residency named Reflections at the Aliw Theater. The sequel album Covers, Vol. 2 was released in February 2006. Unlike its predecessor, it contains songs by foreign artists, including Alanis Morissette's "Head Over Feet", Blondie's "Call Me", and Elvis Presley's "Blue Suede Shoes". Manila Bulletins Jojo Panaligan was generally impressed with Velasquez's "versatility" and the album tracks' "jazzy and blues-y interpretation". In October 2006, she performed a concert titled Twenty at the Araneta Coliseum, which won her Best Female Major Concert Act and Entertainer of the Year award at the 20th Aliw Awards. In 2007, she became co-host of the reality television show Celebrity Duets, an interactive music competition based on the eponymous original US show.
2008–2012: Low Key and professional hiatus
Velasquez developed other television projects in 2008. She appeared in Songbird, a weekly late-night musical television show that featured performances by a musical guest. She also featured in the musical television special The Best of Me, which was filmed at her residence in Quezon City. Velasquez signed a deal with Universal Records and released an album titled Low Key in December 2008. The album consists of cover versions of international songs that she described as "more relaxed, laid-back and restrained". It includes tracks such as Billy Joel's "She's Always a Woman", Dan Fogelberg's "Leader of the Band", and Janis Ian's "At Seventeen". The Philippine Daily Inquirer praised the album's maturity and wrote, "[Velasquez] no longer shrieks and shouts as much as she used to". The album sold more than 25,000 copies within two months of its release and was certified platinum. In May 2009, she appeared on the television documentary Roots to Riches, which chronicles her personal and professional struggles, and includes musical performances filmed in her hometown Malolos. Later that month, she hosted the television talent show Are You the Next Big Star?.
Velasquez's next album, a double CD set called Fantasy, was released in December 2010. The first disc is composed of Original Pilipino Music (OPM) recordings and the second includes covers of international singles such as Madonnas "Papa Don't Preach", Torontos "What About Love", and the Eagles' "Love Will Keep Us Alive". The Philippine Daily Inquirer called the album "vocally sumptuous" and was generally impressed with Velasquez's vocals and range. Fantasy received a platinum certification and earned three nominations at the 3rd Star Awards for Music. After receiving the Magna Award at the Myx Music Awards 2011, and the confirmation of her pregnancy, Velasquez took a hiatus from public engagements. She returned to television on October 6, 2012 with Sarap Diva, a weekly lifestyle talk show. On November 16, 2012, Velasquez performed a concert titled Silver at the Mall of Asia Arena, which was cut short after she lost her voice due to a viral infection.
2013–2016: Silver Rewind and Hulog Ka Ng Langit
After Silver's cancellation, Velasquez restaged the concert on January 5, 2013. The concert received generally favorable reviews; Manila Bulletin Jojo Panaligan called it a "redemption of reputation", while Dolly Anne Carvajal of the Philippine Daily Inquirer said Velasquez did not fail to make up for the initial cancellation of the show. The following month, she co-headlined in Foursome alongside Alcasid, Fernandez, and Nievera. For both shows, Velasquez received four nominations at the 5th Star Awards for Music, winning Best Female Major Concert Act for "Silver" and Concert of the Year for "Foursome".
In November 2013, Velasquez's album Hulog Ka Ng Langit was released; it received a platinum certification for two-week sales of 15,000 copies. She won Best Inspirational Record for "Nathaniel (Gift of God)" and Best Christmas Recording for "Hele ni Inay" at the 27th Awit Awards, while Hulog Ka Ng Langit won Album Cover of the Year at the 6th Star Awards for Music. In 2014, she worked with Nievera in a one-night show titled Voices of Love, with Gloc-9 on "Takipsilim", and with Vice Ganda on "Push Mo Yan Teh".
In February 2015, Velasquez appeared alongside Nievera, Valenciano, and Lani Misalucha in a concert titled Ultimate at the Mall of Asia Arena. She received accolades at the 47th Box Office Entertainment Awards, 7th Star Awards for Music, and 5th Edukcircle Awards for the production. In the same year, Velasquez served as a judge on the sixth season of the reality talent television show StarStruck. In November 2015, Velasquez headlined a four-date concert residency called Regine at the Theater, which featured songs from musicals.
For a third consecutive year, Velasquez appeared in a co-headlining concert at the Mall of Asia Arena in February 2016. The two-night show, Royals, reunited her with Nievera and also features Angeline Quinto and Erik Santos. Due to the concert's positive critical reception, Velasquez won Best Female Concert Performer at the 48th Box Office Entertainment Awards and Most Influential Concert Performer of the Year at the 6th Edukcircle Awards. In December 2016, People Asia magazine included Velasquez on its annual People of the Year list.
2017–present: R3.0, television projects and Freedom
Velasquez hosted Full House Tonight, which ran from February to May 2017. The following month, she announced her return to Viva Records and that she had begun production of a new studio album called R3.0. In August 2017, a cover of Up Dharma Down's 2010 song "Tadhana" was released as a promotional single. An original track called "Hugot" was released as the album's lead single the following month. In November, she headlined the R3.0 Concert at the Mall of Asia Arena and two months later, with Alcasid, she played a four-date U.S. concert series titled "Mr. and Mrs. A."
In 2018, Velasquez hosted the television talent show The Clash, served as a judge on ABS-CBN's revival of the Idol franchise series Idol Philippines, and hosted the musical variety show ASAP Natin' To. In November, she staged a three-date concert series titled "Regine at the Movies" at the New Frontier Theater.
Sharon Cuneta and Velasquez co-headlined a concert, Iconic, in October 2019. For the show, Velasquez won the awards for Best Collaboration in a Concert and Entertainer of the Year at the 32nd Aliw Awards, having won the latter honor in 2007 and 2009. The following month, she released a collaborative single with Moira Dela Torre called "Unbreakable", which was recorded for the soundtrack of the film of the same name. Velasquez appeared as the face of Australian beauty brand BYS and released the promotional single "I Am Beautiful" for the brand's "Be Your Own Expert" campaign. She released the soundtrack singles "Ikaw Ang Aking Mahal" for the action television series The General's Daughter (2019) and "Mahal Ko O Mahal Ako" for the drama series Love Thy Woman (2020).
Velasquez organized virtual benefit concerts in support of relief efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. She curated One Night with Regine, a collaboration with ABS-CBN to support Bantay Bata Foundation's COVID-19 response fund in April, and appeared in Joy From Home, which raised funds to support Jollibee Groups food aid program in June. On February 28, 2021, she was featured in an online streaming concert titled Freedom.
Acting career
Velasquez made her cinema debut with a minor role in the 1988 comedy film The Untouchable Family. Its soundtrack includes her single "Urong Sulong". She continued to appear in a series of supporting roles in comedies, including Pik Pak Boom (1988) and Elvis and James 2 (1990).
Velasquez began working with composer Ryan Cayabyab in 1995 on the musical theater version of José Rizals Noli Me Tángere, where she played the female lead, María Clara. Vic Del Rosario, head of Viva Entertainment's film production arm, saw Velasquez in one of her performances and offered her a starring role in a film. Her first leading role was a music teacher in the romantic comedy Wanted: Perfect Mother (1996). Nievera and Ocampo co-wrote the song "You Are My Song" for the film's soundtrack. Later in 1996, she starred alongside Donna Cruz and Mikee Cojuangco in the musical comedy Do Re Mi. Velasquez continued to play leading roles in romantic comedies, appearing in Honey Nasa Langit Na Ba Ako (1998) with Janno Gibbs and Dahil May Isang Ikaw (1999) with Aga Muhlach. Her first television role came in 2000 in an episode of the IBC-13s weekly drama series Habang May Buhay as Piolo Pascuals cancer-stricken love interest.
A key point in Velasquez's film career came when she was cast in Joyce Bernals Kailangan Ko'y Ikaw (2000) opposite Robin Padilla. Film critic Noel Vera criticized the film's formula as "the nth variation of Roman Holiday", but wrote that Velasquez "[brought] her own public persona and charisma and sense of humor to the role". Her next film role was in Pangako Ikaw Lang (2001), which reunited her with Bernal and Muhlach. Vera was impressed with the film's direction and writing, and described Velasquez's performance as "sunny good nature [with a] light comic touch". Pangako Ikaw Lang became the highest-grossing Filipino film of 2001. Velasquez was awarded the Box Office Queen title at the 32nd Box Office Entertainment Awards due to the film's commercial performance.
Her next television appearance was in an episode of ABS-CBN's weekly drama series Maalaala Mo Kaya (2001), playing a woman with autism. The role won her the Best Actress award at the 16th Star Awards for Television. She portrayed a mundane and undesirable mail sorter in the drama Ikaw Lamang Hanggang Ngayon (2002) opposite Richard Gomez, while Pangarap Ko Ang Ibigin Ka (2003) reunited her with Christopher de Leon of Wanted: Perfect Mother, which premiered at the Manila Film Festival in July 2003. In December, Velasquez next starred alongside Bong Revilla in the superhero film Captain Barbell.
Although Velasquez did not make any film appearances in 2004, she made her primetime television debut in the drama series Forever in My Heart, in which she was reunited with Gomez, and worked alongside Ariel Rivera. She next starred in romantic dramas, reuniting with Padilla in Till I Met You (2006) and with Pascual in Paano Kita Iibigin (2007). For the latter film, Velasquez received FAMAS and Luna nominations for Best Actress. In 2008, she returned to television, playing the titular character in the comedy series Ako si Kim Samsoon, an adaption of a South Korean television show. Velasquez also voiced the eponymous character in the animated film Urduja (2008).
During 2009, Velasquez made cameo appearances in the comedies Kimmy Dora, OMG (Oh, My Girl!), and Yaya and Angelina: The Spoiled Brat Movie. In March 2010, Velasquez appeared in the musical television series Diva as a facially disfigured ghost singer. The following year, she collaborated with Dingdong Dantes in the television series I Heart You, Pare! (2011). She left the show for health reasons and was replaced by Iza Calzado.
In the 2012 film Of All The Things, Velasquez worked with Bernal and Muhlach for the third time. Philbert Dy of ClickTheCity called the film a "tedious, unfocused mess that forces chemistry where none really exists". Despite the film's negative review, Velasquez's performance won the 10th Golden Screen award for Best Actress. She next starred in the independent film Mrs. Recto (2015), a comedy-drama set principally on Recto Avenue. She then portrayed a socialite who is stripped of her wealth in the television comedy series Poor Señorita (2016). Her only acting appearance in 2017 was a supporting role in Mulawin vs. Ravena, the sequel to the 2004 television series Mulawin.
Velasquez played a widow obsessed with a pop star in Nigel Santos' independent film Yours Truly, Shirley. The film premiered at the 2019 Cinema One Originals Film Festival. In January 2020, she briefly appeared in the iWant comedy series My Single Lady.
Artistry
Influences
As a child, Velasquez enjoyed listening to her father singing classic songs to lull her to sleep; she was drawn to traditional songs rather than nursery rhymes because of this routine. Since her childhood, Velasquez has considered Sharon Cuneta a role model and credits Cuneta as a key inspiration who led her to pursue a musical career.
Velasquez's music is influenced by artists such as Sheena Easton, Angela Bofill, Whitney Houston, and Mariah Carey in her early years. She admires Houston for her "style and R&B influence" and Carey's songwriting. On several occasions, Velasquez has cited Barbra Streisand as her main influence and musical inspiration, saying, "I look up to [Streisand] not just because of her enormous talent, but because of her fearlessness and dedication to excellence, her willingness to take risks and to be different." Streisand's music has frequently featured in Velasquez's repertoire throughout her career, including a series of concerts paying homage to Streisand, which Velasquez described as "a pleasure" to perform. Velasquez has also been influenced by many Filipino artists; early in her career, she cited Kuh Ledesma, Joey Albert, Gary Valenciano, Martin Nievera, and Pops Fernandez as her role models. She has also paid tribute to Filipino songwriters, including George Canseco, Rey Valera, Basil Valdez, Ryan Cayabyab, and Willy Cruz.
Musical style and themes
Velasquez's early-career music includes elements of traditional OPM love songs. She described how she developed her musical style, saying, "I was only 16 and people didn't know what to do with me. When they want me to sing love songs, they had to explain to me what it meant because I didn't know the feeling yet." Her debut album Regine includes ballads and bubblegum pop love songs; its themes revolve around feelings of "excitement and uncertainty", as well as "missed chances and regrets". Elvin Luciano from CNN Philippines wrote: "During her [initial] phase, she proved that Filipino love songs don't have to come pre-packaged in the kundiman-rooted love ballad." Her later releases, including Nineteen 90 and Tagala Talaga, capitalized on her popularity; they are dominated by Filipino love songs. Velasquez began working with foreign songwriters while planning her first regional album Listen Without Prejudice, which according to AllMusic is "oriented towards easy-listening love songs with adventurous, contemporary touches". The album features tracks with syncopated backbeats and hip-hop influences.
During the mid-1990s and the early 2000s, Velasquez's albums consisted primarily of cover versions of international material because of its commercial viability, and Filipinos' preference for American music. According to CNN Philippines, "Regine has a knack for choosing songs which at first, may not fit her, but eventually become her own." Many of her songs, particularly in Retro, Drawn, and R2K contained R&B, soul, and hip-hop elements. Reigne is an OPM album that she described as "songs influenced by the music, artists, and genres that I enjoy listening to," and included tracks that are melancholic, sensual, and poetic. Her crossover to film saw significant use of contemporary love ballads in her catalog of soundtrack themes, describing the music as "straightforward, earnest, and lyrically simple".
Voice and timbre
Velasquez is known for her use of vocal belting, and credits the vocal training she received from her father as a child:
Velasquez is a soprano and is often praised for her range and technical ability. Luciano of CNN Philippines complimented her "trademark and sometimes melismatic vocals" while Gonzales adds her singing is "strong, emotive, and confident". She has often been criticized, however, for the excessive use of belting and oversinging. Gonzales described Velasquez's timbre as "thin, unimpressive and unappealing at times", and said her singing is "aiming for a higher [note], [which] she did all too often". Velasquez said, "I don't mean to make any songs hard. It's just that when I'm on stage, with the adrenaline rush and all, you get excited. I do try to hold back [because] otherwise I'd be screaming the whole show, that's not good."
Legacy and influence
Velasquez's vocal style and singing ability have significantly impacted Philippine popular and contemporary music. Critics have called her "Asia's songbird" and she is often cited as one of Filipino music's most influential artists. According to Allan Policarpio of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, "Regine needed only to open her mouth and that celebrated voice would come out. She could sing seated, lying down or hoisted up in the air with a harness—no problem. And even when she was so sick she couldn't speak, she could still sing." Velasquez has also been recognized for playing a pivotal role in creating the "blue print" for becoming a "singing icon". Many critics complimented her work, often singling out Velasquez's influence. Luciano, writing for CNN Philippines, described her "legitimacy" as "enough to secure a space in pop culture" and said her musical career "continues to influence generations of OPM patrons and songbird wannabes up to this day", while according to The Philippine Star, "If one were to go by records and distinctions made, Regine Velasquez would win, hands down". She has often been regarded as a powerhouse for her performances and musical content.
Velasquez's use of vocal belting has been subject to scrutiny because young singers, including contestants on television talent shows, have imitated her singing technique. According to Nestor Torre of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, "The popularity of 'birit' [belting] started here with the amateur singing contests ... Then came Regine Velasquez, who also launched her own singing career the 'birit' way ... Trouble is, Regine's belting became so popular that her successor[s] ... imitated her." Manila Bulletin said, "Most of our top selling new female singers are still and mere parrots of [Velasquez] in terms of vocal acrobatics and predilection to show off her high range". According to Boy Abunda, "Most of the young female singers currently making waves in the industry are cut from the same biritera [belter] cloth as Regine Velasquez."
Filipino pop, hip-hop, and R&B artists Aicelle Santos, Charice, Erik Santos, Jona Viray, Julie Anne San Jose, KZ Tandingan, Kyla, Mark Bautista, Morissette Amon, , and Yeng Constantino—among others—have cited Velasquez as an influence.
Velasquez's music has broadly influenced a younger generation of performers from reality television talent shows; Sarah Geronimo has stated Velasquez made her realize the value of hard work while Rachelle Ann Go and Angeline Quinto have both said Velasquez inspired them during their early years as aspiring singers. American Idol finalists Ramiele Malubay, Thia Megia, and Jessica Sanchez have expressed a desire to emulate Velasquez.
Velasquez has also been credited for her work and performances with international artists, including 98 Degrees, Alicia Keys, Coco Lee, Peabo Bryson, and Stephen Bishop. French composer Michel Legrand described working with Velasquez, saying "It's tough to sing a song after Barbra Streisand, I will tell you. But to sing with Regine is, I'm in heaven. She sings so well, she has such an extraordinary technical voice ... sensitive voice and talented expression." American singer Brian McKnight who co-headlined a concert with Velasquez, has complimented her singing, stating; "I got to sing onstage with Regine and it was one of the best experiences ever because she's one of the best singers I've ever heard."
Other activities
Philanthropy
Velasquez has been involved with several charitable organizations. She became associated with the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in 2001 and worked on a documentary titled Speak Your Mind, which is about homeless children in Payatas, Quezon City, one of the Philippines' largest open dumpsites. The program was nominated for the UNICEF Child Rights Award.
One of Velasquez's highest-profile benefit concert appearances was in One Night with Regine, which she performed at the National Museum of the Philippines in support of the Bantay Bata Foundation, a child welfare organization. In 2005, Velasquez appeared in an episode of the lifestyle talk show Mel and Joey, and donated proceeds from an auction of her gowns to the GMA Kapuso Foundation's Christmas Give-a-Gift project. In 2009, Velasquez headlined a benefit television special called After The Rain: A Hopeful Christmas in the aftermath of Typhoon Ketsana (Ondoy). In October 2010, she became an ambassador for Operation Smile, a nonprofit organization that provides cleft lip and palate repair surgery to children worldwide. She recorded the theme "S.M.I.L.E.", which was written for the project and appears on her studio album Fantasy. In November 2013, proceeds from the sales of her album Hulog Ka Ng Langit were donated to the Philippine Red Cross in support of the Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda) relief.
Product endorsements
Velasquez has been involved in brand marketing initiatives for American fast food restaurant chains Wendy's and KFC. She has signed advertising deals with several other brands, including Digitel, Lux, Nestlé Philippines, Nokia, and Smart Communications. Throughout 2005, she appeared as the face of the Department of Tourism's travel promotion campaign. In August 2009, Velasquez released a line of women's perfume called "Reigne" and "Songbird" for the clothing brand Bench. In February 2020, she collaborated with beauty brand BYS and launched a line of makeup called "Reigne".
Personal life
Velasquez announced her relationship with singer-songwriter Ogie Alcasid in an article published by Yes! magazine in June 2007. On August 8, 2010, the couple announced their engagement, and in December, they married in Nasugbu, Batangas. She gave birth to their son, Nathaniel James, via caesarean section on November 8, 2011.
Velasquez is a born-again Christian. In March 2016, she said she had suffered a miscarriage prior to her marriage to Alcasid and cited it as her reason for converting. She also said she had been attending Victory Christian Fellowship.
Awards and recognition
Throughout her career, Velasquez has received many honors and awards, including MTV Asia's Favorite Artist Philippines in 2002 and 2003, and the Aliw Awards' Entertainer of the Year in 2007, 2009, and 2019. She has been the recipient of lifetime achievement awards, including the Awit Awards Dangal ng Musikang Pilipino, the Star Awards for Music's Pilita Corrales Lifetime Achievement and Natatanging Alagad Ng Musika, FAMAS Awards' Golden Artist, and Myx Music's Magna Award.
Velasquez has sold more than seven million records in the Philippines and 1.5 million in Asia, making her the biggest-selling Filipino artist of all time. Eight of her albums have each sold over 200,000 copies. She was ranked first in Female Networks 2011 countdown of the "Top 25 Best Filipina Singers" and was included in Top 10 Asia magazine's list of "Ten Most Admired Female Singers in Asia". Velasquez has also received recognition for her work in television and film, such as the Box Office Queen award in 2002, the Star Awards for Television's Best Actress in 2002, and the Golden Screen Awards' Best Actress in 2013. She has received a total of 21 Awit Awards, 22 Box Office Entertainment Awards, 15 Aliw Awards, and 12 Star Awards for Music. In December 2007, Velasquez was honored with a star on the Philippines' Walk of Fame.
Discography
Regine (1987)
Nineteen '90 (1990)
Tagala Talaga (1991)
Reason Enough (1993)
Listen Without Prejudice (1994)
My Love Emotion (1995)
Retro (1997)
Drawn (1998)
R2K (1999)
Reigne (2001)
Covers, Vol. 1 (2004)
Covers, Vol. 2 (2006)
Low Key (2008)
Fantasy (2010)
Hulog Ka Ng Langit (2013)
R3.0 (2017)
Filmography
Wanted Perfect Mother (1996)
Do Re Mi (1996)
Dahil May Isang Ikaw (1998)
Kailangan Ko'y Ikaw (2000)
Pangako Ikaw Lang (2001)
Ikaw Lamang Hanggang Ngayon (2002)
Pangarap Ko Ang Ibigin Ka (2003)
Till I Met You (2006)
Paano Kita Iibigin (2007)
Of All The Things (2012)
Mrs. Recto (2015)
Yours Truly, Shirley (2019)
Concerts
Headlining concerts
Narito Ako! (1990)
In Season (1991)
Music and Me (1993)
Isang Pasasalamat (1996)
Retro (1997)
Drawn (1998)
R2K The Concert (2000)
Songbird Sings the Classics (2001)
R-15 (2001)
One Night with Regine (2002)
Reigning Still (2004)
Twenty (2006)
Silver (2013)
R3.0 (2017)
Freedom (2021)
Co-headlining concerts
Power of Two (with Kuh Ledesma) (1996)
Celebration of Love (with Peabo Bryson and Jeffrey Osborne) (2000)
Independent Women (with Jaya) (2001)
Two for the Knight (with Brian McKnight) (2002)
Songbird Sings Legrand (with Michel Legrand) (2003)
Martin & Regine: The World Concert (with Martin Nievera) (2003)
The Songbird & The Songwriter (with Ogie Alcasid) (2004)
Queens on Fire (with Pops Fernandez) (2005)
Iconic (with Sharon Cuneta) (2019)
Unified (with Sarah Geronimo) (2020)
Concert residencies
Regine at the Movies (2001; 2018)
Songbird Sings (2002)
Songbird Sings Streisand (2003)
Reflections (2005)
Regine at the Theater (2015)
See also
List of best-selling albums in the Philippines
List of Filipino singers
List of Filipino actresses
Music of the Philippines
Philippine Association of the Record Industry
Notes
References
Citations
Book sources
External links
1970 births
Intercontinental Broadcasting Corporation personalities
Universal Records (Philippines) artists
Filipino dance musicians
Filipino women pop singers
Filipino record producers
Filipino Protestants
Filipino Christians
Filipino television actresses
Filipino film actresses
English-language singers from the Philippines
Living people
People from Tondo, Manila
Singers from Manila
Actresses from Manila
Tagalog people
Filipino sopranos
ABS-CBN personalities
GMA Network personalities
TV5 (Philippine TV network) personalities
21st-century Filipino women singers
Women record producers | false | [
"\"What About Now\" is a song recorded by American country music group Lonestar. It was released in April 2000 as the fourth single from their 1999 album Lonely Grill and it spent four weeks at the top of the Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks (now Hot Country Songs) chart. It was written by Ron Harbin, Aaron Barker and Anthony L. Smith.\n\nCritical reception\nDeborah Evans Price, of Billboard magazine reviewed the song favorably, saying that what makes the single work is McDonald's \"endearing style, made so apparent with the mega success of 'Amazed'.\" She says that McDonald \"projects a sincerity that propels the lyrical content nicely\" and that the \"crisp production\" highlights the playing.\n\nTrack listing\nUS promo CD single\n\"What About Now\" – 3:30\n\nUS vinyl 7\" single\n\"What About Now\" – 3:30\n\"Smile\" – 3:33\n\nUK & Europe CD single\n\"What About Now\" (Remix) – 3:30\n\"What About Now\" (Original Mix) – 3:26\n\"Amazed\" (Captain Mix) – 4:29\n\nChart positions\n\nWeekly charts\n\nYear-end charts\n\nReferences\n\n2000 singles\n1999 songs\nLonestar songs\nSongs written by Aaron Barker\nSongs written by Ron Harbin\nSongs written by Anthony L. Smith\nSong recordings produced by Dann Huff\nBNA Records singles",
"\"I'm an Individual\" is a novelty song released by former Australian football player Mark \"Jacko\" Jackson in 1985. Described as \"a shouty rap\", it reached #3 on the Australian popular music charts.\n\nA follow-up single by Jackson, \"Me Brain Hurts\", was also released but did not achieve the same success.\n\nFellow Australian football full-forward Warwick Capper is reputed to have recorded the single \"I Only Take What's Mine\" as a result of the success of \"I'm an Individual\". The music video for \"I Only Take What's Mine\" includes footage of Capper throwing darts at a picture of Jackson.\n\nThe song was featured in the 2012 play Barassi: The Stage Show.\n\nTrack listing\n\nCharts\n\nReferences\n\n1985 singles\nNovelty songs\n1985 songs"
]
|
[
"Regine Velasquez",
"1986-1989: Career beginnings and Regine",
"What was Regine's first experience singing?",
"After winning Ang Bagong Kampeon, Velasquez was signed to OctoArts International (now PolyEast Records).",
"How old was she when she won that award?",
"I don't know.",
"What was her first work with OctoArts?",
"She was introduced as 'Chona' Velasquez--her nickname--and recorded the single \"Love Me Again\", which was released in early 1986.",
"What that single a success?",
"the single was commercially unsuccessful."
]
| C_37b88fd530a6472498feadbc43940518_1 | Did she do any duets with other singers on that label? | 5 | Did Regine Velasquez do any duets with other singers on the OctoArts International label? | Regine Velasquez | After winning Ang Bagong Kampeon, Velasquez was signed to OctoArts International (now PolyEast Records). She was introduced as 'Chona' Velasquez--her nickname--and recorded the single "Love Me Again", which was released in early 1986. However, the single was commercially unsuccessful. On February 16, 1986, at the behest of another OctoArts recording artist, Pops Fernandez, Velasquez was invited to appear on her live late night musical television show, The Penthouse Live! While she was rehearsing for the live show, the producer and talent manager Ronnie Henares showed interest and signed her. At the suggestion of Fernandez's husband and the show's co-host, Martin Nievera, Velasquez adopted the stage name "Regine". Under Henares' management, Velasquez was introduced to the head of VIVA Records, Vicente del Rosario Jr., who signed her and started production of her debut album. Del Rosario enlisted top songwriters, including Joaquin Francisco Sanchez, Vehnee Saturno and Christine Bendebel. He and Henares, who were both serving as executive producers, planned to market Velasquez as one of their main female pop artists, hoping to attain commercial success as they had done with Nora Aunor and Sharon Cuneta. After Velasquez completed her debut album, Regine, VIVA released the lead single "Kung Maibabalik Ko Lang" in 1987. Despite a weak start, the album gained mainstream appeal after Velasquez's promotional appearances on the ABS-CBN television variety shows Triple Treat and Teen Pan Alley. The album produced two more singles--"Urong Sulong" and "Isang Lahi". Two years after the release of her debut album, Velasquez represented the Philippines in the 1989 Asia Pacific Singing Contest. She was initially apprehensive and skeptical of the idea of participating in another competition at that stage in her career. At Henares' urging she agreed to compete and won the contest in Hong Kong, performing the songs "You'll Never Walk Alone" from the 1945 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Carousel and "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going" from the musical Dreamgirls. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Regina Encarnacion Ansong Velasquez ( ; born April 22, 1970) is a Filipino singer, actress, and producer. She is known for her vocal range, belting technique, and the unorthodox voice training she received during her childhood, where she was immersed neck-deep in the sea. Velasquez rose to prominence after winning the television talent show Ang Bagong Kampeon in 1984 and the Asia Pacific Singing Contest in 1989. Under the name Chona, she signed a recording contract with OctoArts International in 1986 and released the single "Love Me Again", which was commercially unsuccessful. The following year, she adopted the stage name Regine Velasquez for her debut studio album, Regine (1987), under the guidance of Viva Records executive Vic del Rosario and producer Ronnie Henares. She explored Manila sound and kundiman genres on her second and third studio albums, Nineteen 90 (1990) and Tagala Talaga (1991).
After signing an international record deal with Polygram Records, Velasquez achieved commercial success in some Asian territories with her fifth album Listen Without Prejudice (1994), which sold more than 700,000 copies and became her highest-selling album to date, aided by its lead single "In Love With You". She experimented further with jazz and adult contemporary genres on My Love Emotion (1995), while she recorded covers on Retro (1997). After she left Polygram to sign with Mark J. Feists MJF Company in 1998, she released the R&B-influenced album Drawn. Velasquez's follow-up record, R2K (1999), was supported by remakes of "On the Wings of Love", "I'll Never Love This Way Again", and "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing", and was subsequently certified twelve-times platinum by the Philippine Association of the Record Industry (PARI).
Velasquez played leading roles in the romantic comedies Kailangan Ko'y Ikaw (2000) and Pangako Ikaw Lang (2001), and received the Box Office Entertainment Award for Box Office Queen for the latter. Her performance as an intellectually disabled woman in an episode of the anthology series Maalaala Mo Kaya (2002) earned her a Star Award for Best Actress. She also starred in the prime time television series Forever in My Heart (2004), Ako si Kim Samsoon (2008), Totoy Bato (2009), Diva (2010), I Heart You, Pare! (2011), and Poor Señorita (2016). Velasquez also won the Golden Screen Award for Best Actress for playing a document forger in the comedy film Of All the Things (2013). She expanded her career into reality television talent shows as a presenter on Star for a Night (2002), Pinoy Pop Superstar (2004), and The Clash (2018), and as a judge on StarStruck (2015) and Idol Philippines (2019).
Having sold more than seven million records domestically and 1.5 million in Asia, Velasquez is the best-selling Filipino music artist of all time. Her accolades include two Asian Television Awards, two MTV Asia Awards, 21 Awit Awards, 15 Aliw Awards (including 3 Entertainer of the Year wins), 22 Box Office Entertainment Awards, and 12 Star Awards for Music. Referred to as "Asia's songbird", she has consistently been credited with inspiring a generation of Filipino singers.
Early life
Regina Encarnacion Ansong Velasquez was born on April 22, 1970, in Tondo, Manila, to Teresita (née Ansong) and Gerardo Velasquez. She has three sisters—Cacai, Diane, and Deca—and a brother named Jojo. Her family moved to Hinundayan, Southern Leyte, where Velasquez spent the early years of her life. At age three, Velasquez became interested in music after listening to her father's lullabies. She would listen to her mother play guitar and piano while her father sang, and referenced Sharon Cuneta's "Mr. DJ" as one of the first songs she learned.
Velasquez started singing at age six; she underwent intensive vocal training with her father, who immersed her neck-deep in the sea and had her go through vocal runs. She credits this unorthodox method for strengthening her core and stomach muscles, and developing her lung capacity. Velasquez placed third in her first singing competition on Betty Mendez Livioco The Tita Betty's Children Show.
When Velasquez was nine, her family moved to Balagtas, Bulacan, where she attended St. Lawrence Academy and competed for her school at the annual Bulacan Private Schools Association singing competition. In 1984, at fourteen, Velasquez auditioned for the reality television series Ang Bagong Kampeon. She qualified and became the show's senior division winner, defending her spot for eight consecutive weeks. Velasquez won the competition and was signed to a record deal with OctoArts International.
Music career
1986–1989: Career beginnings and Regine
In 1986, Velasquez initially used the stage name Chona and released the single "Love Me Again", which was commercially unsuccessful. At the recommendation of another OctoArts recording artist, Pops Fernandez, she appeared on The Penthouse Live! While rehearsing for the show, Velasquez caught the attention of Ronnie Henares, a producer and talent manager who signed her to a management deal. Velasquez adopted the stage name Regine at the suggestion of Fernandez's husband and The Penthouse Live! co-host, .
Velasquez signed with Viva Records and released her debut album Regine in 1987. Henares served as an executive producer and worked with songwriters Joaquin Francisco Sanchez and Vehnee Saturno. Three singles were released in 1987: "Kung Maibabalik Ko Lang", " Urong Sulong", and "Isang Lahi". During this period, Velasquez appeared on the ABS-CBN television shows Triple Treat and Teen Pan Alley. Two years after Regine's release, Velasquez represented the Philippines in the 1989 Asia Pacific Singing Contest in Hong Kong and won, performing the songs "You'll Never Walk Alone" from the musical Carousel and "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going" from the musical Dreamgirls.
1990–1993: Nineteen 90 and Reason Enough
Velasquez released her second studio album Nineteen 90 in 1990. She worked with Louie Ocampo on the album's lead single "Narito Ako", which was originally recorded and performed by Maricris Bermont and written by Nonong Pedero for the 1978 Metro Manila Popular Music Festival. Later that year, she headlined her first major concert at the Folk Arts Theater. She recorded "Please Be Careful with My Heart" with Jose Mari Chan, who released the track on his album Constant Change; she also sang backing vocals on Gary Valenciano's "Each Passing Night", which appears on his album Faces of Love.
In 1991, Velasquez made her North American concert debut at Carnegie Hall in New York City, a first for an Asian solo artist. British theatrical producer Cameron Mackintosh later invited Velasquez to audition for the West End production of the musical Miss Saigon. She received a letter from the production offering to train her in London, which she declined: partly due to her lack of experience in musical theater, and because she wished to remain with her family.
Velasquez's third studio album Tagala Talaga was released in October 1991. It includes cover versions of recordings by National Artist for Music recipients Ryan Cayabyab, Lucio San Pedro, and Levi Celerio. The album's lead single, titled "Buhay Ng Buhay Ko", was originally recorded by Leah Navarro and was written by Pedero, with whom Velasquez had worked on Nineteen 90. Other notable singles from the album include "Anak and "Sa Ugoy Ng Duyan".
PolyGram Far East announced a joint-venture licensing deal in the Philippines in July 1993 with the formation of its subsidiary PolyCosmic Records. Velasquez recorded a duet titled "It's Hard to Say Goodbye" with Canadian singer Paul Anka, which became the new label's first release. The single was later included on her fourth studio album Reason Enough. David Gonzales of AllMusic described the album as "more attuned to international ears" and said Velasquez's vocals are "thin and unimpressive". One of its singles, "Sana Maulit Muli", won the Awit Award for Best Performance by a Female Recording Artist in 1994.
1994–1998: Listen Without Prejudice and My Love Emotion
Velasquez released her fifth studio album Listen Without Prejudice in 1994. She worked with songwriters, including Glenn Medeiros, Trina Belamide, and John Laudon. The album was released in several countries in Southeast and East Asia, including China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand. The album's lead single "In Love With You" features Cantonese singer Jacky Cheung. Gonzales commended the record's themes and said, "Cheung's presence on the duet had much to do with the overseas success". The album had sold more than 700,000 copies worldwide, including 100,000 in the Philippines, making it the best-selling album of Velasquez's career to date.
Velasquez's sixth studio album My Love Emotion was released in 1995. The title track, which was written by Southern Sons vocalist Phil Buckle, was described by Gonzales as a "triumph [and] an outstanding vehicle, containing a strong melody and hook in the chorus". The album made a combined regional and domestic sales of 250,000 copies.
For her seventh studio album Retro (1997), Velasquez recorded cover versions of popular music of the 1970s and 1980s from artists, including Donna Summer, Foreigner, and the Carpenters. The album's only original track, "Fly", is credited to Earth, Wind & Fire members Maurice White, Al McKay, and Allee Willis because the song interpolates the melody of their single "September". Velasquez left PolyCosmic in 1998, and signed a six-album contract with the MJF Company. That year, her ninth studio album Drawn was released. MJF head Mark J. Feist wrote and produced most of the tracks, including the lead single "How Could You Leave". Drawn sold more than 40,000 copies and was awarded a platinum certification within two weeks of its release.
1999–2003: R2K and Reigne
Velasquez produced most of her next album R2K, which was released on November 27, 1999. She recorded remakes of Jeffrey Osborne's "On the Wings of Love", Dionne Warwick's "I'll Never Love This Way Again", Aerosmith's "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing", and ABBA's Dancing Queen, among others. Gonzales criticized the record's "infatuation with Western popular music" and called Velasquez's singing "self-assured [but] also unimpressive". Commercially, R2K sold more than 40,000 copies in its second week of release, earning a platinum certification, and was certified four times platinum a year later. R2K has since been certified twelve times platinum, becoming the highest-selling album by a female artist in the Philippines. On December 31, 1999, Velasquez was a featured musical act in 2000 Today, a BBC millennium television special that attracted a worldwide audience of more than 800 million viewers with its core program broadcast across the world's time zones, which began with Kiribati Line Islands and ended in American Samoa.
Velasquez headlined and directed the R2K Concert at the Araneta Coliseum in April 2000, which won her Best Female Major Concert Act at the 13th Aliw Awards. Ricky Lo from The Philippine Star was generally impressed with the production and complimented Velasquez's "boundless energy and creativity". She also performed a concert at the Westin Philippine Plaza that year, which spawned the release of her first live album Regine Live: Songbird Sings the Classics in December 2000. Despite being criticized for the audio mixing, the album was certified six times platinum.
Velasquez worked with Filipino songwriters for material on her eleventh studio album Reigne. The album and its lead single "To Reach You" were released in December 2001. Other singles were Tats Faustino's "Dadalhin" and Janno Gibbs' "Sa Aking Pag-iisa". Gonzales called the album "an adventurous set" and praised the quality of the songwriting.
Velasquez won the inaugural MTV Asia Award for Favorite Artist Philippines in February 2002. She performed "Cry" with Mandy Moore to promote the theatrical release of Moore's film A Walk to Remember. In March, Velasquez hosted the first season of Star for a Night, which is based on the British talent show of the same name. In April, she headlined a benefit concert called One Night with Regine at the National Museum of the Philippines, which was a collaboration with ABS-CBN Foundation to benefit Bantay Bata Foundation's child abuse response fund. The show won Best Musical Program at the 7th Asian Television Awards.
At the 2003 MTV Asia Awards, Velasquez won her second consecutive award for Favorite Artist Philippines. In May 2003, she embarked on the Martin-Regine World Concert Tour with Nievera. The following month, Velasquez returned to host the second season of Search for a Star. That November, she had a concert residency named Songbird Sings Streisand, a tribute to American singer and actor Barbra Streisand, at Makati's Onstage Theatre.
2004–2007: Covers Vol. 1 and Vol. 2
In February 2004, Velasquez and Ogie Alcasid co-headlined a concert, The Songbird & The Songwriter, at the Araneta Coliseum, and embarked on a North American tour that April. At the 17th Aliw Awards, she won Best Female Performance in a Concert and was nominated for Entertainer of the Year for the collaboration. Velasquez hosted the reality talent show Pinoy Pop Superstar, which began airing on GMA Network that July. In October 2004, she released "Forevermore", the lead single from her twelfth studio album Covers, Vol. 1. Its songs were originally recorded by Filipino male artists and was her most expensive cover album to produce due in part to the cost of securing licensing rights for songs by local songwriters, including Ariel Rivera's "Minsan Lang Kita Iibigan", Basil Valdez's "Say That You Love Me", and Nonoy Zuñiga's "Araw Gabi". The album has since been certified six times platinum.
Later in November and December 2005, Velasquez had an eight-day concert residency named Reflections at the Aliw Theater. The sequel album Covers, Vol. 2 was released in February 2006. Unlike its predecessor, it contains songs by foreign artists, including Alanis Morissette's "Head Over Feet", Blondie's "Call Me", and Elvis Presley's "Blue Suede Shoes". Manila Bulletins Jojo Panaligan was generally impressed with Velasquez's "versatility" and the album tracks' "jazzy and blues-y interpretation". In October 2006, she performed a concert titled Twenty at the Araneta Coliseum, which won her Best Female Major Concert Act and Entertainer of the Year award at the 20th Aliw Awards. In 2007, she became co-host of the reality television show Celebrity Duets, an interactive music competition based on the eponymous original US show.
2008–2012: Low Key and professional hiatus
Velasquez developed other television projects in 2008. She appeared in Songbird, a weekly late-night musical television show that featured performances by a musical guest. She also featured in the musical television special The Best of Me, which was filmed at her residence in Quezon City. Velasquez signed a deal with Universal Records and released an album titled Low Key in December 2008. The album consists of cover versions of international songs that she described as "more relaxed, laid-back and restrained". It includes tracks such as Billy Joel's "She's Always a Woman", Dan Fogelberg's "Leader of the Band", and Janis Ian's "At Seventeen". The Philippine Daily Inquirer praised the album's maturity and wrote, "[Velasquez] no longer shrieks and shouts as much as she used to". The album sold more than 25,000 copies within two months of its release and was certified platinum. In May 2009, she appeared on the television documentary Roots to Riches, which chronicles her personal and professional struggles, and includes musical performances filmed in her hometown Malolos. Later that month, she hosted the television talent show Are You the Next Big Star?.
Velasquez's next album, a double CD set called Fantasy, was released in December 2010. The first disc is composed of Original Pilipino Music (OPM) recordings and the second includes covers of international singles such as Madonnas "Papa Don't Preach", Torontos "What About Love", and the Eagles' "Love Will Keep Us Alive". The Philippine Daily Inquirer called the album "vocally sumptuous" and was generally impressed with Velasquez's vocals and range. Fantasy received a platinum certification and earned three nominations at the 3rd Star Awards for Music. After receiving the Magna Award at the Myx Music Awards 2011, and the confirmation of her pregnancy, Velasquez took a hiatus from public engagements. She returned to television on October 6, 2012 with Sarap Diva, a weekly lifestyle talk show. On November 16, 2012, Velasquez performed a concert titled Silver at the Mall of Asia Arena, which was cut short after she lost her voice due to a viral infection.
2013–2016: Silver Rewind and Hulog Ka Ng Langit
After Silver's cancellation, Velasquez restaged the concert on January 5, 2013. The concert received generally favorable reviews; Manila Bulletin Jojo Panaligan called it a "redemption of reputation", while Dolly Anne Carvajal of the Philippine Daily Inquirer said Velasquez did not fail to make up for the initial cancellation of the show. The following month, she co-headlined in Foursome alongside Alcasid, Fernandez, and Nievera. For both shows, Velasquez received four nominations at the 5th Star Awards for Music, winning Best Female Major Concert Act for "Silver" and Concert of the Year for "Foursome".
In November 2013, Velasquez's album Hulog Ka Ng Langit was released; it received a platinum certification for two-week sales of 15,000 copies. She won Best Inspirational Record for "Nathaniel (Gift of God)" and Best Christmas Recording for "Hele ni Inay" at the 27th Awit Awards, while Hulog Ka Ng Langit won Album Cover of the Year at the 6th Star Awards for Music. In 2014, she worked with Nievera in a one-night show titled Voices of Love, with Gloc-9 on "Takipsilim", and with Vice Ganda on "Push Mo Yan Teh".
In February 2015, Velasquez appeared alongside Nievera, Valenciano, and Lani Misalucha in a concert titled Ultimate at the Mall of Asia Arena. She received accolades at the 47th Box Office Entertainment Awards, 7th Star Awards for Music, and 5th Edukcircle Awards for the production. In the same year, Velasquez served as a judge on the sixth season of the reality talent television show StarStruck. In November 2015, Velasquez headlined a four-date concert residency called Regine at the Theater, which featured songs from musicals.
For a third consecutive year, Velasquez appeared in a co-headlining concert at the Mall of Asia Arena in February 2016. The two-night show, Royals, reunited her with Nievera and also features Angeline Quinto and Erik Santos. Due to the concert's positive critical reception, Velasquez won Best Female Concert Performer at the 48th Box Office Entertainment Awards and Most Influential Concert Performer of the Year at the 6th Edukcircle Awards. In December 2016, People Asia magazine included Velasquez on its annual People of the Year list.
2017–present: R3.0, television projects and Freedom
Velasquez hosted Full House Tonight, which ran from February to May 2017. The following month, she announced her return to Viva Records and that she had begun production of a new studio album called R3.0. In August 2017, a cover of Up Dharma Down's 2010 song "Tadhana" was released as a promotional single. An original track called "Hugot" was released as the album's lead single the following month. In November, she headlined the R3.0 Concert at the Mall of Asia Arena and two months later, with Alcasid, she played a four-date U.S. concert series titled "Mr. and Mrs. A."
In 2018, Velasquez hosted the television talent show The Clash, served as a judge on ABS-CBN's revival of the Idol franchise series Idol Philippines, and hosted the musical variety show ASAP Natin' To. In November, she staged a three-date concert series titled "Regine at the Movies" at the New Frontier Theater.
Sharon Cuneta and Velasquez co-headlined a concert, Iconic, in October 2019. For the show, Velasquez won the awards for Best Collaboration in a Concert and Entertainer of the Year at the 32nd Aliw Awards, having won the latter honor in 2007 and 2009. The following month, she released a collaborative single with Moira Dela Torre called "Unbreakable", which was recorded for the soundtrack of the film of the same name. Velasquez appeared as the face of Australian beauty brand BYS and released the promotional single "I Am Beautiful" for the brand's "Be Your Own Expert" campaign. She released the soundtrack singles "Ikaw Ang Aking Mahal" for the action television series The General's Daughter (2019) and "Mahal Ko O Mahal Ako" for the drama series Love Thy Woman (2020).
Velasquez organized virtual benefit concerts in support of relief efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. She curated One Night with Regine, a collaboration with ABS-CBN to support Bantay Bata Foundation's COVID-19 response fund in April, and appeared in Joy From Home, which raised funds to support Jollibee Groups food aid program in June. On February 28, 2021, she was featured in an online streaming concert titled Freedom.
Acting career
Velasquez made her cinema debut with a minor role in the 1988 comedy film The Untouchable Family. Its soundtrack includes her single "Urong Sulong". She continued to appear in a series of supporting roles in comedies, including Pik Pak Boom (1988) and Elvis and James 2 (1990).
Velasquez began working with composer Ryan Cayabyab in 1995 on the musical theater version of José Rizals Noli Me Tángere, where she played the female lead, María Clara. Vic Del Rosario, head of Viva Entertainment's film production arm, saw Velasquez in one of her performances and offered her a starring role in a film. Her first leading role was a music teacher in the romantic comedy Wanted: Perfect Mother (1996). Nievera and Ocampo co-wrote the song "You Are My Song" for the film's soundtrack. Later in 1996, she starred alongside Donna Cruz and Mikee Cojuangco in the musical comedy Do Re Mi. Velasquez continued to play leading roles in romantic comedies, appearing in Honey Nasa Langit Na Ba Ako (1998) with Janno Gibbs and Dahil May Isang Ikaw (1999) with Aga Muhlach. Her first television role came in 2000 in an episode of the IBC-13s weekly drama series Habang May Buhay as Piolo Pascuals cancer-stricken love interest.
A key point in Velasquez's film career came when she was cast in Joyce Bernals Kailangan Ko'y Ikaw (2000) opposite Robin Padilla. Film critic Noel Vera criticized the film's formula as "the nth variation of Roman Holiday", but wrote that Velasquez "[brought] her own public persona and charisma and sense of humor to the role". Her next film role was in Pangako Ikaw Lang (2001), which reunited her with Bernal and Muhlach. Vera was impressed with the film's direction and writing, and described Velasquez's performance as "sunny good nature [with a] light comic touch". Pangako Ikaw Lang became the highest-grossing Filipino film of 2001. Velasquez was awarded the Box Office Queen title at the 32nd Box Office Entertainment Awards due to the film's commercial performance.
Her next television appearance was in an episode of ABS-CBN's weekly drama series Maalaala Mo Kaya (2001), playing a woman with autism. The role won her the Best Actress award at the 16th Star Awards for Television. She portrayed a mundane and undesirable mail sorter in the drama Ikaw Lamang Hanggang Ngayon (2002) opposite Richard Gomez, while Pangarap Ko Ang Ibigin Ka (2003) reunited her with Christopher de Leon of Wanted: Perfect Mother, which premiered at the Manila Film Festival in July 2003. In December, Velasquez next starred alongside Bong Revilla in the superhero film Captain Barbell.
Although Velasquez did not make any film appearances in 2004, she made her primetime television debut in the drama series Forever in My Heart, in which she was reunited with Gomez, and worked alongside Ariel Rivera. She next starred in romantic dramas, reuniting with Padilla in Till I Met You (2006) and with Pascual in Paano Kita Iibigin (2007). For the latter film, Velasquez received FAMAS and Luna nominations for Best Actress. In 2008, she returned to television, playing the titular character in the comedy series Ako si Kim Samsoon, an adaption of a South Korean television show. Velasquez also voiced the eponymous character in the animated film Urduja (2008).
During 2009, Velasquez made cameo appearances in the comedies Kimmy Dora, OMG (Oh, My Girl!), and Yaya and Angelina: The Spoiled Brat Movie. In March 2010, Velasquez appeared in the musical television series Diva as a facially disfigured ghost singer. The following year, she collaborated with Dingdong Dantes in the television series I Heart You, Pare! (2011). She left the show for health reasons and was replaced by Iza Calzado.
In the 2012 film Of All The Things, Velasquez worked with Bernal and Muhlach for the third time. Philbert Dy of ClickTheCity called the film a "tedious, unfocused mess that forces chemistry where none really exists". Despite the film's negative review, Velasquez's performance won the 10th Golden Screen award for Best Actress. She next starred in the independent film Mrs. Recto (2015), a comedy-drama set principally on Recto Avenue. She then portrayed a socialite who is stripped of her wealth in the television comedy series Poor Señorita (2016). Her only acting appearance in 2017 was a supporting role in Mulawin vs. Ravena, the sequel to the 2004 television series Mulawin.
Velasquez played a widow obsessed with a pop star in Nigel Santos' independent film Yours Truly, Shirley. The film premiered at the 2019 Cinema One Originals Film Festival. In January 2020, she briefly appeared in the iWant comedy series My Single Lady.
Artistry
Influences
As a child, Velasquez enjoyed listening to her father singing classic songs to lull her to sleep; she was drawn to traditional songs rather than nursery rhymes because of this routine. Since her childhood, Velasquez has considered Sharon Cuneta a role model and credits Cuneta as a key inspiration who led her to pursue a musical career.
Velasquez's music is influenced by artists such as Sheena Easton, Angela Bofill, Whitney Houston, and Mariah Carey in her early years. She admires Houston for her "style and R&B influence" and Carey's songwriting. On several occasions, Velasquez has cited Barbra Streisand as her main influence and musical inspiration, saying, "I look up to [Streisand] not just because of her enormous talent, but because of her fearlessness and dedication to excellence, her willingness to take risks and to be different." Streisand's music has frequently featured in Velasquez's repertoire throughout her career, including a series of concerts paying homage to Streisand, which Velasquez described as "a pleasure" to perform. Velasquez has also been influenced by many Filipino artists; early in her career, she cited Kuh Ledesma, Joey Albert, Gary Valenciano, Martin Nievera, and Pops Fernandez as her role models. She has also paid tribute to Filipino songwriters, including George Canseco, Rey Valera, Basil Valdez, Ryan Cayabyab, and Willy Cruz.
Musical style and themes
Velasquez's early-career music includes elements of traditional OPM love songs. She described how she developed her musical style, saying, "I was only 16 and people didn't know what to do with me. When they want me to sing love songs, they had to explain to me what it meant because I didn't know the feeling yet." Her debut album Regine includes ballads and bubblegum pop love songs; its themes revolve around feelings of "excitement and uncertainty", as well as "missed chances and regrets". Elvin Luciano from CNN Philippines wrote: "During her [initial] phase, she proved that Filipino love songs don't have to come pre-packaged in the kundiman-rooted love ballad." Her later releases, including Nineteen 90 and Tagala Talaga, capitalized on her popularity; they are dominated by Filipino love songs. Velasquez began working with foreign songwriters while planning her first regional album Listen Without Prejudice, which according to AllMusic is "oriented towards easy-listening love songs with adventurous, contemporary touches". The album features tracks with syncopated backbeats and hip-hop influences.
During the mid-1990s and the early 2000s, Velasquez's albums consisted primarily of cover versions of international material because of its commercial viability, and Filipinos' preference for American music. According to CNN Philippines, "Regine has a knack for choosing songs which at first, may not fit her, but eventually become her own." Many of her songs, particularly in Retro, Drawn, and R2K contained R&B, soul, and hip-hop elements. Reigne is an OPM album that she described as "songs influenced by the music, artists, and genres that I enjoy listening to," and included tracks that are melancholic, sensual, and poetic. Her crossover to film saw significant use of contemporary love ballads in her catalog of soundtrack themes, describing the music as "straightforward, earnest, and lyrically simple".
Voice and timbre
Velasquez is known for her use of vocal belting, and credits the vocal training she received from her father as a child:
Velasquez is a soprano and is often praised for her range and technical ability. Luciano of CNN Philippines complimented her "trademark and sometimes melismatic vocals" while Gonzales adds her singing is "strong, emotive, and confident". She has often been criticized, however, for the excessive use of belting and oversinging. Gonzales described Velasquez's timbre as "thin, unimpressive and unappealing at times", and said her singing is "aiming for a higher [note], [which] she did all too often". Velasquez said, "I don't mean to make any songs hard. It's just that when I'm on stage, with the adrenaline rush and all, you get excited. I do try to hold back [because] otherwise I'd be screaming the whole show, that's not good."
Legacy and influence
Velasquez's vocal style and singing ability have significantly impacted Philippine popular and contemporary music. Critics have called her "Asia's songbird" and she is often cited as one of Filipino music's most influential artists. According to Allan Policarpio of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, "Regine needed only to open her mouth and that celebrated voice would come out. She could sing seated, lying down or hoisted up in the air with a harness—no problem. And even when she was so sick she couldn't speak, she could still sing." Velasquez has also been recognized for playing a pivotal role in creating the "blue print" for becoming a "singing icon". Many critics complimented her work, often singling out Velasquez's influence. Luciano, writing for CNN Philippines, described her "legitimacy" as "enough to secure a space in pop culture" and said her musical career "continues to influence generations of OPM patrons and songbird wannabes up to this day", while according to The Philippine Star, "If one were to go by records and distinctions made, Regine Velasquez would win, hands down". She has often been regarded as a powerhouse for her performances and musical content.
Velasquez's use of vocal belting has been subject to scrutiny because young singers, including contestants on television talent shows, have imitated her singing technique. According to Nestor Torre of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, "The popularity of 'birit' [belting] started here with the amateur singing contests ... Then came Regine Velasquez, who also launched her own singing career the 'birit' way ... Trouble is, Regine's belting became so popular that her successor[s] ... imitated her." Manila Bulletin said, "Most of our top selling new female singers are still and mere parrots of [Velasquez] in terms of vocal acrobatics and predilection to show off her high range". According to Boy Abunda, "Most of the young female singers currently making waves in the industry are cut from the same biritera [belter] cloth as Regine Velasquez."
Filipino pop, hip-hop, and R&B artists Aicelle Santos, Charice, Erik Santos, Jona Viray, Julie Anne San Jose, KZ Tandingan, Kyla, Mark Bautista, Morissette Amon, , and Yeng Constantino—among others—have cited Velasquez as an influence.
Velasquez's music has broadly influenced a younger generation of performers from reality television talent shows; Sarah Geronimo has stated Velasquez made her realize the value of hard work while Rachelle Ann Go and Angeline Quinto have both said Velasquez inspired them during their early years as aspiring singers. American Idol finalists Ramiele Malubay, Thia Megia, and Jessica Sanchez have expressed a desire to emulate Velasquez.
Velasquez has also been credited for her work and performances with international artists, including 98 Degrees, Alicia Keys, Coco Lee, Peabo Bryson, and Stephen Bishop. French composer Michel Legrand described working with Velasquez, saying "It's tough to sing a song after Barbra Streisand, I will tell you. But to sing with Regine is, I'm in heaven. She sings so well, she has such an extraordinary technical voice ... sensitive voice and talented expression." American singer Brian McKnight who co-headlined a concert with Velasquez, has complimented her singing, stating; "I got to sing onstage with Regine and it was one of the best experiences ever because she's one of the best singers I've ever heard."
Other activities
Philanthropy
Velasquez has been involved with several charitable organizations. She became associated with the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in 2001 and worked on a documentary titled Speak Your Mind, which is about homeless children in Payatas, Quezon City, one of the Philippines' largest open dumpsites. The program was nominated for the UNICEF Child Rights Award.
One of Velasquez's highest-profile benefit concert appearances was in One Night with Regine, which she performed at the National Museum of the Philippines in support of the Bantay Bata Foundation, a child welfare organization. In 2005, Velasquez appeared in an episode of the lifestyle talk show Mel and Joey, and donated proceeds from an auction of her gowns to the GMA Kapuso Foundation's Christmas Give-a-Gift project. In 2009, Velasquez headlined a benefit television special called After The Rain: A Hopeful Christmas in the aftermath of Typhoon Ketsana (Ondoy). In October 2010, she became an ambassador for Operation Smile, a nonprofit organization that provides cleft lip and palate repair surgery to children worldwide. She recorded the theme "S.M.I.L.E.", which was written for the project and appears on her studio album Fantasy. In November 2013, proceeds from the sales of her album Hulog Ka Ng Langit were donated to the Philippine Red Cross in support of the Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda) relief.
Product endorsements
Velasquez has been involved in brand marketing initiatives for American fast food restaurant chains Wendy's and KFC. She has signed advertising deals with several other brands, including Digitel, Lux, Nestlé Philippines, Nokia, and Smart Communications. Throughout 2005, she appeared as the face of the Department of Tourism's travel promotion campaign. In August 2009, Velasquez released a line of women's perfume called "Reigne" and "Songbird" for the clothing brand Bench. In February 2020, she collaborated with beauty brand BYS and launched a line of makeup called "Reigne".
Personal life
Velasquez announced her relationship with singer-songwriter Ogie Alcasid in an article published by Yes! magazine in June 2007. On August 8, 2010, the couple announced their engagement, and in December, they married in Nasugbu, Batangas. She gave birth to their son, Nathaniel James, via caesarean section on November 8, 2011.
Velasquez is a born-again Christian. In March 2016, she said she had suffered a miscarriage prior to her marriage to Alcasid and cited it as her reason for converting. She also said she had been attending Victory Christian Fellowship.
Awards and recognition
Throughout her career, Velasquez has received many honors and awards, including MTV Asia's Favorite Artist Philippines in 2002 and 2003, and the Aliw Awards' Entertainer of the Year in 2007, 2009, and 2019. She has been the recipient of lifetime achievement awards, including the Awit Awards Dangal ng Musikang Pilipino, the Star Awards for Music's Pilita Corrales Lifetime Achievement and Natatanging Alagad Ng Musika, FAMAS Awards' Golden Artist, and Myx Music's Magna Award.
Velasquez has sold more than seven million records in the Philippines and 1.5 million in Asia, making her the biggest-selling Filipino artist of all time. Eight of her albums have each sold over 200,000 copies. She was ranked first in Female Networks 2011 countdown of the "Top 25 Best Filipina Singers" and was included in Top 10 Asia magazine's list of "Ten Most Admired Female Singers in Asia". Velasquez has also received recognition for her work in television and film, such as the Box Office Queen award in 2002, the Star Awards for Television's Best Actress in 2002, and the Golden Screen Awards' Best Actress in 2013. She has received a total of 21 Awit Awards, 22 Box Office Entertainment Awards, 15 Aliw Awards, and 12 Star Awards for Music. In December 2007, Velasquez was honored with a star on the Philippines' Walk of Fame.
Discography
Regine (1987)
Nineteen '90 (1990)
Tagala Talaga (1991)
Reason Enough (1993)
Listen Without Prejudice (1994)
My Love Emotion (1995)
Retro (1997)
Drawn (1998)
R2K (1999)
Reigne (2001)
Covers, Vol. 1 (2004)
Covers, Vol. 2 (2006)
Low Key (2008)
Fantasy (2010)
Hulog Ka Ng Langit (2013)
R3.0 (2017)
Filmography
Wanted Perfect Mother (1996)
Do Re Mi (1996)
Dahil May Isang Ikaw (1998)
Kailangan Ko'y Ikaw (2000)
Pangako Ikaw Lang (2001)
Ikaw Lamang Hanggang Ngayon (2002)
Pangarap Ko Ang Ibigin Ka (2003)
Till I Met You (2006)
Paano Kita Iibigin (2007)
Of All The Things (2012)
Mrs. Recto (2015)
Yours Truly, Shirley (2019)
Concerts
Headlining concerts
Narito Ako! (1990)
In Season (1991)
Music and Me (1993)
Isang Pasasalamat (1996)
Retro (1997)
Drawn (1998)
R2K The Concert (2000)
Songbird Sings the Classics (2001)
R-15 (2001)
One Night with Regine (2002)
Reigning Still (2004)
Twenty (2006)
Silver (2013)
R3.0 (2017)
Freedom (2021)
Co-headlining concerts
Power of Two (with Kuh Ledesma) (1996)
Celebration of Love (with Peabo Bryson and Jeffrey Osborne) (2000)
Independent Women (with Jaya) (2001)
Two for the Knight (with Brian McKnight) (2002)
Songbird Sings Legrand (with Michel Legrand) (2003)
Martin & Regine: The World Concert (with Martin Nievera) (2003)
The Songbird & The Songwriter (with Ogie Alcasid) (2004)
Queens on Fire (with Pops Fernandez) (2005)
Iconic (with Sharon Cuneta) (2019)
Unified (with Sarah Geronimo) (2020)
Concert residencies
Regine at the Movies (2001; 2018)
Songbird Sings (2002)
Songbird Sings Streisand (2003)
Reflections (2005)
Regine at the Theater (2015)
See also
List of best-selling albums in the Philippines
List of Filipino singers
List of Filipino actresses
Music of the Philippines
Philippine Association of the Record Industry
Notes
References
Citations
Book sources
External links
1970 births
Intercontinental Broadcasting Corporation personalities
Universal Records (Philippines) artists
Filipino dance musicians
Filipino women pop singers
Filipino record producers
Filipino Protestants
Filipino Christians
Filipino television actresses
Filipino film actresses
English-language singers from the Philippines
Living people
People from Tondo, Manila
Singers from Manila
Actresses from Manila
Tagalog people
Filipino sopranos
ABS-CBN personalities
GMA Network personalities
TV5 (Philippine TV network) personalities
21st-century Filipino women singers
Women record producers | false | [
"Dondria Nicole Fields (born January 6, 1987), better known by her stage name Dondria Nicole, is an American R&B singer, currently signed to So So Def Recordings. Before getting signed, Dondria was known to post YouTube videos singing cover songs.\n\nBiography\n\nEarly life and career beginnings\nDondria was discovered on YouTube by So So Def founder Jermaine Dupri. She was born in Dover, Oklahoma, and raised in Sachse, Texas. Dondria began singing at a young age in her church choir after her friend David Baker asked her to join with him. In 2006 at the age of 19, she created a YouTube channel using the username \"Phatfffat\" to showcase her singing talent. With YouTube she built a sizable following online, and eventually she was contacted by Dupri via a YouTube Message. Although it took several messages before she responded, when she did she was flown to Atlanta to meet Dupri and he offered her a recording contract with So So Def Recordings and she agreed with Dupri and signed her in 2007. Originally she was asked to record a song with R&B group Jagged Edge, but eventually was offered a solo contract.\n\n2008–10: Dondria Vs. Phatfffat\n\nDondria released a buzz single for her debut album, titled \"Can't Stop\" on June 17, 2008. It originally was known to be her first single, but was only used as promotion for the project. She also was featured on a song titled \"Like This\" by Bow Wow, which was included on his 2009 studio album New Jack City, II.\nDondria released a mixtape for fans, titled \"Dondria Duets\" on November 6, 2009. The Mixtape was available for download on Global14.com, for free. She recorded popular male R&B songs that included verses by herself, turning them into duets. The Mixtape was released to promote, Dondria's single You're The One which dropped a few weeks later.\n\nHer debut album, titled Dondria Vs. Phatfffat, was released on August 17, 2010. It debuted at No. 43, with first week sales of 422, which is notable since she was discovered off YouTube. The official debut single for her album \"You're The One\" was released on November 23, 2009. The single debuted on Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs charts at No. 100 and peaked at No. 14. It's also charted at No. 21 on the Christian Songs chart the single has reached at No. 70 on the radio songs. It is now a No. 10 on Heetseekers Chart. The video has peaked at No. 1 on 106 & Park. Her second single was titled \"Shawty Wus Up\" which features label-mate Johnta Austin and Diamond. Dondria will be touring as the opening act on Trey Songz and Monica's \"Passion Pain & Pleasure\" Tour. The tour began on August 6, 2010 in Shreveport, Louisiana. On August 4, 2010, \"Makin Love\" from Dondria's debut album leaked to the Internet, getting overall good reviews from fans.\n\"Where Did We Go Wrong,\" a song from the album co-written by Dondria, was to be the album's third single. It was never officially released, but it did make the R&B charts.\n\n2011–2016: Second studio album, Dondria Duets 2 and 3\nOn June 3, 2011, \"Boiling Points\" was confirmed by Dondria to be an upcoming single on her Tumblr Blog. The original song featuring Jermaine Dupri first appeared on her \"Dondria Duets 2\", Mixtape. It is unclear if the record will be released as a mixtape single, or the first offering from a brand new studio album. Currently, Dondria is in the studio recording songs for her upcoming second album. She also just dropped remixes of Miguel's \"Quickie\", Drake's \"Headlines\" and Maroon 5's \"Make Moves Like Jagger\". She has maintained a YouTube fan base of more than 120,000 subscribers.\n\nDondria originally planned to released a 3rd edition to her \"Dondria Duets\" mixtape series, entitled \"Dondria Duets III: 90s Edition\" on January 6, 2012 her 25th birthday, however it was delayed. The mixtape will now be released on February 1, 2012. \nIn a recent YouTube video of the making of the \"Dondria Duets III: 90's Edition\" mixtape, Jermaine Dupri revealed it would the final installment to the series, however Dondria would do an official duet album to be released as her third studio album. The album would include all new original duet recordings. \"Dondria Duets III: 90s Edition\" was released online via Global14.com on February 1, 2012.\nAlso confirmed on this date was information regarding he first official single from Dondria's second album. Rapup.com reported the single will be a track entitled \"Ol School Love\", and featuring Da Brat.\n\n2017–present: Dondria Duets 4 &5, EP: The Day of the Don, EP: A Tale of Hearts \nOn July 4, 2017, Dondria released her first original body of work since her debut album, \"Dondria Vs. Phatfffat\". The EP, entitled \"The Day of The Don\" embodied 6 songs covering ebbs and flows of a relationship. The EP was received well and showcased more of Dondria's writing ability. She co-wrote with ShaSha Jones, Derrick \"D-Mac\" Mckenzie, The Penhouse, Bryan-Michael Cox, Nikki, Songwriter Pendrick, and Yonni.\n\nOn February 14, 2018, Dondria dropped an unannounced \"Dondria Duets 4\" Mixtape as a token of appreciation to her fans for Valentine's Day. The mixtape feat remixes of hits like Chris Brown's \"To My Bed, Dvsn's \"Too Deep\", and Bruno Mars' \"That's What I Like\". It had been 6 years since the last installment of the Dondria Duet series so her fans were definitely in for a treat.\n\nDondria later dropped another EP on November 9, 2018, called \"A Tale of Hearts\". This was a complete duet project with childhood friend and Youtube partner in crime, Corey \"Broadway\" Stevenson. The EP was produced by Patrick Carpenter of First Kontact Music Group and pleased all of the duo's fans that had been watching them for years and we were wondering what happened to their bond.\n\nOn January 15, 2021, Dondria released her single \"Let It Be,\" produced by Bryan-Michael Cox. She co-wrote the song with John Bias.\n\nDiscography\n\nStudio albums\n\nMixtapes \n Dondria Duets (2009)\n Dondria Duets 2 (2011)\n Dondria Duets 3: 90s Edition (2012)\n Dondria Duets 4 (2018)\n Dondria Duets 5: The 90's Edition II (2019)\n\nSingles\n\nGuest appearances\n\nTours\n\nAs supporting act\n 2010: Trey Songz and Monica (Passion Pain & Pleasure Tour)\n\nReferences\n\n1.http://www.global14.com/dondria/\n\nExternal links\n\nDondria at Last.fm\n\n1987 births\nLiving people\nPeople from Kingfisher County, Oklahoma\nPeople from Dallas County, Texas\nAmerican contemporary R&B singers\n20th-century African-American women singers\nSingers from Texas\nSo So Def Recordings artists\nSingers from Oklahoma\n21st-century American women singers\n21st-century American singers\n21st-century African-American women singers",
"Ginny Wright was an American country music singer. She was born in Twin City, Georgia during the 1930s, first sang in glee clubs, and studied opera. She began performing country music in the early 1950s. Her first single was on the Triple A label, following her discovery by deejay Jack Gale.\n\nWright next signed with the new Fabor label on the West Coast, recording a duet with Jim Reeves, \"I Love You\" (Fabor 101), which spent 22 weeks on Billboard's country charts in early 1954, peaking at No. 3. One year later she returned to the hit parade with another duet, \"Are You Mine?\" (Fabor 117), this time with Tom Tall, which did even better. Over a 26-week run on Billboard's country charts, it peaked at No. 2. It was her second top 10 duet and her final chart appearance.\n\nAfter taking a break from her career in the mid-1950s to raise a family, Wright entered country music in the 1960s, cutting a few singles for the Chart label. Wright recorded more duets, including additional ones with Tom Tall, who followed her to the Chart label.\n\nHer sound began to change in the 1960s, acquiring more of a Nashville flavor. A series of one-off label recordings followed, including a couple for Jack Gale's Gallery 11 label, one for Travel and a couple for Cayce. Wright also cut an album for Playback Records featuring gospel standards with organ accompaniment.\n\nAt this time Wright's popularity began to rise in the German market. Her first German success was the album Ginny Wright's Songs & Duets. This was followed by another album on the Bear Family label titled Whirlwind; her duets with Tom Tall were issued on a separate LP under his name. These albums are out of print and the original singles are very rare.\n\nWright was inducted into the Louisiana Hayride Hall Of Fame in 2003; and a year later, Bear Family released a CD containing most of Wright and Tom Tall's Fabor recordings.\n\nGinny passed away on September 5, 2021. Her funeral was held on September 9 in Twin City, GA. She was laid to rest in Antioch Primitive Baptist Church Cemetery.\n\nReferences\n\nAmerican women country singers\nAmerican country singer-songwriters\nAbbott Records artists\nPeople from Emanuel County, Georgia\nLiving people\nCountry musicians from Georgia (U.S. state)\nYear of birth missing (living people)\n21st-century American women\nSinger-songwriters from Georgia (U.S. state)"
]
|
[
"Regine Velasquez",
"1986-1989: Career beginnings and Regine",
"What was Regine's first experience singing?",
"After winning Ang Bagong Kampeon, Velasquez was signed to OctoArts International (now PolyEast Records).",
"How old was she when she won that award?",
"I don't know.",
"What was her first work with OctoArts?",
"She was introduced as 'Chona' Velasquez--her nickname--and recorded the single \"Love Me Again\", which was released in early 1986.",
"What that single a success?",
"the single was commercially unsuccessful.",
"Did she do any duets with other singers on that label?",
"I don't know."
]
| C_37b88fd530a6472498feadbc43940518_1 | Did she have any other successes at that label? | 6 | Besides recording "Love Me Again, did Regine Velasquez have any other successes at OctoArts International? | Regine Velasquez | After winning Ang Bagong Kampeon, Velasquez was signed to OctoArts International (now PolyEast Records). She was introduced as 'Chona' Velasquez--her nickname--and recorded the single "Love Me Again", which was released in early 1986. However, the single was commercially unsuccessful. On February 16, 1986, at the behest of another OctoArts recording artist, Pops Fernandez, Velasquez was invited to appear on her live late night musical television show, The Penthouse Live! While she was rehearsing for the live show, the producer and talent manager Ronnie Henares showed interest and signed her. At the suggestion of Fernandez's husband and the show's co-host, Martin Nievera, Velasquez adopted the stage name "Regine". Under Henares' management, Velasquez was introduced to the head of VIVA Records, Vicente del Rosario Jr., who signed her and started production of her debut album. Del Rosario enlisted top songwriters, including Joaquin Francisco Sanchez, Vehnee Saturno and Christine Bendebel. He and Henares, who were both serving as executive producers, planned to market Velasquez as one of their main female pop artists, hoping to attain commercial success as they had done with Nora Aunor and Sharon Cuneta. After Velasquez completed her debut album, Regine, VIVA released the lead single "Kung Maibabalik Ko Lang" in 1987. Despite a weak start, the album gained mainstream appeal after Velasquez's promotional appearances on the ABS-CBN television variety shows Triple Treat and Teen Pan Alley. The album produced two more singles--"Urong Sulong" and "Isang Lahi". Two years after the release of her debut album, Velasquez represented the Philippines in the 1989 Asia Pacific Singing Contest. She was initially apprehensive and skeptical of the idea of participating in another competition at that stage in her career. At Henares' urging she agreed to compete and won the contest in Hong Kong, performing the songs "You'll Never Walk Alone" from the 1945 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Carousel and "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going" from the musical Dreamgirls. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Regina Encarnacion Ansong Velasquez ( ; born April 22, 1970) is a Filipino singer, actress, and producer. She is known for her vocal range, belting technique, and the unorthodox voice training she received during her childhood, where she was immersed neck-deep in the sea. Velasquez rose to prominence after winning the television talent show Ang Bagong Kampeon in 1984 and the Asia Pacific Singing Contest in 1989. Under the name Chona, she signed a recording contract with OctoArts International in 1986 and released the single "Love Me Again", which was commercially unsuccessful. The following year, she adopted the stage name Regine Velasquez for her debut studio album, Regine (1987), under the guidance of Viva Records executive Vic del Rosario and producer Ronnie Henares. She explored Manila sound and kundiman genres on her second and third studio albums, Nineteen 90 (1990) and Tagala Talaga (1991).
After signing an international record deal with Polygram Records, Velasquez achieved commercial success in some Asian territories with her fifth album Listen Without Prejudice (1994), which sold more than 700,000 copies and became her highest-selling album to date, aided by its lead single "In Love With You". She experimented further with jazz and adult contemporary genres on My Love Emotion (1995), while she recorded covers on Retro (1997). After she left Polygram to sign with Mark J. Feists MJF Company in 1998, she released the R&B-influenced album Drawn. Velasquez's follow-up record, R2K (1999), was supported by remakes of "On the Wings of Love", "I'll Never Love This Way Again", and "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing", and was subsequently certified twelve-times platinum by the Philippine Association of the Record Industry (PARI).
Velasquez played leading roles in the romantic comedies Kailangan Ko'y Ikaw (2000) and Pangako Ikaw Lang (2001), and received the Box Office Entertainment Award for Box Office Queen for the latter. Her performance as an intellectually disabled woman in an episode of the anthology series Maalaala Mo Kaya (2002) earned her a Star Award for Best Actress. She also starred in the prime time television series Forever in My Heart (2004), Ako si Kim Samsoon (2008), Totoy Bato (2009), Diva (2010), I Heart You, Pare! (2011), and Poor Señorita (2016). Velasquez also won the Golden Screen Award for Best Actress for playing a document forger in the comedy film Of All the Things (2013). She expanded her career into reality television talent shows as a presenter on Star for a Night (2002), Pinoy Pop Superstar (2004), and The Clash (2018), and as a judge on StarStruck (2015) and Idol Philippines (2019).
Having sold more than seven million records domestically and 1.5 million in Asia, Velasquez is the best-selling Filipino music artist of all time. Her accolades include two Asian Television Awards, two MTV Asia Awards, 21 Awit Awards, 15 Aliw Awards (including 3 Entertainer of the Year wins), 22 Box Office Entertainment Awards, and 12 Star Awards for Music. Referred to as "Asia's songbird", she has consistently been credited with inspiring a generation of Filipino singers.
Early life
Regina Encarnacion Ansong Velasquez was born on April 22, 1970, in Tondo, Manila, to Teresita (née Ansong) and Gerardo Velasquez. She has three sisters—Cacai, Diane, and Deca—and a brother named Jojo. Her family moved to Hinundayan, Southern Leyte, where Velasquez spent the early years of her life. At age three, Velasquez became interested in music after listening to her father's lullabies. She would listen to her mother play guitar and piano while her father sang, and referenced Sharon Cuneta's "Mr. DJ" as one of the first songs she learned.
Velasquez started singing at age six; she underwent intensive vocal training with her father, who immersed her neck-deep in the sea and had her go through vocal runs. She credits this unorthodox method for strengthening her core and stomach muscles, and developing her lung capacity. Velasquez placed third in her first singing competition on Betty Mendez Livioco The Tita Betty's Children Show.
When Velasquez was nine, her family moved to Balagtas, Bulacan, where she attended St. Lawrence Academy and competed for her school at the annual Bulacan Private Schools Association singing competition. In 1984, at fourteen, Velasquez auditioned for the reality television series Ang Bagong Kampeon. She qualified and became the show's senior division winner, defending her spot for eight consecutive weeks. Velasquez won the competition and was signed to a record deal with OctoArts International.
Music career
1986–1989: Career beginnings and Regine
In 1986, Velasquez initially used the stage name Chona and released the single "Love Me Again", which was commercially unsuccessful. At the recommendation of another OctoArts recording artist, Pops Fernandez, she appeared on The Penthouse Live! While rehearsing for the show, Velasquez caught the attention of Ronnie Henares, a producer and talent manager who signed her to a management deal. Velasquez adopted the stage name Regine at the suggestion of Fernandez's husband and The Penthouse Live! co-host, .
Velasquez signed with Viva Records and released her debut album Regine in 1987. Henares served as an executive producer and worked with songwriters Joaquin Francisco Sanchez and Vehnee Saturno. Three singles were released in 1987: "Kung Maibabalik Ko Lang", " Urong Sulong", and "Isang Lahi". During this period, Velasquez appeared on the ABS-CBN television shows Triple Treat and Teen Pan Alley. Two years after Regine's release, Velasquez represented the Philippines in the 1989 Asia Pacific Singing Contest in Hong Kong and won, performing the songs "You'll Never Walk Alone" from the musical Carousel and "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going" from the musical Dreamgirls.
1990–1993: Nineteen 90 and Reason Enough
Velasquez released her second studio album Nineteen 90 in 1990. She worked with Louie Ocampo on the album's lead single "Narito Ako", which was originally recorded and performed by Maricris Bermont and written by Nonong Pedero for the 1978 Metro Manila Popular Music Festival. Later that year, she headlined her first major concert at the Folk Arts Theater. She recorded "Please Be Careful with My Heart" with Jose Mari Chan, who released the track on his album Constant Change; she also sang backing vocals on Gary Valenciano's "Each Passing Night", which appears on his album Faces of Love.
In 1991, Velasquez made her North American concert debut at Carnegie Hall in New York City, a first for an Asian solo artist. British theatrical producer Cameron Mackintosh later invited Velasquez to audition for the West End production of the musical Miss Saigon. She received a letter from the production offering to train her in London, which she declined: partly due to her lack of experience in musical theater, and because she wished to remain with her family.
Velasquez's third studio album Tagala Talaga was released in October 1991. It includes cover versions of recordings by National Artist for Music recipients Ryan Cayabyab, Lucio San Pedro, and Levi Celerio. The album's lead single, titled "Buhay Ng Buhay Ko", was originally recorded by Leah Navarro and was written by Pedero, with whom Velasquez had worked on Nineteen 90. Other notable singles from the album include "Anak and "Sa Ugoy Ng Duyan".
PolyGram Far East announced a joint-venture licensing deal in the Philippines in July 1993 with the formation of its subsidiary PolyCosmic Records. Velasquez recorded a duet titled "It's Hard to Say Goodbye" with Canadian singer Paul Anka, which became the new label's first release. The single was later included on her fourth studio album Reason Enough. David Gonzales of AllMusic described the album as "more attuned to international ears" and said Velasquez's vocals are "thin and unimpressive". One of its singles, "Sana Maulit Muli", won the Awit Award for Best Performance by a Female Recording Artist in 1994.
1994–1998: Listen Without Prejudice and My Love Emotion
Velasquez released her fifth studio album Listen Without Prejudice in 1994. She worked with songwriters, including Glenn Medeiros, Trina Belamide, and John Laudon. The album was released in several countries in Southeast and East Asia, including China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand. The album's lead single "In Love With You" features Cantonese singer Jacky Cheung. Gonzales commended the record's themes and said, "Cheung's presence on the duet had much to do with the overseas success". The album had sold more than 700,000 copies worldwide, including 100,000 in the Philippines, making it the best-selling album of Velasquez's career to date.
Velasquez's sixth studio album My Love Emotion was released in 1995. The title track, which was written by Southern Sons vocalist Phil Buckle, was described by Gonzales as a "triumph [and] an outstanding vehicle, containing a strong melody and hook in the chorus". The album made a combined regional and domestic sales of 250,000 copies.
For her seventh studio album Retro (1997), Velasquez recorded cover versions of popular music of the 1970s and 1980s from artists, including Donna Summer, Foreigner, and the Carpenters. The album's only original track, "Fly", is credited to Earth, Wind & Fire members Maurice White, Al McKay, and Allee Willis because the song interpolates the melody of their single "September". Velasquez left PolyCosmic in 1998, and signed a six-album contract with the MJF Company. That year, her ninth studio album Drawn was released. MJF head Mark J. Feist wrote and produced most of the tracks, including the lead single "How Could You Leave". Drawn sold more than 40,000 copies and was awarded a platinum certification within two weeks of its release.
1999–2003: R2K and Reigne
Velasquez produced most of her next album R2K, which was released on November 27, 1999. She recorded remakes of Jeffrey Osborne's "On the Wings of Love", Dionne Warwick's "I'll Never Love This Way Again", Aerosmith's "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing", and ABBA's Dancing Queen, among others. Gonzales criticized the record's "infatuation with Western popular music" and called Velasquez's singing "self-assured [but] also unimpressive". Commercially, R2K sold more than 40,000 copies in its second week of release, earning a platinum certification, and was certified four times platinum a year later. R2K has since been certified twelve times platinum, becoming the highest-selling album by a female artist in the Philippines. On December 31, 1999, Velasquez was a featured musical act in 2000 Today, a BBC millennium television special that attracted a worldwide audience of more than 800 million viewers with its core program broadcast across the world's time zones, which began with Kiribati Line Islands and ended in American Samoa.
Velasquez headlined and directed the R2K Concert at the Araneta Coliseum in April 2000, which won her Best Female Major Concert Act at the 13th Aliw Awards. Ricky Lo from The Philippine Star was generally impressed with the production and complimented Velasquez's "boundless energy and creativity". She also performed a concert at the Westin Philippine Plaza that year, which spawned the release of her first live album Regine Live: Songbird Sings the Classics in December 2000. Despite being criticized for the audio mixing, the album was certified six times platinum.
Velasquez worked with Filipino songwriters for material on her eleventh studio album Reigne. The album and its lead single "To Reach You" were released in December 2001. Other singles were Tats Faustino's "Dadalhin" and Janno Gibbs' "Sa Aking Pag-iisa". Gonzales called the album "an adventurous set" and praised the quality of the songwriting.
Velasquez won the inaugural MTV Asia Award for Favorite Artist Philippines in February 2002. She performed "Cry" with Mandy Moore to promote the theatrical release of Moore's film A Walk to Remember. In March, Velasquez hosted the first season of Star for a Night, which is based on the British talent show of the same name. In April, she headlined a benefit concert called One Night with Regine at the National Museum of the Philippines, which was a collaboration with ABS-CBN Foundation to benefit Bantay Bata Foundation's child abuse response fund. The show won Best Musical Program at the 7th Asian Television Awards.
At the 2003 MTV Asia Awards, Velasquez won her second consecutive award for Favorite Artist Philippines. In May 2003, she embarked on the Martin-Regine World Concert Tour with Nievera. The following month, Velasquez returned to host the second season of Search for a Star. That November, she had a concert residency named Songbird Sings Streisand, a tribute to American singer and actor Barbra Streisand, at Makati's Onstage Theatre.
2004–2007: Covers Vol. 1 and Vol. 2
In February 2004, Velasquez and Ogie Alcasid co-headlined a concert, The Songbird & The Songwriter, at the Araneta Coliseum, and embarked on a North American tour that April. At the 17th Aliw Awards, she won Best Female Performance in a Concert and was nominated for Entertainer of the Year for the collaboration. Velasquez hosted the reality talent show Pinoy Pop Superstar, which began airing on GMA Network that July. In October 2004, she released "Forevermore", the lead single from her twelfth studio album Covers, Vol. 1. Its songs were originally recorded by Filipino male artists and was her most expensive cover album to produce due in part to the cost of securing licensing rights for songs by local songwriters, including Ariel Rivera's "Minsan Lang Kita Iibigan", Basil Valdez's "Say That You Love Me", and Nonoy Zuñiga's "Araw Gabi". The album has since been certified six times platinum.
Later in November and December 2005, Velasquez had an eight-day concert residency named Reflections at the Aliw Theater. The sequel album Covers, Vol. 2 was released in February 2006. Unlike its predecessor, it contains songs by foreign artists, including Alanis Morissette's "Head Over Feet", Blondie's "Call Me", and Elvis Presley's "Blue Suede Shoes". Manila Bulletins Jojo Panaligan was generally impressed with Velasquez's "versatility" and the album tracks' "jazzy and blues-y interpretation". In October 2006, she performed a concert titled Twenty at the Araneta Coliseum, which won her Best Female Major Concert Act and Entertainer of the Year award at the 20th Aliw Awards. In 2007, she became co-host of the reality television show Celebrity Duets, an interactive music competition based on the eponymous original US show.
2008–2012: Low Key and professional hiatus
Velasquez developed other television projects in 2008. She appeared in Songbird, a weekly late-night musical television show that featured performances by a musical guest. She also featured in the musical television special The Best of Me, which was filmed at her residence in Quezon City. Velasquez signed a deal with Universal Records and released an album titled Low Key in December 2008. The album consists of cover versions of international songs that she described as "more relaxed, laid-back and restrained". It includes tracks such as Billy Joel's "She's Always a Woman", Dan Fogelberg's "Leader of the Band", and Janis Ian's "At Seventeen". The Philippine Daily Inquirer praised the album's maturity and wrote, "[Velasquez] no longer shrieks and shouts as much as she used to". The album sold more than 25,000 copies within two months of its release and was certified platinum. In May 2009, she appeared on the television documentary Roots to Riches, which chronicles her personal and professional struggles, and includes musical performances filmed in her hometown Malolos. Later that month, she hosted the television talent show Are You the Next Big Star?.
Velasquez's next album, a double CD set called Fantasy, was released in December 2010. The first disc is composed of Original Pilipino Music (OPM) recordings and the second includes covers of international singles such as Madonnas "Papa Don't Preach", Torontos "What About Love", and the Eagles' "Love Will Keep Us Alive". The Philippine Daily Inquirer called the album "vocally sumptuous" and was generally impressed with Velasquez's vocals and range. Fantasy received a platinum certification and earned three nominations at the 3rd Star Awards for Music. After receiving the Magna Award at the Myx Music Awards 2011, and the confirmation of her pregnancy, Velasquez took a hiatus from public engagements. She returned to television on October 6, 2012 with Sarap Diva, a weekly lifestyle talk show. On November 16, 2012, Velasquez performed a concert titled Silver at the Mall of Asia Arena, which was cut short after she lost her voice due to a viral infection.
2013–2016: Silver Rewind and Hulog Ka Ng Langit
After Silver's cancellation, Velasquez restaged the concert on January 5, 2013. The concert received generally favorable reviews; Manila Bulletin Jojo Panaligan called it a "redemption of reputation", while Dolly Anne Carvajal of the Philippine Daily Inquirer said Velasquez did not fail to make up for the initial cancellation of the show. The following month, she co-headlined in Foursome alongside Alcasid, Fernandez, and Nievera. For both shows, Velasquez received four nominations at the 5th Star Awards for Music, winning Best Female Major Concert Act for "Silver" and Concert of the Year for "Foursome".
In November 2013, Velasquez's album Hulog Ka Ng Langit was released; it received a platinum certification for two-week sales of 15,000 copies. She won Best Inspirational Record for "Nathaniel (Gift of God)" and Best Christmas Recording for "Hele ni Inay" at the 27th Awit Awards, while Hulog Ka Ng Langit won Album Cover of the Year at the 6th Star Awards for Music. In 2014, she worked with Nievera in a one-night show titled Voices of Love, with Gloc-9 on "Takipsilim", and with Vice Ganda on "Push Mo Yan Teh".
In February 2015, Velasquez appeared alongside Nievera, Valenciano, and Lani Misalucha in a concert titled Ultimate at the Mall of Asia Arena. She received accolades at the 47th Box Office Entertainment Awards, 7th Star Awards for Music, and 5th Edukcircle Awards for the production. In the same year, Velasquez served as a judge on the sixth season of the reality talent television show StarStruck. In November 2015, Velasquez headlined a four-date concert residency called Regine at the Theater, which featured songs from musicals.
For a third consecutive year, Velasquez appeared in a co-headlining concert at the Mall of Asia Arena in February 2016. The two-night show, Royals, reunited her with Nievera and also features Angeline Quinto and Erik Santos. Due to the concert's positive critical reception, Velasquez won Best Female Concert Performer at the 48th Box Office Entertainment Awards and Most Influential Concert Performer of the Year at the 6th Edukcircle Awards. In December 2016, People Asia magazine included Velasquez on its annual People of the Year list.
2017–present: R3.0, television projects and Freedom
Velasquez hosted Full House Tonight, which ran from February to May 2017. The following month, she announced her return to Viva Records and that she had begun production of a new studio album called R3.0. In August 2017, a cover of Up Dharma Down's 2010 song "Tadhana" was released as a promotional single. An original track called "Hugot" was released as the album's lead single the following month. In November, she headlined the R3.0 Concert at the Mall of Asia Arena and two months later, with Alcasid, she played a four-date U.S. concert series titled "Mr. and Mrs. A."
In 2018, Velasquez hosted the television talent show The Clash, served as a judge on ABS-CBN's revival of the Idol franchise series Idol Philippines, and hosted the musical variety show ASAP Natin' To. In November, she staged a three-date concert series titled "Regine at the Movies" at the New Frontier Theater.
Sharon Cuneta and Velasquez co-headlined a concert, Iconic, in October 2019. For the show, Velasquez won the awards for Best Collaboration in a Concert and Entertainer of the Year at the 32nd Aliw Awards, having won the latter honor in 2007 and 2009. The following month, she released a collaborative single with Moira Dela Torre called "Unbreakable", which was recorded for the soundtrack of the film of the same name. Velasquez appeared as the face of Australian beauty brand BYS and released the promotional single "I Am Beautiful" for the brand's "Be Your Own Expert" campaign. She released the soundtrack singles "Ikaw Ang Aking Mahal" for the action television series The General's Daughter (2019) and "Mahal Ko O Mahal Ako" for the drama series Love Thy Woman (2020).
Velasquez organized virtual benefit concerts in support of relief efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. She curated One Night with Regine, a collaboration with ABS-CBN to support Bantay Bata Foundation's COVID-19 response fund in April, and appeared in Joy From Home, which raised funds to support Jollibee Groups food aid program in June. On February 28, 2021, she was featured in an online streaming concert titled Freedom.
Acting career
Velasquez made her cinema debut with a minor role in the 1988 comedy film The Untouchable Family. Its soundtrack includes her single "Urong Sulong". She continued to appear in a series of supporting roles in comedies, including Pik Pak Boom (1988) and Elvis and James 2 (1990).
Velasquez began working with composer Ryan Cayabyab in 1995 on the musical theater version of José Rizals Noli Me Tángere, where she played the female lead, María Clara. Vic Del Rosario, head of Viva Entertainment's film production arm, saw Velasquez in one of her performances and offered her a starring role in a film. Her first leading role was a music teacher in the romantic comedy Wanted: Perfect Mother (1996). Nievera and Ocampo co-wrote the song "You Are My Song" for the film's soundtrack. Later in 1996, she starred alongside Donna Cruz and Mikee Cojuangco in the musical comedy Do Re Mi. Velasquez continued to play leading roles in romantic comedies, appearing in Honey Nasa Langit Na Ba Ako (1998) with Janno Gibbs and Dahil May Isang Ikaw (1999) with Aga Muhlach. Her first television role came in 2000 in an episode of the IBC-13s weekly drama series Habang May Buhay as Piolo Pascuals cancer-stricken love interest.
A key point in Velasquez's film career came when she was cast in Joyce Bernals Kailangan Ko'y Ikaw (2000) opposite Robin Padilla. Film critic Noel Vera criticized the film's formula as "the nth variation of Roman Holiday", but wrote that Velasquez "[brought] her own public persona and charisma and sense of humor to the role". Her next film role was in Pangako Ikaw Lang (2001), which reunited her with Bernal and Muhlach. Vera was impressed with the film's direction and writing, and described Velasquez's performance as "sunny good nature [with a] light comic touch". Pangako Ikaw Lang became the highest-grossing Filipino film of 2001. Velasquez was awarded the Box Office Queen title at the 32nd Box Office Entertainment Awards due to the film's commercial performance.
Her next television appearance was in an episode of ABS-CBN's weekly drama series Maalaala Mo Kaya (2001), playing a woman with autism. The role won her the Best Actress award at the 16th Star Awards for Television. She portrayed a mundane and undesirable mail sorter in the drama Ikaw Lamang Hanggang Ngayon (2002) opposite Richard Gomez, while Pangarap Ko Ang Ibigin Ka (2003) reunited her with Christopher de Leon of Wanted: Perfect Mother, which premiered at the Manila Film Festival in July 2003. In December, Velasquez next starred alongside Bong Revilla in the superhero film Captain Barbell.
Although Velasquez did not make any film appearances in 2004, she made her primetime television debut in the drama series Forever in My Heart, in which she was reunited with Gomez, and worked alongside Ariel Rivera. She next starred in romantic dramas, reuniting with Padilla in Till I Met You (2006) and with Pascual in Paano Kita Iibigin (2007). For the latter film, Velasquez received FAMAS and Luna nominations for Best Actress. In 2008, she returned to television, playing the titular character in the comedy series Ako si Kim Samsoon, an adaption of a South Korean television show. Velasquez also voiced the eponymous character in the animated film Urduja (2008).
During 2009, Velasquez made cameo appearances in the comedies Kimmy Dora, OMG (Oh, My Girl!), and Yaya and Angelina: The Spoiled Brat Movie. In March 2010, Velasquez appeared in the musical television series Diva as a facially disfigured ghost singer. The following year, she collaborated with Dingdong Dantes in the television series I Heart You, Pare! (2011). She left the show for health reasons and was replaced by Iza Calzado.
In the 2012 film Of All The Things, Velasquez worked with Bernal and Muhlach for the third time. Philbert Dy of ClickTheCity called the film a "tedious, unfocused mess that forces chemistry where none really exists". Despite the film's negative review, Velasquez's performance won the 10th Golden Screen award for Best Actress. She next starred in the independent film Mrs. Recto (2015), a comedy-drama set principally on Recto Avenue. She then portrayed a socialite who is stripped of her wealth in the television comedy series Poor Señorita (2016). Her only acting appearance in 2017 was a supporting role in Mulawin vs. Ravena, the sequel to the 2004 television series Mulawin.
Velasquez played a widow obsessed with a pop star in Nigel Santos' independent film Yours Truly, Shirley. The film premiered at the 2019 Cinema One Originals Film Festival. In January 2020, she briefly appeared in the iWant comedy series My Single Lady.
Artistry
Influences
As a child, Velasquez enjoyed listening to her father singing classic songs to lull her to sleep; she was drawn to traditional songs rather than nursery rhymes because of this routine. Since her childhood, Velasquez has considered Sharon Cuneta a role model and credits Cuneta as a key inspiration who led her to pursue a musical career.
Velasquez's music is influenced by artists such as Sheena Easton, Angela Bofill, Whitney Houston, and Mariah Carey in her early years. She admires Houston for her "style and R&B influence" and Carey's songwriting. On several occasions, Velasquez has cited Barbra Streisand as her main influence and musical inspiration, saying, "I look up to [Streisand] not just because of her enormous talent, but because of her fearlessness and dedication to excellence, her willingness to take risks and to be different." Streisand's music has frequently featured in Velasquez's repertoire throughout her career, including a series of concerts paying homage to Streisand, which Velasquez described as "a pleasure" to perform. Velasquez has also been influenced by many Filipino artists; early in her career, she cited Kuh Ledesma, Joey Albert, Gary Valenciano, Martin Nievera, and Pops Fernandez as her role models. She has also paid tribute to Filipino songwriters, including George Canseco, Rey Valera, Basil Valdez, Ryan Cayabyab, and Willy Cruz.
Musical style and themes
Velasquez's early-career music includes elements of traditional OPM love songs. She described how she developed her musical style, saying, "I was only 16 and people didn't know what to do with me. When they want me to sing love songs, they had to explain to me what it meant because I didn't know the feeling yet." Her debut album Regine includes ballads and bubblegum pop love songs; its themes revolve around feelings of "excitement and uncertainty", as well as "missed chances and regrets". Elvin Luciano from CNN Philippines wrote: "During her [initial] phase, she proved that Filipino love songs don't have to come pre-packaged in the kundiman-rooted love ballad." Her later releases, including Nineteen 90 and Tagala Talaga, capitalized on her popularity; they are dominated by Filipino love songs. Velasquez began working with foreign songwriters while planning her first regional album Listen Without Prejudice, which according to AllMusic is "oriented towards easy-listening love songs with adventurous, contemporary touches". The album features tracks with syncopated backbeats and hip-hop influences.
During the mid-1990s and the early 2000s, Velasquez's albums consisted primarily of cover versions of international material because of its commercial viability, and Filipinos' preference for American music. According to CNN Philippines, "Regine has a knack for choosing songs which at first, may not fit her, but eventually become her own." Many of her songs, particularly in Retro, Drawn, and R2K contained R&B, soul, and hip-hop elements. Reigne is an OPM album that she described as "songs influenced by the music, artists, and genres that I enjoy listening to," and included tracks that are melancholic, sensual, and poetic. Her crossover to film saw significant use of contemporary love ballads in her catalog of soundtrack themes, describing the music as "straightforward, earnest, and lyrically simple".
Voice and timbre
Velasquez is known for her use of vocal belting, and credits the vocal training she received from her father as a child:
Velasquez is a soprano and is often praised for her range and technical ability. Luciano of CNN Philippines complimented her "trademark and sometimes melismatic vocals" while Gonzales adds her singing is "strong, emotive, and confident". She has often been criticized, however, for the excessive use of belting and oversinging. Gonzales described Velasquez's timbre as "thin, unimpressive and unappealing at times", and said her singing is "aiming for a higher [note], [which] she did all too often". Velasquez said, "I don't mean to make any songs hard. It's just that when I'm on stage, with the adrenaline rush and all, you get excited. I do try to hold back [because] otherwise I'd be screaming the whole show, that's not good."
Legacy and influence
Velasquez's vocal style and singing ability have significantly impacted Philippine popular and contemporary music. Critics have called her "Asia's songbird" and she is often cited as one of Filipino music's most influential artists. According to Allan Policarpio of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, "Regine needed only to open her mouth and that celebrated voice would come out. She could sing seated, lying down or hoisted up in the air with a harness—no problem. And even when she was so sick she couldn't speak, she could still sing." Velasquez has also been recognized for playing a pivotal role in creating the "blue print" for becoming a "singing icon". Many critics complimented her work, often singling out Velasquez's influence. Luciano, writing for CNN Philippines, described her "legitimacy" as "enough to secure a space in pop culture" and said her musical career "continues to influence generations of OPM patrons and songbird wannabes up to this day", while according to The Philippine Star, "If one were to go by records and distinctions made, Regine Velasquez would win, hands down". She has often been regarded as a powerhouse for her performances and musical content.
Velasquez's use of vocal belting has been subject to scrutiny because young singers, including contestants on television talent shows, have imitated her singing technique. According to Nestor Torre of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, "The popularity of 'birit' [belting] started here with the amateur singing contests ... Then came Regine Velasquez, who also launched her own singing career the 'birit' way ... Trouble is, Regine's belting became so popular that her successor[s] ... imitated her." Manila Bulletin said, "Most of our top selling new female singers are still and mere parrots of [Velasquez] in terms of vocal acrobatics and predilection to show off her high range". According to Boy Abunda, "Most of the young female singers currently making waves in the industry are cut from the same biritera [belter] cloth as Regine Velasquez."
Filipino pop, hip-hop, and R&B artists Aicelle Santos, Charice, Erik Santos, Jona Viray, Julie Anne San Jose, KZ Tandingan, Kyla, Mark Bautista, Morissette Amon, , and Yeng Constantino—among others—have cited Velasquez as an influence.
Velasquez's music has broadly influenced a younger generation of performers from reality television talent shows; Sarah Geronimo has stated Velasquez made her realize the value of hard work while Rachelle Ann Go and Angeline Quinto have both said Velasquez inspired them during their early years as aspiring singers. American Idol finalists Ramiele Malubay, Thia Megia, and Jessica Sanchez have expressed a desire to emulate Velasquez.
Velasquez has also been credited for her work and performances with international artists, including 98 Degrees, Alicia Keys, Coco Lee, Peabo Bryson, and Stephen Bishop. French composer Michel Legrand described working with Velasquez, saying "It's tough to sing a song after Barbra Streisand, I will tell you. But to sing with Regine is, I'm in heaven. She sings so well, she has such an extraordinary technical voice ... sensitive voice and talented expression." American singer Brian McKnight who co-headlined a concert with Velasquez, has complimented her singing, stating; "I got to sing onstage with Regine and it was one of the best experiences ever because she's one of the best singers I've ever heard."
Other activities
Philanthropy
Velasquez has been involved with several charitable organizations. She became associated with the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in 2001 and worked on a documentary titled Speak Your Mind, which is about homeless children in Payatas, Quezon City, one of the Philippines' largest open dumpsites. The program was nominated for the UNICEF Child Rights Award.
One of Velasquez's highest-profile benefit concert appearances was in One Night with Regine, which she performed at the National Museum of the Philippines in support of the Bantay Bata Foundation, a child welfare organization. In 2005, Velasquez appeared in an episode of the lifestyle talk show Mel and Joey, and donated proceeds from an auction of her gowns to the GMA Kapuso Foundation's Christmas Give-a-Gift project. In 2009, Velasquez headlined a benefit television special called After The Rain: A Hopeful Christmas in the aftermath of Typhoon Ketsana (Ondoy). In October 2010, she became an ambassador for Operation Smile, a nonprofit organization that provides cleft lip and palate repair surgery to children worldwide. She recorded the theme "S.M.I.L.E.", which was written for the project and appears on her studio album Fantasy. In November 2013, proceeds from the sales of her album Hulog Ka Ng Langit were donated to the Philippine Red Cross in support of the Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda) relief.
Product endorsements
Velasquez has been involved in brand marketing initiatives for American fast food restaurant chains Wendy's and KFC. She has signed advertising deals with several other brands, including Digitel, Lux, Nestlé Philippines, Nokia, and Smart Communications. Throughout 2005, she appeared as the face of the Department of Tourism's travel promotion campaign. In August 2009, Velasquez released a line of women's perfume called "Reigne" and "Songbird" for the clothing brand Bench. In February 2020, she collaborated with beauty brand BYS and launched a line of makeup called "Reigne".
Personal life
Velasquez announced her relationship with singer-songwriter Ogie Alcasid in an article published by Yes! magazine in June 2007. On August 8, 2010, the couple announced their engagement, and in December, they married in Nasugbu, Batangas. She gave birth to their son, Nathaniel James, via caesarean section on November 8, 2011.
Velasquez is a born-again Christian. In March 2016, she said she had suffered a miscarriage prior to her marriage to Alcasid and cited it as her reason for converting. She also said she had been attending Victory Christian Fellowship.
Awards and recognition
Throughout her career, Velasquez has received many honors and awards, including MTV Asia's Favorite Artist Philippines in 2002 and 2003, and the Aliw Awards' Entertainer of the Year in 2007, 2009, and 2019. She has been the recipient of lifetime achievement awards, including the Awit Awards Dangal ng Musikang Pilipino, the Star Awards for Music's Pilita Corrales Lifetime Achievement and Natatanging Alagad Ng Musika, FAMAS Awards' Golden Artist, and Myx Music's Magna Award.
Velasquez has sold more than seven million records in the Philippines and 1.5 million in Asia, making her the biggest-selling Filipino artist of all time. Eight of her albums have each sold over 200,000 copies. She was ranked first in Female Networks 2011 countdown of the "Top 25 Best Filipina Singers" and was included in Top 10 Asia magazine's list of "Ten Most Admired Female Singers in Asia". Velasquez has also received recognition for her work in television and film, such as the Box Office Queen award in 2002, the Star Awards for Television's Best Actress in 2002, and the Golden Screen Awards' Best Actress in 2013. She has received a total of 21 Awit Awards, 22 Box Office Entertainment Awards, 15 Aliw Awards, and 12 Star Awards for Music. In December 2007, Velasquez was honored with a star on the Philippines' Walk of Fame.
Discography
Regine (1987)
Nineteen '90 (1990)
Tagala Talaga (1991)
Reason Enough (1993)
Listen Without Prejudice (1994)
My Love Emotion (1995)
Retro (1997)
Drawn (1998)
R2K (1999)
Reigne (2001)
Covers, Vol. 1 (2004)
Covers, Vol. 2 (2006)
Low Key (2008)
Fantasy (2010)
Hulog Ka Ng Langit (2013)
R3.0 (2017)
Filmography
Wanted Perfect Mother (1996)
Do Re Mi (1996)
Dahil May Isang Ikaw (1998)
Kailangan Ko'y Ikaw (2000)
Pangako Ikaw Lang (2001)
Ikaw Lamang Hanggang Ngayon (2002)
Pangarap Ko Ang Ibigin Ka (2003)
Till I Met You (2006)
Paano Kita Iibigin (2007)
Of All The Things (2012)
Mrs. Recto (2015)
Yours Truly, Shirley (2019)
Concerts
Headlining concerts
Narito Ako! (1990)
In Season (1991)
Music and Me (1993)
Isang Pasasalamat (1996)
Retro (1997)
Drawn (1998)
R2K The Concert (2000)
Songbird Sings the Classics (2001)
R-15 (2001)
One Night with Regine (2002)
Reigning Still (2004)
Twenty (2006)
Silver (2013)
R3.0 (2017)
Freedom (2021)
Co-headlining concerts
Power of Two (with Kuh Ledesma) (1996)
Celebration of Love (with Peabo Bryson and Jeffrey Osborne) (2000)
Independent Women (with Jaya) (2001)
Two for the Knight (with Brian McKnight) (2002)
Songbird Sings Legrand (with Michel Legrand) (2003)
Martin & Regine: The World Concert (with Martin Nievera) (2003)
The Songbird & The Songwriter (with Ogie Alcasid) (2004)
Queens on Fire (with Pops Fernandez) (2005)
Iconic (with Sharon Cuneta) (2019)
Unified (with Sarah Geronimo) (2020)
Concert residencies
Regine at the Movies (2001; 2018)
Songbird Sings (2002)
Songbird Sings Streisand (2003)
Reflections (2005)
Regine at the Theater (2015)
See also
List of best-selling albums in the Philippines
List of Filipino singers
List of Filipino actresses
Music of the Philippines
Philippine Association of the Record Industry
Notes
References
Citations
Book sources
External links
1970 births
Intercontinental Broadcasting Corporation personalities
Universal Records (Philippines) artists
Filipino dance musicians
Filipino women pop singers
Filipino record producers
Filipino Protestants
Filipino Christians
Filipino television actresses
Filipino film actresses
English-language singers from the Philippines
Living people
People from Tondo, Manila
Singers from Manila
Actresses from Manila
Tagalog people
Filipino sopranos
ABS-CBN personalities
GMA Network personalities
TV5 (Philippine TV network) personalities
21st-century Filipino women singers
Women record producers | false | [
"Longhorn Records was an American country music record label based in Dallas, Texas. The label was founded in September, 1957. Dewey Groom acquired the local Dallas label in 1960 in order to further promote acts that were appearing at the Longhorn Ballroom. Bob Wills made his last recordings with the Texas Playboys for Longhorn in 1964 and 1965. Wills made another session with Longhorn, post Playboys, in which the label allowed Wills to make an album of pure folk music, something Wills had long wanted to do but which had never been supported by any of his previous record labels. One of Longhorn's biggest successes was by Phil Baugh, whose song \"Country Guitar\" appeared at #16 on the Country singles chart, and the accompanying album reach #4 on Billboard's Top Country Albums. Groom closed the label in 1969 in order to devote more of his energies into the Ballroom.\n\nArtists\n Clay Allen\n Phil Baugh\n Rozena Eads\n Al Gliva\n Billy Gray\n Janet McBride\n Vern Stovall\n Bob Wills\n\nReferences\n\n \nRecord labels established in 1957\nRecord labels disestablished in 1969\n1957 establishments in Texas\n1969 disestablishments in Texas\nAmerican country music record labels",
"Andrea Demirović (; born 17 June 1985), also known as simply Andrea, is a Montenegrin singer and a student of the Cetinje Music Academy – Music Pedagogy.\n\nDemirović was born in Podgorica, Montenegro (then part of SFR Yugoslavia). Her breakthrough came at the Sunčane Skale festival in 2002. She then had considerable successes at regional festivals, including the Serbo-Montenegrin and Montenegrin national finals for selecting the Eurovision Song Contest entry. Her first album, titled \"Andrea\", was released in 2006, under the City Records label. Her follow-up album is due for release later in 2009, and the first single from the new album is \"The Queen of the Night\", a cover of Mirela's Misión Eurovisión 2007 song.\n\nIn 2015, she took part in Odbrojavanje za Beč (Countdown to Vienna), the Serbian national final for the Eurovision Song Contest 2015 but did not win. The same year, she announced the Montenegrin votes at the contest.\n\nEurovision 2009 \nOn 23 January 2009 it was revealed that Andrea would represent Montenegro at the Eurovision Song Contest 2009 in Moscow, Russia. She was the first female singer to represent the nation at the contest and performed the song Just Get Out of My Life. It was the opening song in the first semi-final on 12 May, however it failed to win a place in the final.\n\nOther works \nIn 2021, Andrea made a duet with Bojan Jovović in ballad the Spring.\n\nExternal links \n https://web.archive.org/web/20090206121826/http://www.limark.net/html/index.php?categoryid=3&langid=1\n Video for The Queen of the Night\n Video for Oblak od Ljubavi\n Video for Nisi ti Kriv\n\n1985 births\nLiving people\nMusicians from Podgorica\n21st-century Montenegrin women singers\nEurovision Song Contest entrants for Montenegro\nEurovision Song Contest entrants of 2009"
]
|
[
"Ode to Billie Joe",
"Listener and author views on the story told in the song"
]
| C_65b906f192a44a1585be87b62bc41f01_0 | What were the listeners views on the song? | 1 | What were the listeners views on Ode to Billie Joe? | Ode to Billie Joe | Questions arose among listeners: what did Billie Joe and his girlfriend throw off the Tallahatchie Bridge, and why did Billie Joe commit suicide? Speculation ran rampant after the song hit the airwaves. Gentry said in a November 1967 interview that it was the question most asked of her by everyone she met. She named flowers, an engagement ring, a draft card, a bottle of LSD pills, and an aborted baby as the most often guessed items. Although she knew definitely what the item was, she would not reveal it, saying only "Suppose it was a wedding ring." "It's in there for two reasons," she said. "First, it locks up a definite relationship between Billie Joe and the girl telling the story, the girl at the table. Second, the fact that Billie Joe was seen throwing something off the bridge - no matter what it was - provides a possible motivation as to why he jumped off the bridge the next day." When Herman Raucher met Gentry in preparation for writing a novel and screenplay based on the song, she said that she had no idea why Billie Joe killed himself. Gentry has, however, commented elsewhere on the song, saying that its real theme was indifference: Those questions are of secondary importance in my mind. The story of Billie Joe has two more interesting underlying themes. First, the illustration of a group of people's reactions to the life and death of Billie Joe, and its subsequent effect on their lives, is made. Second, the obvious gap between the girl and her mother is shown when both women experience a common loss (first Billie Joe, and later, Papa), and yet Mama and the girl are unable to recognize their mutual loss or share their grief. The bridge mentioned in this song collapsed in June 1972. It crossed the Tallahatchie River at Money, about ten miles (16 km) north of Greenwood, Mississippi, and has since been replaced. The November 10, 1967, issue of Life Magazine contained a photo of Gentry crossing the original bridge. CANNOTANSWER | Questions arose among listeners: what did Billie Joe and his girlfriend throw off the Tallahatchie Bridge, and why did Billie Joe commit suicide? | "Ode to Billie Joe" is a song by American singer-songwriter Bobbie Gentry released by Capitol Records in July 1967, and later used as the title-track of her debut album. Five weeks after its release, the song topped Billboard's Pop singles chart. It also appeared in the top 10 of the Adult Contemporary and Hot R&B singles charts, and in the top 20 of the Hot Country Songs list.
The song takes the form of a first-person narrative performed over sparse acoustic guitar accompaniment with strings in the background. It tells of a rural Mississippi family's reaction to the news of the suicide of Billie Joe McAllister, a local boy to whom the daughter (and narrator) is connected. The song received widespread attention, leaving its audience intrigued as to what the narrator and Billie Joe threw off the Tallahatchie Bridge. Gentry later clarified that she intended the song to portray the family's indifference to the suicide in what she deemed "a study in unconscious cruelty", while she remarked the object thrown was not relevant to the message.
"Ode to Billie Joe" was nominated for eight Grammy Awards; Gentry and arranger Jimmie Haskell won three between them. Gentry's writing was adapted for the 1976 film Ode to Billy Joe. The song appeared on Rolling Stone's lists, 500 Greatest Songs of All Time and Greatest Country Songs, while Pitchfork featured it on their 200 Best Songs of the 1960s list.
Background and recording
Singer-songwriter Bobbie Gentry was born in Chickasaw County, Mississippi. After her parents had divorced, she continued to live there with her paternal grandparents. At age 13, Gentry moved to California to live with her mother. She graduated from high school and entered UCLA as a philosophy major, before transferring to the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music. After she met Jody Reynolds at one of his concerts, Gentry took part in a recording session with him to sing two duets. Singer-songwriter Jim Ford introduced Gentry to labels and music publishers. Ford took Gentry to Del-Fi Records, where he presented "Ode to Billie Joe" to the label's A&R man Barry White. Ford claimed credit for writing the song, telling White he had brought Gentry along because he felt he could not sing it himself. The composition impressed White, and Ford expressed an interest in selling it to him. White took the song to Del-Fi Records president Bob Keane, who did not like it and refused to make a purchase. Ford later claimed Gentry "stole the song" from him.
Capitol Records producer Kelly Gordon received Gentry's demo for "Mississippi Delta". Gordon liked it, and he asked for a B-side for the song. Gentry planned to sell "Ode to Billie Joe" to Capitol Records, and she decided that recording the demo herself was cheaper than using a professional singer. The song's recording happened soon after Gentry's session that yielded "Mississippi Delta" in February 1967, while Bobby Paris assisted her in the studio in exchange for guitar session work on some of his own studio recordings. Gentry intended to have Lou Rawls record the song. Larry Shayne, Gentry's publisher, warned Gordon against adding a rhythm section to the track. Shayne was a friend of David Axelrod, Capitol Record's main A&R man. He sold Axelrod the song's recording rights for $10,000 (). Gordon liked Gentry's vocals on the demo, but he decided to add a sparse instrumental arrangement to the recording. Gordon called Jimmie Haskell, who prepared a string arrangement with four violins and two cellos. Jesse Erlich played one cello like an upright bass. Haskell felt the song sounded like a film and decided to write the arrangement as if it was a score. Gordon then overdubbed Gentry's recording with the strings. He determined that "Ode to Billie Joe" was going to be used for the A-side of the single.
Haskell later claimed that a seven-minute version of the song existed, but that Gordon cut it to under five minutes to favor radio play. The existence of a seven-minute version has not been confirmed. Meanwhile, a manuscript of a draft of the song donated by Gentry to the University of Mississippi contained stanzas that were not included on the final recording.
Content
"Ode to Billie Joe" takes the form of a first-person narrative by the young daughter of a Mississippi Delta family. It offers fragments of dinnertime conversation on the day that a local boy, an acquaintance of the narrator, jumped to his death from a nearby bridge. The account is interspersed with everyday, polite, mealtime conversation. The song's last verse conveys the passage of events over the following year.
The song begins on June 3 with the narrator, her brother and her father returning from farming chores to the family house for dinner. After reminding them to clean their feet, the mother announces she received news from Choctaw Ridge: "Billie Joe McAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge." The verse is repeated through the song as the story develops to "heighten the mystery". Unmoved, the father comments that "Billie Joe never had a lick of sense", before asking for the biscuits and adding "there's five more acres in the lower forty, I've got to plow". The brother then expresses his surprise, but continues eating his meal.
The mother notices her daughter is distraught, and is not eating. She mentions the "young preacher" Brother Taylor visited the house earlier and that they would have dinner with him on Sunday. As an afterthought, the mother adds the preacher saw Billie Joe with a girl that "looked a lot" like the daughter, and "she and Billie Joe was throwin' somethin' off the Tallahatchie Bridge". A year later, the brother moves to Tupelo, Mississippi, after he marries, while the father dies of an unnamed virus. Even though she expresses no sadness over her father's death, the daughter notices her mother is still distraught by it. Rather than consoling her, she routinely picks flowers and throws them off the bridge.
The song became a success because it created curiosity in listeners, as Gentry did not mention what was thrown off of the bridge or why Billie Joe committed suicide. It features perfect rhymes from the first to the sixth line of every verse. Meanwhile, the fifth and sixth lines of the song repeat the rhyme of "ridge" and "bridge" in every stanza. The composition does not have a chorus. The musical phrases begin with pickup notes, while melismas and downbeats are used for the rhymes.
Gentry's comments on the lyrics
In August 1967, Gentry told the Los Angeles Times she wanted to show "people's lack of ability" to empathize with others' "tragedy". She pointed at the mother, noticing but not understanding her daughter's lack of appetite, while later the daughter is unaware of the similarity of her mother's behavior after the father dies. Gentry explained that both characters had "isolated themselves in their own personal tragedies", and remained unconcerned for the others. The songwriter compared the end product to a play. On the object thrown off the Tallahatchie Bridge, she commented that the audience had found more meanings than she had intended. Gentry mentioned the theories she had heard at the time included a baby, a wedding ring, or flowers. While she indicated that what happened at the bridge was the motivation behind Billie Joe's suicide, she had left that open to the listener's interpretation. Gentry said she had no answer and her sole motivation was to show "people's apathy".
In an interview with the Associated Press in November 1967, Gentry called the song "a study in unconscious cruelty". Gentry told the news agency that audiences still asked her what was thrown off the bridge rather than noticing "the thoughtlessness of people expressed in the song", adding that what had been thrown was unimportant. She said people suggested to her it was a draft card, or a bottle of LSD pills. The songwriter clarified she knew what it was, but said she considered it irrelevant to the story, and repeated that she had deliberately left interpretation open. Gentry remarked the song's message revolved around the "nonchalant way" the family discussed the suicide and that what was thrown off of the bridge was included because it established a relationship between Billie Joe and the daughter, and provided "a possible motivation for his suicide the next day". The interview ended with Gentry's suggestion that it could have been a wedding ring. Gentry told The New York Times in 1969: "I had my own idea what it was while I was writing it, but it's not that important. Actually it was something symbolic. But I've never told anyone what it was, not even my own dear mother."
Release and reception
The single "Mississippi Delta"-"Ode to Billie Joe" was released in July 1967. Paris was given a co-producer credit on the single with Gordon. Five weeks after its release, it reached number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. By the sixth week, the single had sold one million copies. It also appeared at number 7 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary chart, at number 8 on the Hot R&B singles chart, and number 17 on the Hot Country Songs chart. Billboard's year-end chart placed the song at number 3, while Canada's RPM placed it at number 16.
In Australia, the song reached number 4 on Go-Set's National Top 40. Meanwhile, it peaked at number 6 on the Irish Singles Chart. On the New Zealand Listener chart, the song reached number 3.
In November 1967, Life published an article about the song's success after a visit with Gentry and her parents in Mississippi. Gentry showed the journalists a bridge in Money, Mississippi, that featured the characteristics of the one she wrote about as she clarified: "this is what I had in mind" she continued: "The river isn't very deep here, but the current is strong." Gentry was photographed crossing the bridge for the story. The single was nominated in eight categories at the 10th Annual Grammy Awards and won three: Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, Best New Artist, and Best Arrangement, Instrumental and Vocals. By 1969, Gentry estimated the single had sold three million copies.
Gentry sued Paris to have his co-producer credit removed, claiming she was the recording's sole producer. Paris's credit was removed on the album release. Soon after she left Capitol Records, Paris sued Gentry for $100,000 and the label for $300,000 in punitive damages for failing to pay him one fifth of the royalties from the song's sales. Gentry and Paris testified against one another in the 1973 case. The jury awarded Paris one percent of the total royalties from "Ode to Billie Joe" and "Mississippi Delta", that amounted to $32,277.40 (). Gentry told Penny Anderson of the New York Times in 1974 that she originally produced "Ode To Billie Joe" and most of her recordings. She added "but a woman doesn't stand much chance in a recording studio. A staff producer's name was nearly always put on the records." Gentry expressed the desire to gain more control over the production of her songs and recordings.
Critical reception
The staff of Billboard welcomed the release as "fascinating material and performance" with a "potent lyric content that is worth the unusual length of the disk". The Los Angeles Times critic Leonard Feather considered it an "aural parallel" to the film In the Heat of the Night (1967), deeming them both "sardonic, knife-edge studies of human nature". Feather concluded Gentry added "a durable new dimension" to American "contemporary folklore". The New York Times commented on the success of the song four weeks after its release. Critic John S. Wilson felt the song was "a most unlikely candidate for success", as it was "long by radio programming standards" and he considered the topic "nothing startling, nothing strange, nothing particularly original". Wilson remarked the lyrics had "something to say about indifference ... which, after a couple of clarifying hearings, drifts off into the midst of forgotten poesy".
Nixon Smiley wrote in his piece for the Miami Herald that "not since William Faulkner wrote As I Lay Dying has anything come out of Mississippi as earthy and as fundamental" as 'Ode to Billie Joe'". Smiley determined that upon "casual hearing there seems to be nothing great about the song, the lyrics or the rendition", but that it "captivated both the young and old". He noted disc jockeys were "surprised, even flabbergasted", and "sometimes disgusted".
The Montgomery Advertiser found the song "hard to classify", and remarked that it "has [a] rhythm and blues beat, and it's clever", and it noted the presence of mystery. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram called it, "One of the most haunting songs of the year." The Honolulu Star-Bulletin wrote that "the lyrics are too much" and that "after a few listenings, the subject matter becomes clear, and the message gets across". The review pointed out that, "musically, the song is as fine as it is lyrically inventive" and that it "grips with heretofore taboo themes".
Legacy
Following the success of the single, Capitol Records received 500,000 pre-orders for Ode to Billie Joe, surpassing the label's record held by the Beatles's Meet the Beatles!. Gentry began receiving offers to make a motion picture based on the film in 1967, but she rejected them, preferring to wait for an offer from a movie maker who would "portray Billie Joe and his girlfriend in a serious, sensitive manner". In 1975, Gentry and her Shayne accepted an offer from Max Baer Jr., who decided to direct the film. Baer said his interest was to have two unknown young people "because the audience has to believe they are Bobbie and Billie Joe". The film would be shot on location in Mississippi with a budget of $1.5 million (equivalent to $ million in ). Warner Bros. commissioned Herman Raucher to write an adaptation of the song for the upcoming film; Raucher's adaptation and novel were both titled Ode to Billy Joe. Gentry was present during the shooting and contributed a musical score. At the time of the production, she told United Press International that the film would "answer many questions left unanswered by the song". The film starred Robby Benson as Billy Joe and Glynnis O'Connor as Bobbie Lee. In the adaptation, the pair throw a rag doll off of the bridge, while a homosexual experience with the owner of the sawmill is established as the reason for Billy Joe's suicide.
"Ode to Billie Joe" reappeared on the charts in 1976. It charted at number 65 on the Billboard Hot 100, and in Canada at numbers 92 and 42 on the RPM Top Singles and Adult Contemporary charts, respectively.
After hearing "Ode to Billie Joe" on the radio, Tony Joe White was inspired to write songs. White felt that his own life experience resembled that of Billie Joe, as he inhabited a similar place during his childhood and he remarked that the song was "real". Soon after, White composed "Polk Salad Annie" (1969). By 1969, Leflore County established a fine of $180 () for people who jumped off of the Tallahatchie Bridge and the other bridges of the area. The county estimated that between 40 and 50 men had jumped off the structure, but none had died. The bridge collapsed in June 1972 after a fire and a new one was built in its place. In 2013, a memorial marker for the song was added south of the new bridge as part of the Mississippi Country Music Trail.
Rolling Stone included "Ode To Billie Joe" at number 419 on its 2003 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list. The publication also listed it at number 47 on its 100 Greatest Country Songs in 2014; Richard Gehr deemed the track a "sultry country blues that drifts downstream on Gentry's ominous acoustic guitar". Meanwhile, Pitchfork placed it at number 144 on its 200 Best Songs of the 1960s list.
Other versions
In August 1967, Margie Singleton released a cover of the song that reached number 40 on Billboard's Hot Country Singles. Ray Bryant's version reached number 89 on Billboard's Hot 100 and number 34 on their Adult Contemporary chart soon after. King Curtis charted with his cover at number 28 on the Billboard Hot 100, also in 1967, and at number 6 on the R&B chart. Also in 1967, Joe Dassin released a cover of the song in French, entitled "Marie-Jeanne". In the song, the main character is a man, while Marie-Jeanne jumps off of the Garonne bridge.
A parody by Bob Dylan entitled "Clothes Line Saga", originally recorded in 1967, was released on the 1975 album The Basement Tapes. It mimicked the conversational style of "Ode to Billie Joe" with lyrics concentrating on routine household chores. The shocking event buried in all the mundane details is a revelation that "The Vice-President's gone mad!." Dylan's song was originally titled "Answer to 'Ode'".
A 2008 episode of Saturday Night Live parodied the song where Kristen Wiig and host Paul Rudd play a married singer-songwriter couple who perform "Ode to Tracking Number". Jill Sobule's album California Years (2009) featured "Where is Bobbie Gentry?", which used the same melody in a lyrical sequel. The narrator, seeking the reclusive Gentry, claims to be the abandoned child of Gentry and Billie Joe. In 2016, Lorrie Morgan covered the song at a slower pace for her 2016 album Letting Go... Slow. Morgan commented on recording the song with producer Richard Landis: "Richard purposely slowed the record down to make the musical passages through there really feel kind of spooky and eerie. Everything just felt so swampy and scary. Everybody has their own interpretation of that song and just what they threw off of the Tallahatchie Bridge."
Chart performance
Bobbie Gentry
Weekly charts
Year-end charts
All-time charts
Other artists
References
Sources
External links
1967 songs
Songs written by Bobbie Gentry
Bobbie Gentry songs
Nancy Wilson (jazz singer) songs
Margie Singleton songs
The Detroit Emeralds songs
Billboard Hot 100 number-one singles
Cashbox number-one singles
RPM Top Singles number-one singles
Grammy Hall of Fame Award recipients
Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance
Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist(s)
Capitol Records singles
1967 debut singles
Teenage tragedy songs
Songs about suicide
Songs about Mississippi
Songs about rivers | false | [
"\"I Am Woman\" is a song by American singer Emmy Meli, released on November 18, 2021, through Arista and Disruptor Records. The song went viral on video sharing app TikTok.\n\nBackground\nEmmy Meli is a singer from California who gained popularity after posting the song to TikTok, where it has over 22 million views. Meli says she wrote the song to \"empower women\" and called seeing the song resonate with listeners \"the most amazing and beautiful thing\" she has experienced.\n\nCommercial performance\nThe song first charted inside the top 75 of the UK Singles Chart at number 67 on 7 January 2022 after amassing a sales total of 5,789 units.\n\nCharts\n\nCertifications\n\nRelease history\n\nReferences\n\n2021 singles\n2021 songs\nArista Records singles\nDisruptor Records singles",
"Invisible is the fifth studio album by Leeland, released on July 22, 2016 through Bethel Music.\n\nCritical reception\n\nCCM Magazine's Matt Conner describes, \"Leeland’s latest proves itself well worth the wait.\" Jonathan J. Francesco, in a NewReleaseToday review, states, \"Leeland has crafted a worship album that should remind artists and listeners alike of what worship music can and should be.\" Chris Major of The Christian Beat writes, \"For listeners wanting a flowing and moving collection of powerful, truth-filled worship music, Leeland's Invisible surpasses expectations.\"\n\nAccolades\nThe song, \"Lion and the Lamb\", was No. 8 on the Worship Leaders Top 20 Songs of 2016 list.\n\nOn August 9, 2017, the Gospel Music Association was announced that the song \"Lion and the Lamb\" would be nominated for a GMA Dove Award in the Song of the Year and Worship Song of the Year categories at the 48th Annual GMA Dove Awards.\n\nTrack listing\n\nCharts\n\nReferences\n\n2016 albums\nLeeland (band) albums"
]
|
[
"Ode to Billie Joe",
"Listener and author views on the story told in the song",
"What were the listeners views on the song?",
"Questions arose among listeners: what did Billie Joe and his girlfriend throw off the Tallahatchie Bridge, and why did Billie Joe commit suicide?"
]
| C_65b906f192a44a1585be87b62bc41f01_0 | What were some other views? | 2 | Besides the listeners views on Ode to Billie Joe, what were some other views? | Ode to Billie Joe | Questions arose among listeners: what did Billie Joe and his girlfriend throw off the Tallahatchie Bridge, and why did Billie Joe commit suicide? Speculation ran rampant after the song hit the airwaves. Gentry said in a November 1967 interview that it was the question most asked of her by everyone she met. She named flowers, an engagement ring, a draft card, a bottle of LSD pills, and an aborted baby as the most often guessed items. Although she knew definitely what the item was, she would not reveal it, saying only "Suppose it was a wedding ring." "It's in there for two reasons," she said. "First, it locks up a definite relationship between Billie Joe and the girl telling the story, the girl at the table. Second, the fact that Billie Joe was seen throwing something off the bridge - no matter what it was - provides a possible motivation as to why he jumped off the bridge the next day." When Herman Raucher met Gentry in preparation for writing a novel and screenplay based on the song, she said that she had no idea why Billie Joe killed himself. Gentry has, however, commented elsewhere on the song, saying that its real theme was indifference: Those questions are of secondary importance in my mind. The story of Billie Joe has two more interesting underlying themes. First, the illustration of a group of people's reactions to the life and death of Billie Joe, and its subsequent effect on their lives, is made. Second, the obvious gap between the girl and her mother is shown when both women experience a common loss (first Billie Joe, and later, Papa), and yet Mama and the girl are unable to recognize their mutual loss or share their grief. The bridge mentioned in this song collapsed in June 1972. It crossed the Tallahatchie River at Money, about ten miles (16 km) north of Greenwood, Mississippi, and has since been replaced. The November 10, 1967, issue of Life Magazine contained a photo of Gentry crossing the original bridge. CANNOTANSWER | She named flowers, an engagement ring, a draft card, a bottle of LSD pills, and an aborted baby as the most often guessed items. | "Ode to Billie Joe" is a song by American singer-songwriter Bobbie Gentry released by Capitol Records in July 1967, and later used as the title-track of her debut album. Five weeks after its release, the song topped Billboard's Pop singles chart. It also appeared in the top 10 of the Adult Contemporary and Hot R&B singles charts, and in the top 20 of the Hot Country Songs list.
The song takes the form of a first-person narrative performed over sparse acoustic guitar accompaniment with strings in the background. It tells of a rural Mississippi family's reaction to the news of the suicide of Billie Joe McAllister, a local boy to whom the daughter (and narrator) is connected. The song received widespread attention, leaving its audience intrigued as to what the narrator and Billie Joe threw off the Tallahatchie Bridge. Gentry later clarified that she intended the song to portray the family's indifference to the suicide in what she deemed "a study in unconscious cruelty", while she remarked the object thrown was not relevant to the message.
"Ode to Billie Joe" was nominated for eight Grammy Awards; Gentry and arranger Jimmie Haskell won three between them. Gentry's writing was adapted for the 1976 film Ode to Billy Joe. The song appeared on Rolling Stone's lists, 500 Greatest Songs of All Time and Greatest Country Songs, while Pitchfork featured it on their 200 Best Songs of the 1960s list.
Background and recording
Singer-songwriter Bobbie Gentry was born in Chickasaw County, Mississippi. After her parents had divorced, she continued to live there with her paternal grandparents. At age 13, Gentry moved to California to live with her mother. She graduated from high school and entered UCLA as a philosophy major, before transferring to the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music. After she met Jody Reynolds at one of his concerts, Gentry took part in a recording session with him to sing two duets. Singer-songwriter Jim Ford introduced Gentry to labels and music publishers. Ford took Gentry to Del-Fi Records, where he presented "Ode to Billie Joe" to the label's A&R man Barry White. Ford claimed credit for writing the song, telling White he had brought Gentry along because he felt he could not sing it himself. The composition impressed White, and Ford expressed an interest in selling it to him. White took the song to Del-Fi Records president Bob Keane, who did not like it and refused to make a purchase. Ford later claimed Gentry "stole the song" from him.
Capitol Records producer Kelly Gordon received Gentry's demo for "Mississippi Delta". Gordon liked it, and he asked for a B-side for the song. Gentry planned to sell "Ode to Billie Joe" to Capitol Records, and she decided that recording the demo herself was cheaper than using a professional singer. The song's recording happened soon after Gentry's session that yielded "Mississippi Delta" in February 1967, while Bobby Paris assisted her in the studio in exchange for guitar session work on some of his own studio recordings. Gentry intended to have Lou Rawls record the song. Larry Shayne, Gentry's publisher, warned Gordon against adding a rhythm section to the track. Shayne was a friend of David Axelrod, Capitol Record's main A&R man. He sold Axelrod the song's recording rights for $10,000 (). Gordon liked Gentry's vocals on the demo, but he decided to add a sparse instrumental arrangement to the recording. Gordon called Jimmie Haskell, who prepared a string arrangement with four violins and two cellos. Jesse Erlich played one cello like an upright bass. Haskell felt the song sounded like a film and decided to write the arrangement as if it was a score. Gordon then overdubbed Gentry's recording with the strings. He determined that "Ode to Billie Joe" was going to be used for the A-side of the single.
Haskell later claimed that a seven-minute version of the song existed, but that Gordon cut it to under five minutes to favor radio play. The existence of a seven-minute version has not been confirmed. Meanwhile, a manuscript of a draft of the song donated by Gentry to the University of Mississippi contained stanzas that were not included on the final recording.
Content
"Ode to Billie Joe" takes the form of a first-person narrative by the young daughter of a Mississippi Delta family. It offers fragments of dinnertime conversation on the day that a local boy, an acquaintance of the narrator, jumped to his death from a nearby bridge. The account is interspersed with everyday, polite, mealtime conversation. The song's last verse conveys the passage of events over the following year.
The song begins on June 3 with the narrator, her brother and her father returning from farming chores to the family house for dinner. After reminding them to clean their feet, the mother announces she received news from Choctaw Ridge: "Billie Joe McAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge." The verse is repeated through the song as the story develops to "heighten the mystery". Unmoved, the father comments that "Billie Joe never had a lick of sense", before asking for the biscuits and adding "there's five more acres in the lower forty, I've got to plow". The brother then expresses his surprise, but continues eating his meal.
The mother notices her daughter is distraught, and is not eating. She mentions the "young preacher" Brother Taylor visited the house earlier and that they would have dinner with him on Sunday. As an afterthought, the mother adds the preacher saw Billie Joe with a girl that "looked a lot" like the daughter, and "she and Billie Joe was throwin' somethin' off the Tallahatchie Bridge". A year later, the brother moves to Tupelo, Mississippi, after he marries, while the father dies of an unnamed virus. Even though she expresses no sadness over her father's death, the daughter notices her mother is still distraught by it. Rather than consoling her, she routinely picks flowers and throws them off the bridge.
The song became a success because it created curiosity in listeners, as Gentry did not mention what was thrown off of the bridge or why Billie Joe committed suicide. It features perfect rhymes from the first to the sixth line of every verse. Meanwhile, the fifth and sixth lines of the song repeat the rhyme of "ridge" and "bridge" in every stanza. The composition does not have a chorus. The musical phrases begin with pickup notes, while melismas and downbeats are used for the rhymes.
Gentry's comments on the lyrics
In August 1967, Gentry told the Los Angeles Times she wanted to show "people's lack of ability" to empathize with others' "tragedy". She pointed at the mother, noticing but not understanding her daughter's lack of appetite, while later the daughter is unaware of the similarity of her mother's behavior after the father dies. Gentry explained that both characters had "isolated themselves in their own personal tragedies", and remained unconcerned for the others. The songwriter compared the end product to a play. On the object thrown off the Tallahatchie Bridge, she commented that the audience had found more meanings than she had intended. Gentry mentioned the theories she had heard at the time included a baby, a wedding ring, or flowers. While she indicated that what happened at the bridge was the motivation behind Billie Joe's suicide, she had left that open to the listener's interpretation. Gentry said she had no answer and her sole motivation was to show "people's apathy".
In an interview with the Associated Press in November 1967, Gentry called the song "a study in unconscious cruelty". Gentry told the news agency that audiences still asked her what was thrown off the bridge rather than noticing "the thoughtlessness of people expressed in the song", adding that what had been thrown was unimportant. She said people suggested to her it was a draft card, or a bottle of LSD pills. The songwriter clarified she knew what it was, but said she considered it irrelevant to the story, and repeated that she had deliberately left interpretation open. Gentry remarked the song's message revolved around the "nonchalant way" the family discussed the suicide and that what was thrown off of the bridge was included because it established a relationship between Billie Joe and the daughter, and provided "a possible motivation for his suicide the next day". The interview ended with Gentry's suggestion that it could have been a wedding ring. Gentry told The New York Times in 1969: "I had my own idea what it was while I was writing it, but it's not that important. Actually it was something symbolic. But I've never told anyone what it was, not even my own dear mother."
Release and reception
The single "Mississippi Delta"-"Ode to Billie Joe" was released in July 1967. Paris was given a co-producer credit on the single with Gordon. Five weeks after its release, it reached number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. By the sixth week, the single had sold one million copies. It also appeared at number 7 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary chart, at number 8 on the Hot R&B singles chart, and number 17 on the Hot Country Songs chart. Billboard's year-end chart placed the song at number 3, while Canada's RPM placed it at number 16.
In Australia, the song reached number 4 on Go-Set's National Top 40. Meanwhile, it peaked at number 6 on the Irish Singles Chart. On the New Zealand Listener chart, the song reached number 3.
In November 1967, Life published an article about the song's success after a visit with Gentry and her parents in Mississippi. Gentry showed the journalists a bridge in Money, Mississippi, that featured the characteristics of the one she wrote about as she clarified: "this is what I had in mind" she continued: "The river isn't very deep here, but the current is strong." Gentry was photographed crossing the bridge for the story. The single was nominated in eight categories at the 10th Annual Grammy Awards and won three: Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, Best New Artist, and Best Arrangement, Instrumental and Vocals. By 1969, Gentry estimated the single had sold three million copies.
Gentry sued Paris to have his co-producer credit removed, claiming she was the recording's sole producer. Paris's credit was removed on the album release. Soon after she left Capitol Records, Paris sued Gentry for $100,000 and the label for $300,000 in punitive damages for failing to pay him one fifth of the royalties from the song's sales. Gentry and Paris testified against one another in the 1973 case. The jury awarded Paris one percent of the total royalties from "Ode to Billie Joe" and "Mississippi Delta", that amounted to $32,277.40 (). Gentry told Penny Anderson of the New York Times in 1974 that she originally produced "Ode To Billie Joe" and most of her recordings. She added "but a woman doesn't stand much chance in a recording studio. A staff producer's name was nearly always put on the records." Gentry expressed the desire to gain more control over the production of her songs and recordings.
Critical reception
The staff of Billboard welcomed the release as "fascinating material and performance" with a "potent lyric content that is worth the unusual length of the disk". The Los Angeles Times critic Leonard Feather considered it an "aural parallel" to the film In the Heat of the Night (1967), deeming them both "sardonic, knife-edge studies of human nature". Feather concluded Gentry added "a durable new dimension" to American "contemporary folklore". The New York Times commented on the success of the song four weeks after its release. Critic John S. Wilson felt the song was "a most unlikely candidate for success", as it was "long by radio programming standards" and he considered the topic "nothing startling, nothing strange, nothing particularly original". Wilson remarked the lyrics had "something to say about indifference ... which, after a couple of clarifying hearings, drifts off into the midst of forgotten poesy".
Nixon Smiley wrote in his piece for the Miami Herald that "not since William Faulkner wrote As I Lay Dying has anything come out of Mississippi as earthy and as fundamental" as 'Ode to Billie Joe'". Smiley determined that upon "casual hearing there seems to be nothing great about the song, the lyrics or the rendition", but that it "captivated both the young and old". He noted disc jockeys were "surprised, even flabbergasted", and "sometimes disgusted".
The Montgomery Advertiser found the song "hard to classify", and remarked that it "has [a] rhythm and blues beat, and it's clever", and it noted the presence of mystery. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram called it, "One of the most haunting songs of the year." The Honolulu Star-Bulletin wrote that "the lyrics are too much" and that "after a few listenings, the subject matter becomes clear, and the message gets across". The review pointed out that, "musically, the song is as fine as it is lyrically inventive" and that it "grips with heretofore taboo themes".
Legacy
Following the success of the single, Capitol Records received 500,000 pre-orders for Ode to Billie Joe, surpassing the label's record held by the Beatles's Meet the Beatles!. Gentry began receiving offers to make a motion picture based on the film in 1967, but she rejected them, preferring to wait for an offer from a movie maker who would "portray Billie Joe and his girlfriend in a serious, sensitive manner". In 1975, Gentry and her Shayne accepted an offer from Max Baer Jr., who decided to direct the film. Baer said his interest was to have two unknown young people "because the audience has to believe they are Bobbie and Billie Joe". The film would be shot on location in Mississippi with a budget of $1.5 million (equivalent to $ million in ). Warner Bros. commissioned Herman Raucher to write an adaptation of the song for the upcoming film; Raucher's adaptation and novel were both titled Ode to Billy Joe. Gentry was present during the shooting and contributed a musical score. At the time of the production, she told United Press International that the film would "answer many questions left unanswered by the song". The film starred Robby Benson as Billy Joe and Glynnis O'Connor as Bobbie Lee. In the adaptation, the pair throw a rag doll off of the bridge, while a homosexual experience with the owner of the sawmill is established as the reason for Billy Joe's suicide.
"Ode to Billie Joe" reappeared on the charts in 1976. It charted at number 65 on the Billboard Hot 100, and in Canada at numbers 92 and 42 on the RPM Top Singles and Adult Contemporary charts, respectively.
After hearing "Ode to Billie Joe" on the radio, Tony Joe White was inspired to write songs. White felt that his own life experience resembled that of Billie Joe, as he inhabited a similar place during his childhood and he remarked that the song was "real". Soon after, White composed "Polk Salad Annie" (1969). By 1969, Leflore County established a fine of $180 () for people who jumped off of the Tallahatchie Bridge and the other bridges of the area. The county estimated that between 40 and 50 men had jumped off the structure, but none had died. The bridge collapsed in June 1972 after a fire and a new one was built in its place. In 2013, a memorial marker for the song was added south of the new bridge as part of the Mississippi Country Music Trail.
Rolling Stone included "Ode To Billie Joe" at number 419 on its 2003 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list. The publication also listed it at number 47 on its 100 Greatest Country Songs in 2014; Richard Gehr deemed the track a "sultry country blues that drifts downstream on Gentry's ominous acoustic guitar". Meanwhile, Pitchfork placed it at number 144 on its 200 Best Songs of the 1960s list.
Other versions
In August 1967, Margie Singleton released a cover of the song that reached number 40 on Billboard's Hot Country Singles. Ray Bryant's version reached number 89 on Billboard's Hot 100 and number 34 on their Adult Contemporary chart soon after. King Curtis charted with his cover at number 28 on the Billboard Hot 100, also in 1967, and at number 6 on the R&B chart. Also in 1967, Joe Dassin released a cover of the song in French, entitled "Marie-Jeanne". In the song, the main character is a man, while Marie-Jeanne jumps off of the Garonne bridge.
A parody by Bob Dylan entitled "Clothes Line Saga", originally recorded in 1967, was released on the 1975 album The Basement Tapes. It mimicked the conversational style of "Ode to Billie Joe" with lyrics concentrating on routine household chores. The shocking event buried in all the mundane details is a revelation that "The Vice-President's gone mad!." Dylan's song was originally titled "Answer to 'Ode'".
A 2008 episode of Saturday Night Live parodied the song where Kristen Wiig and host Paul Rudd play a married singer-songwriter couple who perform "Ode to Tracking Number". Jill Sobule's album California Years (2009) featured "Where is Bobbie Gentry?", which used the same melody in a lyrical sequel. The narrator, seeking the reclusive Gentry, claims to be the abandoned child of Gentry and Billie Joe. In 2016, Lorrie Morgan covered the song at a slower pace for her 2016 album Letting Go... Slow. Morgan commented on recording the song with producer Richard Landis: "Richard purposely slowed the record down to make the musical passages through there really feel kind of spooky and eerie. Everything just felt so swampy and scary. Everybody has their own interpretation of that song and just what they threw off of the Tallahatchie Bridge."
Chart performance
Bobbie Gentry
Weekly charts
Year-end charts
All-time charts
Other artists
References
Sources
External links
1967 songs
Songs written by Bobbie Gentry
Bobbie Gentry songs
Nancy Wilson (jazz singer) songs
Margie Singleton songs
The Detroit Emeralds songs
Billboard Hot 100 number-one singles
Cashbox number-one singles
RPM Top Singles number-one singles
Grammy Hall of Fame Award recipients
Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance
Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist(s)
Capitol Records singles
1967 debut singles
Teenage tragedy songs
Songs about suicide
Songs about Mississippi
Songs about rivers | false | [
"Dissolving views were a popular type of 19th century magic lantern show exhibiting the gradual transition from one projected image to another. The effect is similar to a dissolve in modern filmmaking. Typical examples had landscapes that dissolved from day to night or from summer to winter. The effect was achieved by aligning the projection of two matching images and slowly diminishing the first image while introducing the second image. The subject and the effect of magic lantern dissolving views is similar to the popular Diorama theatre paintings which originated in Paris in 1822. The terms \"dissolving views\", \"dioramic views\", or simply \"diorama\" were often used interchangeably in 19th century magic lantern playbills.\n\nWhile most dissolving views showed landscapes or architecture in different light, the effect was also used in other ways. For instance, Henry Langdon Childe showed groves changing into cathedrals. Another popular example has a soldier sleeping or daydreaming on the battlefield, with dissolving views displaying several of his dreams about home above his head.\n\nInvention\nThe dissolve effect was reportedly invented by phantasmagoria pioneer Paul de Philipsthal while in Ireland in 1804. He thought of using two lanterns to make the spirit of Samuel appear out of a mist in his representation of the Witch of Endor. While working out the desired effect, he got the idea of using the technique with landscapes. Information about De Philipsthal's activities after 1804 is limited, so it remains unclear whether he did incorporate the effect in his shows before other lanternists developed their own versions. Surviving playbills of his shows seem to focus on the exhibition of automata, besides \"experiments in optics, aeronautics, hydraulics and pyrotechnics\". Some bills do not even mention any optical effects. However, an 1812 newspaper about a London performance indicates that De Philipsthal presented \"a series of landscapes (in imitation of moonlight), which insensibly change to various scenes producing a very magical effect\". After a few other lanternists had presented similar shows, De Philipsthal returned from retirement in December 1827 with a show that included \"various splendid views (...) transforming themselves imperceptibly (as if it were by Magic) from one form into another\".\n\nAnother possible inventor is Henry Langdon Childe, who purportedly once worked for De Philipsthal. He is said to have invented the dissolving views in 1807 and to have improved and completed the technique in 1818. However, there's no documentation of Childe performing with a magic lantern before 1827. That year he presented \"Scenic Views, showing the various effects of light and shade\" with a series of subjects that would become classics in many dissolving view shows, while some had already been subjects in the London Diorama the years before.\n\nIn 1826 Scottish magician and ventriloquist M. Henry's introduced what he referred to as \"Beautiful Dissolvent Scenes\", \"imperceptibly changing views\", \"dissolvent views\" and \"Magic Views\" which were created \"by Machinery invented by M. Henry\".\n\nThe oldest known use of the term \"dissolving views\" occurs on playbills for Childe's shows at the Adelphi Theatre in London in 1837. Childe further popularized the dissolving views at the Royal Polytechnic Institution in the early 1840s.\n\nTechnique and equipment\nBiunial lanterns, with two projecting optical sets in one apparatus, were produced to more easily project dissolving views. Probably the first biunial lantern, dubbed the \"Biscenascope\" was made by the optician Mr. Clarke and presented at the Royal Adelaide Gallery in London on December 5, 1840. Later on triple lanterns enabled the addition of more effects, for instance the effect of snow falling while a green landscape dissolves into a snowy winter version.\n\nA mechanical device could be fitted on the magic lantern, which locked up a diaphragm on the first slide slowly whilst a diaphragm on a second slide was opened simultaneously.\n\nPhilip Carpenter's copper-plate printing process, introduced in 1823, may have made it much easier to create duplicate slides with printed outlines that could then be colored differently to create dissolving view slides. However, all early dissolving view slides seem to have been hand-painted.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\nOptical toys",
"In Buddhism, unanswered questions or undeclared questions (Sanskrit: , Pali: - \"unfathomable, unexpounded\") are a set of common philosophical questions that Buddha refused to answer, according to Buddhist texts. The Pali texts give only ten, the Sanskrit texts fourteen questions.\n\nFourteen questions\n1. Is the world eternal?\n\n2. ...or not?\n\n3. ...or both?\n\n4. ...or neither?\n\n(Pali texts omit \"both\" and \"neither\")\n\n5. Is the world finite?\n\n6. ...or not?\n\n7. ...or both?\n\n8. ...or neither?\n\n(Pali texts omit \"both\" and \"neither\")\n\n9. Is the self identical with the body?\n\n10. ...or is it different from the body?\n\n11. Does the Tathagata (Buddha) exist after death?\n\n12. ...or not?\n\n13. ...or both?\n\n14. ...or neither?\n\nPali Canon\nMajjhima Nikaya 63 and 72 in the Pali Canon contain a list of ten unanswered questions about certain views (ditthi):\n\nThe world is eternal.\nThe world is not eternal.\nThe world is (spatially) infinite.\nThe world is not (spatially) infinite.\nThe being imbued with a life force is identical with the body.\nThe being imbued with a life force is not identical with the body.\nThe Tathagata (a perfectly enlightened being) exists after death.\nThe Tathagata does not exist after death.\nThe Tathagata both exists and does not exist after death.\nThe Tathagata neither exists nor does not exist after death.\n\nSabbasava-Sutta\nThe Sabbasava Sutta (Majjhima Nikaya 2) also mentions 16 questions which are seen as \"unwise reflection\" and lead to attachment to views relating to a self.\n\nWhat am I?\nHow am I?\nAm I?\nAm I not?\nDid I exist in the past?\nDid I not exist in the past?\nWhat was I in the past?\nHow was I in the past?\nHaving been what, did I become what in the past?\nShall I exist in future?\nShall I not exist in future?\nWhat shall I be in future?\nHow shall I be in future?\nHaving been what, shall I become what in future?\nWhence came this person?\nWhither will he go?\n\nThe Buddha states that it is unwise to be attached to both views of having and perceiving a self and views about not having a self. Any view which sees the self as \"permanent, stable, everlasting, unchanging, remaining the same for ever and ever\" is \"becoming enmeshed in views, a jungle of views, a wilderness of views; scuffling in views, the agitation (struggle) of views, the fetter of views.\"\n\nSee also\nNoble Silence\nSimilarities between Pyrrhonism and Buddhism\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nKaccayanagotta Sutta: To Kaccayana Gotta (on Right View)\nCula-Malunkyovada Sutta: The Shorter Instructions to Malunkya\nAggi-Vacchagotta Sutta: To Vacchagotta on Fire\nPeter Della Santina, The Tree of Enlightenment: An Introduction to the Major Traditions of Buddhism, Philosophy and Psychology in the Abhidharma\nText of the Cula Malunkyaputta Sutta\n\nFurther reading\nKarunadasa, Yakupitiyage (2007). The Unanswered Questions: Why were They Unanswered? A Re-examination of the Textual Data, Pacific World: Third Series 9, 3-31 \nNicholson, Hugh (2012). Unanswered Questions and the Limits of Knowledge, Journal of Indian Philosophy 40 (5), 533-552\n\nBuddhist cosmology"
]
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[
"Ode to Billie Joe",
"Listener and author views on the story told in the song",
"What were the listeners views on the song?",
"Questions arose among listeners: what did Billie Joe and his girlfriend throw off the Tallahatchie Bridge, and why did Billie Joe commit suicide?",
"What were some other views?",
"She named flowers, an engagement ring, a draft card, a bottle of LSD pills, and an aborted baby as the most often guessed items."
]
| C_65b906f192a44a1585be87b62bc41f01_0 | What were the author views on the story? | 3 | What were the author views on the story of Billie Joe? | Ode to Billie Joe | Questions arose among listeners: what did Billie Joe and his girlfriend throw off the Tallahatchie Bridge, and why did Billie Joe commit suicide? Speculation ran rampant after the song hit the airwaves. Gentry said in a November 1967 interview that it was the question most asked of her by everyone she met. She named flowers, an engagement ring, a draft card, a bottle of LSD pills, and an aborted baby as the most often guessed items. Although she knew definitely what the item was, she would not reveal it, saying only "Suppose it was a wedding ring." "It's in there for two reasons," she said. "First, it locks up a definite relationship between Billie Joe and the girl telling the story, the girl at the table. Second, the fact that Billie Joe was seen throwing something off the bridge - no matter what it was - provides a possible motivation as to why he jumped off the bridge the next day." When Herman Raucher met Gentry in preparation for writing a novel and screenplay based on the song, she said that she had no idea why Billie Joe killed himself. Gentry has, however, commented elsewhere on the song, saying that its real theme was indifference: Those questions are of secondary importance in my mind. The story of Billie Joe has two more interesting underlying themes. First, the illustration of a group of people's reactions to the life and death of Billie Joe, and its subsequent effect on their lives, is made. Second, the obvious gap between the girl and her mother is shown when both women experience a common loss (first Billie Joe, and later, Papa), and yet Mama and the girl are unable to recognize their mutual loss or share their grief. The bridge mentioned in this song collapsed in June 1972. It crossed the Tallahatchie River at Money, about ten miles (16 km) north of Greenwood, Mississippi, and has since been replaced. The November 10, 1967, issue of Life Magazine contained a photo of Gentry crossing the original bridge. CANNOTANSWER | Although she knew definitely what the item was, she would not reveal it, saying only "Suppose it was a wedding ring. | "Ode to Billie Joe" is a song by American singer-songwriter Bobbie Gentry released by Capitol Records in July 1967, and later used as the title-track of her debut album. Five weeks after its release, the song topped Billboard's Pop singles chart. It also appeared in the top 10 of the Adult Contemporary and Hot R&B singles charts, and in the top 20 of the Hot Country Songs list.
The song takes the form of a first-person narrative performed over sparse acoustic guitar accompaniment with strings in the background. It tells of a rural Mississippi family's reaction to the news of the suicide of Billie Joe McAllister, a local boy to whom the daughter (and narrator) is connected. The song received widespread attention, leaving its audience intrigued as to what the narrator and Billie Joe threw off the Tallahatchie Bridge. Gentry later clarified that she intended the song to portray the family's indifference to the suicide in what she deemed "a study in unconscious cruelty", while she remarked the object thrown was not relevant to the message.
"Ode to Billie Joe" was nominated for eight Grammy Awards; Gentry and arranger Jimmie Haskell won three between them. Gentry's writing was adapted for the 1976 film Ode to Billy Joe. The song appeared on Rolling Stone's lists, 500 Greatest Songs of All Time and Greatest Country Songs, while Pitchfork featured it on their 200 Best Songs of the 1960s list.
Background and recording
Singer-songwriter Bobbie Gentry was born in Chickasaw County, Mississippi. After her parents had divorced, she continued to live there with her paternal grandparents. At age 13, Gentry moved to California to live with her mother. She graduated from high school and entered UCLA as a philosophy major, before transferring to the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music. After she met Jody Reynolds at one of his concerts, Gentry took part in a recording session with him to sing two duets. Singer-songwriter Jim Ford introduced Gentry to labels and music publishers. Ford took Gentry to Del-Fi Records, where he presented "Ode to Billie Joe" to the label's A&R man Barry White. Ford claimed credit for writing the song, telling White he had brought Gentry along because he felt he could not sing it himself. The composition impressed White, and Ford expressed an interest in selling it to him. White took the song to Del-Fi Records president Bob Keane, who did not like it and refused to make a purchase. Ford later claimed Gentry "stole the song" from him.
Capitol Records producer Kelly Gordon received Gentry's demo for "Mississippi Delta". Gordon liked it, and he asked for a B-side for the song. Gentry planned to sell "Ode to Billie Joe" to Capitol Records, and she decided that recording the demo herself was cheaper than using a professional singer. The song's recording happened soon after Gentry's session that yielded "Mississippi Delta" in February 1967, while Bobby Paris assisted her in the studio in exchange for guitar session work on some of his own studio recordings. Gentry intended to have Lou Rawls record the song. Larry Shayne, Gentry's publisher, warned Gordon against adding a rhythm section to the track. Shayne was a friend of David Axelrod, Capitol Record's main A&R man. He sold Axelrod the song's recording rights for $10,000 (). Gordon liked Gentry's vocals on the demo, but he decided to add a sparse instrumental arrangement to the recording. Gordon called Jimmie Haskell, who prepared a string arrangement with four violins and two cellos. Jesse Erlich played one cello like an upright bass. Haskell felt the song sounded like a film and decided to write the arrangement as if it was a score. Gordon then overdubbed Gentry's recording with the strings. He determined that "Ode to Billie Joe" was going to be used for the A-side of the single.
Haskell later claimed that a seven-minute version of the song existed, but that Gordon cut it to under five minutes to favor radio play. The existence of a seven-minute version has not been confirmed. Meanwhile, a manuscript of a draft of the song donated by Gentry to the University of Mississippi contained stanzas that were not included on the final recording.
Content
"Ode to Billie Joe" takes the form of a first-person narrative by the young daughter of a Mississippi Delta family. It offers fragments of dinnertime conversation on the day that a local boy, an acquaintance of the narrator, jumped to his death from a nearby bridge. The account is interspersed with everyday, polite, mealtime conversation. The song's last verse conveys the passage of events over the following year.
The song begins on June 3 with the narrator, her brother and her father returning from farming chores to the family house for dinner. After reminding them to clean their feet, the mother announces she received news from Choctaw Ridge: "Billie Joe McAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge." The verse is repeated through the song as the story develops to "heighten the mystery". Unmoved, the father comments that "Billie Joe never had a lick of sense", before asking for the biscuits and adding "there's five more acres in the lower forty, I've got to plow". The brother then expresses his surprise, but continues eating his meal.
The mother notices her daughter is distraught, and is not eating. She mentions the "young preacher" Brother Taylor visited the house earlier and that they would have dinner with him on Sunday. As an afterthought, the mother adds the preacher saw Billie Joe with a girl that "looked a lot" like the daughter, and "she and Billie Joe was throwin' somethin' off the Tallahatchie Bridge". A year later, the brother moves to Tupelo, Mississippi, after he marries, while the father dies of an unnamed virus. Even though she expresses no sadness over her father's death, the daughter notices her mother is still distraught by it. Rather than consoling her, she routinely picks flowers and throws them off the bridge.
The song became a success because it created curiosity in listeners, as Gentry did not mention what was thrown off of the bridge or why Billie Joe committed suicide. It features perfect rhymes from the first to the sixth line of every verse. Meanwhile, the fifth and sixth lines of the song repeat the rhyme of "ridge" and "bridge" in every stanza. The composition does not have a chorus. The musical phrases begin with pickup notes, while melismas and downbeats are used for the rhymes.
Gentry's comments on the lyrics
In August 1967, Gentry told the Los Angeles Times she wanted to show "people's lack of ability" to empathize with others' "tragedy". She pointed at the mother, noticing but not understanding her daughter's lack of appetite, while later the daughter is unaware of the similarity of her mother's behavior after the father dies. Gentry explained that both characters had "isolated themselves in their own personal tragedies", and remained unconcerned for the others. The songwriter compared the end product to a play. On the object thrown off the Tallahatchie Bridge, she commented that the audience had found more meanings than she had intended. Gentry mentioned the theories she had heard at the time included a baby, a wedding ring, or flowers. While she indicated that what happened at the bridge was the motivation behind Billie Joe's suicide, she had left that open to the listener's interpretation. Gentry said she had no answer and her sole motivation was to show "people's apathy".
In an interview with the Associated Press in November 1967, Gentry called the song "a study in unconscious cruelty". Gentry told the news agency that audiences still asked her what was thrown off the bridge rather than noticing "the thoughtlessness of people expressed in the song", adding that what had been thrown was unimportant. She said people suggested to her it was a draft card, or a bottle of LSD pills. The songwriter clarified she knew what it was, but said she considered it irrelevant to the story, and repeated that she had deliberately left interpretation open. Gentry remarked the song's message revolved around the "nonchalant way" the family discussed the suicide and that what was thrown off of the bridge was included because it established a relationship between Billie Joe and the daughter, and provided "a possible motivation for his suicide the next day". The interview ended with Gentry's suggestion that it could have been a wedding ring. Gentry told The New York Times in 1969: "I had my own idea what it was while I was writing it, but it's not that important. Actually it was something symbolic. But I've never told anyone what it was, not even my own dear mother."
Release and reception
The single "Mississippi Delta"-"Ode to Billie Joe" was released in July 1967. Paris was given a co-producer credit on the single with Gordon. Five weeks after its release, it reached number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. By the sixth week, the single had sold one million copies. It also appeared at number 7 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary chart, at number 8 on the Hot R&B singles chart, and number 17 on the Hot Country Songs chart. Billboard's year-end chart placed the song at number 3, while Canada's RPM placed it at number 16.
In Australia, the song reached number 4 on Go-Set's National Top 40. Meanwhile, it peaked at number 6 on the Irish Singles Chart. On the New Zealand Listener chart, the song reached number 3.
In November 1967, Life published an article about the song's success after a visit with Gentry and her parents in Mississippi. Gentry showed the journalists a bridge in Money, Mississippi, that featured the characteristics of the one she wrote about as she clarified: "this is what I had in mind" she continued: "The river isn't very deep here, but the current is strong." Gentry was photographed crossing the bridge for the story. The single was nominated in eight categories at the 10th Annual Grammy Awards and won three: Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, Best New Artist, and Best Arrangement, Instrumental and Vocals. By 1969, Gentry estimated the single had sold three million copies.
Gentry sued Paris to have his co-producer credit removed, claiming she was the recording's sole producer. Paris's credit was removed on the album release. Soon after she left Capitol Records, Paris sued Gentry for $100,000 and the label for $300,000 in punitive damages for failing to pay him one fifth of the royalties from the song's sales. Gentry and Paris testified against one another in the 1973 case. The jury awarded Paris one percent of the total royalties from "Ode to Billie Joe" and "Mississippi Delta", that amounted to $32,277.40 (). Gentry told Penny Anderson of the New York Times in 1974 that she originally produced "Ode To Billie Joe" and most of her recordings. She added "but a woman doesn't stand much chance in a recording studio. A staff producer's name was nearly always put on the records." Gentry expressed the desire to gain more control over the production of her songs and recordings.
Critical reception
The staff of Billboard welcomed the release as "fascinating material and performance" with a "potent lyric content that is worth the unusual length of the disk". The Los Angeles Times critic Leonard Feather considered it an "aural parallel" to the film In the Heat of the Night (1967), deeming them both "sardonic, knife-edge studies of human nature". Feather concluded Gentry added "a durable new dimension" to American "contemporary folklore". The New York Times commented on the success of the song four weeks after its release. Critic John S. Wilson felt the song was "a most unlikely candidate for success", as it was "long by radio programming standards" and he considered the topic "nothing startling, nothing strange, nothing particularly original". Wilson remarked the lyrics had "something to say about indifference ... which, after a couple of clarifying hearings, drifts off into the midst of forgotten poesy".
Nixon Smiley wrote in his piece for the Miami Herald that "not since William Faulkner wrote As I Lay Dying has anything come out of Mississippi as earthy and as fundamental" as 'Ode to Billie Joe'". Smiley determined that upon "casual hearing there seems to be nothing great about the song, the lyrics or the rendition", but that it "captivated both the young and old". He noted disc jockeys were "surprised, even flabbergasted", and "sometimes disgusted".
The Montgomery Advertiser found the song "hard to classify", and remarked that it "has [a] rhythm and blues beat, and it's clever", and it noted the presence of mystery. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram called it, "One of the most haunting songs of the year." The Honolulu Star-Bulletin wrote that "the lyrics are too much" and that "after a few listenings, the subject matter becomes clear, and the message gets across". The review pointed out that, "musically, the song is as fine as it is lyrically inventive" and that it "grips with heretofore taboo themes".
Legacy
Following the success of the single, Capitol Records received 500,000 pre-orders for Ode to Billie Joe, surpassing the label's record held by the Beatles's Meet the Beatles!. Gentry began receiving offers to make a motion picture based on the film in 1967, but she rejected them, preferring to wait for an offer from a movie maker who would "portray Billie Joe and his girlfriend in a serious, sensitive manner". In 1975, Gentry and her Shayne accepted an offer from Max Baer Jr., who decided to direct the film. Baer said his interest was to have two unknown young people "because the audience has to believe they are Bobbie and Billie Joe". The film would be shot on location in Mississippi with a budget of $1.5 million (equivalent to $ million in ). Warner Bros. commissioned Herman Raucher to write an adaptation of the song for the upcoming film; Raucher's adaptation and novel were both titled Ode to Billy Joe. Gentry was present during the shooting and contributed a musical score. At the time of the production, she told United Press International that the film would "answer many questions left unanswered by the song". The film starred Robby Benson as Billy Joe and Glynnis O'Connor as Bobbie Lee. In the adaptation, the pair throw a rag doll off of the bridge, while a homosexual experience with the owner of the sawmill is established as the reason for Billy Joe's suicide.
"Ode to Billie Joe" reappeared on the charts in 1976. It charted at number 65 on the Billboard Hot 100, and in Canada at numbers 92 and 42 on the RPM Top Singles and Adult Contemporary charts, respectively.
After hearing "Ode to Billie Joe" on the radio, Tony Joe White was inspired to write songs. White felt that his own life experience resembled that of Billie Joe, as he inhabited a similar place during his childhood and he remarked that the song was "real". Soon after, White composed "Polk Salad Annie" (1969). By 1969, Leflore County established a fine of $180 () for people who jumped off of the Tallahatchie Bridge and the other bridges of the area. The county estimated that between 40 and 50 men had jumped off the structure, but none had died. The bridge collapsed in June 1972 after a fire and a new one was built in its place. In 2013, a memorial marker for the song was added south of the new bridge as part of the Mississippi Country Music Trail.
Rolling Stone included "Ode To Billie Joe" at number 419 on its 2003 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list. The publication also listed it at number 47 on its 100 Greatest Country Songs in 2014; Richard Gehr deemed the track a "sultry country blues that drifts downstream on Gentry's ominous acoustic guitar". Meanwhile, Pitchfork placed it at number 144 on its 200 Best Songs of the 1960s list.
Other versions
In August 1967, Margie Singleton released a cover of the song that reached number 40 on Billboard's Hot Country Singles. Ray Bryant's version reached number 89 on Billboard's Hot 100 and number 34 on their Adult Contemporary chart soon after. King Curtis charted with his cover at number 28 on the Billboard Hot 100, also in 1967, and at number 6 on the R&B chart. Also in 1967, Joe Dassin released a cover of the song in French, entitled "Marie-Jeanne". In the song, the main character is a man, while Marie-Jeanne jumps off of the Garonne bridge.
A parody by Bob Dylan entitled "Clothes Line Saga", originally recorded in 1967, was released on the 1975 album The Basement Tapes. It mimicked the conversational style of "Ode to Billie Joe" with lyrics concentrating on routine household chores. The shocking event buried in all the mundane details is a revelation that "The Vice-President's gone mad!." Dylan's song was originally titled "Answer to 'Ode'".
A 2008 episode of Saturday Night Live parodied the song where Kristen Wiig and host Paul Rudd play a married singer-songwriter couple who perform "Ode to Tracking Number". Jill Sobule's album California Years (2009) featured "Where is Bobbie Gentry?", which used the same melody in a lyrical sequel. The narrator, seeking the reclusive Gentry, claims to be the abandoned child of Gentry and Billie Joe. In 2016, Lorrie Morgan covered the song at a slower pace for her 2016 album Letting Go... Slow. Morgan commented on recording the song with producer Richard Landis: "Richard purposely slowed the record down to make the musical passages through there really feel kind of spooky and eerie. Everything just felt so swampy and scary. Everybody has their own interpretation of that song and just what they threw off of the Tallahatchie Bridge."
Chart performance
Bobbie Gentry
Weekly charts
Year-end charts
All-time charts
Other artists
References
Sources
External links
1967 songs
Songs written by Bobbie Gentry
Bobbie Gentry songs
Nancy Wilson (jazz singer) songs
Margie Singleton songs
The Detroit Emeralds songs
Billboard Hot 100 number-one singles
Cashbox number-one singles
RPM Top Singles number-one singles
Grammy Hall of Fame Award recipients
Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance
Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist(s)
Capitol Records singles
1967 debut singles
Teenage tragedy songs
Songs about suicide
Songs about Mississippi
Songs about rivers | false | [
"Dating Hamlet is a novel written by Lisa Fiedler, first published in 2002. It is an example of novels that rewrite Shakespeare's plays to reflect the concerns of teenagers.\n\nPlot\nThe plot of the story is largely the same as Shakespeare's Hamlet, but with a few twists in the tale. The story centres on Ophelia and her views on the activities taking place in Denmark and how they affect Hamlet. The author turns the story on its head by making Ophelia the heroine of the story. She is the one who comes up with the plans to save Hamlet. She is the one who proves to be brave while Hamlet appears weak and is left to follow.\n\nThe novel is a retelling of Hamlet from Ophelia's point of view.\n\nReferences\n\nSources\n\n2002 American novels\nAmerican historical novels\nNovels based on Hamlet\nHenry Holt and Company books\nNovels set in Denmark",
"The Romany Rye is a novel by George Borrow, written in 1857 as a sequel to Lavengro (1851).\n\nThe novel\nLargely thought to be at least partly autobiographical, The Romany Rye follows from Lavengro (1851). The title can be translated from Romany as \"Gypsy Gentleman\". Mrs George Borrow wrote on 18 October 1853 to John Murray, his publisher, saying her husband had completed his work – \"which he proposes to call The Romany Rye – A Sequel to Lavengro.\"\n\nThe story itself follows the journey of a learned young man living with Romanies. It is a philosophical adventure story of sorts. The book involves meetings with a number of eccentric characters. It also contains what could be called ethnographic material on the customs and views of the Romani women. The author obtains a valuable horse from his Romani friend Jasper Petulengro and eventually sells it to a Hungarian at the Horncastle horse fair. As with Lavengro, the story ends rather abruptly with the author's realisation that the Romani language has close links to the Northern Indian languages: he resolves to travel to India but Borrow himself did not do so.\n\nIn popular culture\nA pub located in Colman Road, Norwich, was named The Romany Rye, and later The Romany Beer House before it ceased trading in November 2008. The Wetherspoons public house chain used the name Romany Rye for their pub, opened in Dereham, Norfolk, in 2011. Borrow was born in the town.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\n1857 British novels\nEnglish novels\nFictional representations of Romani people\nJohn Murray (publishing house) books\nGeorge Borrow"
]
|
[
"Ode to Billie Joe",
"Listener and author views on the story told in the song",
"What were the listeners views on the song?",
"Questions arose among listeners: what did Billie Joe and his girlfriend throw off the Tallahatchie Bridge, and why did Billie Joe commit suicide?",
"What were some other views?",
"She named flowers, an engagement ring, a draft card, a bottle of LSD pills, and an aborted baby as the most often guessed items.",
"What were the author views on the story?",
"Although she knew definitely what the item was, she would not reveal it, saying only \"Suppose it was a wedding ring."
]
| C_65b906f192a44a1585be87b62bc41f01_0 | What are some other interesting aspects of this article? | 4 | Aside from views on the story of Ode to Billie Joe, what are some other interesting aspects of this article? | Ode to Billie Joe | Questions arose among listeners: what did Billie Joe and his girlfriend throw off the Tallahatchie Bridge, and why did Billie Joe commit suicide? Speculation ran rampant after the song hit the airwaves. Gentry said in a November 1967 interview that it was the question most asked of her by everyone she met. She named flowers, an engagement ring, a draft card, a bottle of LSD pills, and an aborted baby as the most often guessed items. Although she knew definitely what the item was, she would not reveal it, saying only "Suppose it was a wedding ring." "It's in there for two reasons," she said. "First, it locks up a definite relationship between Billie Joe and the girl telling the story, the girl at the table. Second, the fact that Billie Joe was seen throwing something off the bridge - no matter what it was - provides a possible motivation as to why he jumped off the bridge the next day." When Herman Raucher met Gentry in preparation for writing a novel and screenplay based on the song, she said that she had no idea why Billie Joe killed himself. Gentry has, however, commented elsewhere on the song, saying that its real theme was indifference: Those questions are of secondary importance in my mind. The story of Billie Joe has two more interesting underlying themes. First, the illustration of a group of people's reactions to the life and death of Billie Joe, and its subsequent effect on their lives, is made. Second, the obvious gap between the girl and her mother is shown when both women experience a common loss (first Billie Joe, and later, Papa), and yet Mama and the girl are unable to recognize their mutual loss or share their grief. The bridge mentioned in this song collapsed in June 1972. It crossed the Tallahatchie River at Money, about ten miles (16 km) north of Greenwood, Mississippi, and has since been replaced. The November 10, 1967, issue of Life Magazine contained a photo of Gentry crossing the original bridge. CANNOTANSWER | The story of Billie Joe has two more interesting underlying themes. | "Ode to Billie Joe" is a song by American singer-songwriter Bobbie Gentry released by Capitol Records in July 1967, and later used as the title-track of her debut album. Five weeks after its release, the song topped Billboard's Pop singles chart. It also appeared in the top 10 of the Adult Contemporary and Hot R&B singles charts, and in the top 20 of the Hot Country Songs list.
The song takes the form of a first-person narrative performed over sparse acoustic guitar accompaniment with strings in the background. It tells of a rural Mississippi family's reaction to the news of the suicide of Billie Joe McAllister, a local boy to whom the daughter (and narrator) is connected. The song received widespread attention, leaving its audience intrigued as to what the narrator and Billie Joe threw off the Tallahatchie Bridge. Gentry later clarified that she intended the song to portray the family's indifference to the suicide in what she deemed "a study in unconscious cruelty", while she remarked the object thrown was not relevant to the message.
"Ode to Billie Joe" was nominated for eight Grammy Awards; Gentry and arranger Jimmie Haskell won three between them. Gentry's writing was adapted for the 1976 film Ode to Billy Joe. The song appeared on Rolling Stone's lists, 500 Greatest Songs of All Time and Greatest Country Songs, while Pitchfork featured it on their 200 Best Songs of the 1960s list.
Background and recording
Singer-songwriter Bobbie Gentry was born in Chickasaw County, Mississippi. After her parents had divorced, she continued to live there with her paternal grandparents. At age 13, Gentry moved to California to live with her mother. She graduated from high school and entered UCLA as a philosophy major, before transferring to the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music. After she met Jody Reynolds at one of his concerts, Gentry took part in a recording session with him to sing two duets. Singer-songwriter Jim Ford introduced Gentry to labels and music publishers. Ford took Gentry to Del-Fi Records, where he presented "Ode to Billie Joe" to the label's A&R man Barry White. Ford claimed credit for writing the song, telling White he had brought Gentry along because he felt he could not sing it himself. The composition impressed White, and Ford expressed an interest in selling it to him. White took the song to Del-Fi Records president Bob Keane, who did not like it and refused to make a purchase. Ford later claimed Gentry "stole the song" from him.
Capitol Records producer Kelly Gordon received Gentry's demo for "Mississippi Delta". Gordon liked it, and he asked for a B-side for the song. Gentry planned to sell "Ode to Billie Joe" to Capitol Records, and she decided that recording the demo herself was cheaper than using a professional singer. The song's recording happened soon after Gentry's session that yielded "Mississippi Delta" in February 1967, while Bobby Paris assisted her in the studio in exchange for guitar session work on some of his own studio recordings. Gentry intended to have Lou Rawls record the song. Larry Shayne, Gentry's publisher, warned Gordon against adding a rhythm section to the track. Shayne was a friend of David Axelrod, Capitol Record's main A&R man. He sold Axelrod the song's recording rights for $10,000 (). Gordon liked Gentry's vocals on the demo, but he decided to add a sparse instrumental arrangement to the recording. Gordon called Jimmie Haskell, who prepared a string arrangement with four violins and two cellos. Jesse Erlich played one cello like an upright bass. Haskell felt the song sounded like a film and decided to write the arrangement as if it was a score. Gordon then overdubbed Gentry's recording with the strings. He determined that "Ode to Billie Joe" was going to be used for the A-side of the single.
Haskell later claimed that a seven-minute version of the song existed, but that Gordon cut it to under five minutes to favor radio play. The existence of a seven-minute version has not been confirmed. Meanwhile, a manuscript of a draft of the song donated by Gentry to the University of Mississippi contained stanzas that were not included on the final recording.
Content
"Ode to Billie Joe" takes the form of a first-person narrative by the young daughter of a Mississippi Delta family. It offers fragments of dinnertime conversation on the day that a local boy, an acquaintance of the narrator, jumped to his death from a nearby bridge. The account is interspersed with everyday, polite, mealtime conversation. The song's last verse conveys the passage of events over the following year.
The song begins on June 3 with the narrator, her brother and her father returning from farming chores to the family house for dinner. After reminding them to clean their feet, the mother announces she received news from Choctaw Ridge: "Billie Joe McAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge." The verse is repeated through the song as the story develops to "heighten the mystery". Unmoved, the father comments that "Billie Joe never had a lick of sense", before asking for the biscuits and adding "there's five more acres in the lower forty, I've got to plow". The brother then expresses his surprise, but continues eating his meal.
The mother notices her daughter is distraught, and is not eating. She mentions the "young preacher" Brother Taylor visited the house earlier and that they would have dinner with him on Sunday. As an afterthought, the mother adds the preacher saw Billie Joe with a girl that "looked a lot" like the daughter, and "she and Billie Joe was throwin' somethin' off the Tallahatchie Bridge". A year later, the brother moves to Tupelo, Mississippi, after he marries, while the father dies of an unnamed virus. Even though she expresses no sadness over her father's death, the daughter notices her mother is still distraught by it. Rather than consoling her, she routinely picks flowers and throws them off the bridge.
The song became a success because it created curiosity in listeners, as Gentry did not mention what was thrown off of the bridge or why Billie Joe committed suicide. It features perfect rhymes from the first to the sixth line of every verse. Meanwhile, the fifth and sixth lines of the song repeat the rhyme of "ridge" and "bridge" in every stanza. The composition does not have a chorus. The musical phrases begin with pickup notes, while melismas and downbeats are used for the rhymes.
Gentry's comments on the lyrics
In August 1967, Gentry told the Los Angeles Times she wanted to show "people's lack of ability" to empathize with others' "tragedy". She pointed at the mother, noticing but not understanding her daughter's lack of appetite, while later the daughter is unaware of the similarity of her mother's behavior after the father dies. Gentry explained that both characters had "isolated themselves in their own personal tragedies", and remained unconcerned for the others. The songwriter compared the end product to a play. On the object thrown off the Tallahatchie Bridge, she commented that the audience had found more meanings than she had intended. Gentry mentioned the theories she had heard at the time included a baby, a wedding ring, or flowers. While she indicated that what happened at the bridge was the motivation behind Billie Joe's suicide, she had left that open to the listener's interpretation. Gentry said she had no answer and her sole motivation was to show "people's apathy".
In an interview with the Associated Press in November 1967, Gentry called the song "a study in unconscious cruelty". Gentry told the news agency that audiences still asked her what was thrown off the bridge rather than noticing "the thoughtlessness of people expressed in the song", adding that what had been thrown was unimportant. She said people suggested to her it was a draft card, or a bottle of LSD pills. The songwriter clarified she knew what it was, but said she considered it irrelevant to the story, and repeated that she had deliberately left interpretation open. Gentry remarked the song's message revolved around the "nonchalant way" the family discussed the suicide and that what was thrown off of the bridge was included because it established a relationship between Billie Joe and the daughter, and provided "a possible motivation for his suicide the next day". The interview ended with Gentry's suggestion that it could have been a wedding ring. Gentry told The New York Times in 1969: "I had my own idea what it was while I was writing it, but it's not that important. Actually it was something symbolic. But I've never told anyone what it was, not even my own dear mother."
Release and reception
The single "Mississippi Delta"-"Ode to Billie Joe" was released in July 1967. Paris was given a co-producer credit on the single with Gordon. Five weeks after its release, it reached number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. By the sixth week, the single had sold one million copies. It also appeared at number 7 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary chart, at number 8 on the Hot R&B singles chart, and number 17 on the Hot Country Songs chart. Billboard's year-end chart placed the song at number 3, while Canada's RPM placed it at number 16.
In Australia, the song reached number 4 on Go-Set's National Top 40. Meanwhile, it peaked at number 6 on the Irish Singles Chart. On the New Zealand Listener chart, the song reached number 3.
In November 1967, Life published an article about the song's success after a visit with Gentry and her parents in Mississippi. Gentry showed the journalists a bridge in Money, Mississippi, that featured the characteristics of the one she wrote about as she clarified: "this is what I had in mind" she continued: "The river isn't very deep here, but the current is strong." Gentry was photographed crossing the bridge for the story. The single was nominated in eight categories at the 10th Annual Grammy Awards and won three: Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, Best New Artist, and Best Arrangement, Instrumental and Vocals. By 1969, Gentry estimated the single had sold three million copies.
Gentry sued Paris to have his co-producer credit removed, claiming she was the recording's sole producer. Paris's credit was removed on the album release. Soon after she left Capitol Records, Paris sued Gentry for $100,000 and the label for $300,000 in punitive damages for failing to pay him one fifth of the royalties from the song's sales. Gentry and Paris testified against one another in the 1973 case. The jury awarded Paris one percent of the total royalties from "Ode to Billie Joe" and "Mississippi Delta", that amounted to $32,277.40 (). Gentry told Penny Anderson of the New York Times in 1974 that she originally produced "Ode To Billie Joe" and most of her recordings. She added "but a woman doesn't stand much chance in a recording studio. A staff producer's name was nearly always put on the records." Gentry expressed the desire to gain more control over the production of her songs and recordings.
Critical reception
The staff of Billboard welcomed the release as "fascinating material and performance" with a "potent lyric content that is worth the unusual length of the disk". The Los Angeles Times critic Leonard Feather considered it an "aural parallel" to the film In the Heat of the Night (1967), deeming them both "sardonic, knife-edge studies of human nature". Feather concluded Gentry added "a durable new dimension" to American "contemporary folklore". The New York Times commented on the success of the song four weeks after its release. Critic John S. Wilson felt the song was "a most unlikely candidate for success", as it was "long by radio programming standards" and he considered the topic "nothing startling, nothing strange, nothing particularly original". Wilson remarked the lyrics had "something to say about indifference ... which, after a couple of clarifying hearings, drifts off into the midst of forgotten poesy".
Nixon Smiley wrote in his piece for the Miami Herald that "not since William Faulkner wrote As I Lay Dying has anything come out of Mississippi as earthy and as fundamental" as 'Ode to Billie Joe'". Smiley determined that upon "casual hearing there seems to be nothing great about the song, the lyrics or the rendition", but that it "captivated both the young and old". He noted disc jockeys were "surprised, even flabbergasted", and "sometimes disgusted".
The Montgomery Advertiser found the song "hard to classify", and remarked that it "has [a] rhythm and blues beat, and it's clever", and it noted the presence of mystery. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram called it, "One of the most haunting songs of the year." The Honolulu Star-Bulletin wrote that "the lyrics are too much" and that "after a few listenings, the subject matter becomes clear, and the message gets across". The review pointed out that, "musically, the song is as fine as it is lyrically inventive" and that it "grips with heretofore taboo themes".
Legacy
Following the success of the single, Capitol Records received 500,000 pre-orders for Ode to Billie Joe, surpassing the label's record held by the Beatles's Meet the Beatles!. Gentry began receiving offers to make a motion picture based on the film in 1967, but she rejected them, preferring to wait for an offer from a movie maker who would "portray Billie Joe and his girlfriend in a serious, sensitive manner". In 1975, Gentry and her Shayne accepted an offer from Max Baer Jr., who decided to direct the film. Baer said his interest was to have two unknown young people "because the audience has to believe they are Bobbie and Billie Joe". The film would be shot on location in Mississippi with a budget of $1.5 million (equivalent to $ million in ). Warner Bros. commissioned Herman Raucher to write an adaptation of the song for the upcoming film; Raucher's adaptation and novel were both titled Ode to Billy Joe. Gentry was present during the shooting and contributed a musical score. At the time of the production, she told United Press International that the film would "answer many questions left unanswered by the song". The film starred Robby Benson as Billy Joe and Glynnis O'Connor as Bobbie Lee. In the adaptation, the pair throw a rag doll off of the bridge, while a homosexual experience with the owner of the sawmill is established as the reason for Billy Joe's suicide.
"Ode to Billie Joe" reappeared on the charts in 1976. It charted at number 65 on the Billboard Hot 100, and in Canada at numbers 92 and 42 on the RPM Top Singles and Adult Contemporary charts, respectively.
After hearing "Ode to Billie Joe" on the radio, Tony Joe White was inspired to write songs. White felt that his own life experience resembled that of Billie Joe, as he inhabited a similar place during his childhood and he remarked that the song was "real". Soon after, White composed "Polk Salad Annie" (1969). By 1969, Leflore County established a fine of $180 () for people who jumped off of the Tallahatchie Bridge and the other bridges of the area. The county estimated that between 40 and 50 men had jumped off the structure, but none had died. The bridge collapsed in June 1972 after a fire and a new one was built in its place. In 2013, a memorial marker for the song was added south of the new bridge as part of the Mississippi Country Music Trail.
Rolling Stone included "Ode To Billie Joe" at number 419 on its 2003 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list. The publication also listed it at number 47 on its 100 Greatest Country Songs in 2014; Richard Gehr deemed the track a "sultry country blues that drifts downstream on Gentry's ominous acoustic guitar". Meanwhile, Pitchfork placed it at number 144 on its 200 Best Songs of the 1960s list.
Other versions
In August 1967, Margie Singleton released a cover of the song that reached number 40 on Billboard's Hot Country Singles. Ray Bryant's version reached number 89 on Billboard's Hot 100 and number 34 on their Adult Contemporary chart soon after. King Curtis charted with his cover at number 28 on the Billboard Hot 100, also in 1967, and at number 6 on the R&B chart. Also in 1967, Joe Dassin released a cover of the song in French, entitled "Marie-Jeanne". In the song, the main character is a man, while Marie-Jeanne jumps off of the Garonne bridge.
A parody by Bob Dylan entitled "Clothes Line Saga", originally recorded in 1967, was released on the 1975 album The Basement Tapes. It mimicked the conversational style of "Ode to Billie Joe" with lyrics concentrating on routine household chores. The shocking event buried in all the mundane details is a revelation that "The Vice-President's gone mad!." Dylan's song was originally titled "Answer to 'Ode'".
A 2008 episode of Saturday Night Live parodied the song where Kristen Wiig and host Paul Rudd play a married singer-songwriter couple who perform "Ode to Tracking Number". Jill Sobule's album California Years (2009) featured "Where is Bobbie Gentry?", which used the same melody in a lyrical sequel. The narrator, seeking the reclusive Gentry, claims to be the abandoned child of Gentry and Billie Joe. In 2016, Lorrie Morgan covered the song at a slower pace for her 2016 album Letting Go... Slow. Morgan commented on recording the song with producer Richard Landis: "Richard purposely slowed the record down to make the musical passages through there really feel kind of spooky and eerie. Everything just felt so swampy and scary. Everybody has their own interpretation of that song and just what they threw off of the Tallahatchie Bridge."
Chart performance
Bobbie Gentry
Weekly charts
Year-end charts
All-time charts
Other artists
References
Sources
External links
1967 songs
Songs written by Bobbie Gentry
Bobbie Gentry songs
Nancy Wilson (jazz singer) songs
Margie Singleton songs
The Detroit Emeralds songs
Billboard Hot 100 number-one singles
Cashbox number-one singles
RPM Top Singles number-one singles
Grammy Hall of Fame Award recipients
Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance
Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist(s)
Capitol Records singles
1967 debut singles
Teenage tragedy songs
Songs about suicide
Songs about Mississippi
Songs about rivers | false | [
"Přírodní park Třebíčsko (before Oblast klidu Třebíčsko) is a natural park near Třebíč in the Czech Republic. There are many interesting plants. The park was founded in 1983.\n\nKobylinec and Ptáčovský kopeček\n\nKobylinec is a natural monument situated ca 0,5 km from the village of Trnava.\nThe area of this monument is 0,44 ha. Pulsatilla grandis can be found here and in the Ptáčovský kopeček park near Ptáčov near Třebíč. Both monuments are very popular for tourists.\n\nPonds\n\nIn the natural park there are some interesting ponds such as Velký Bor, Malý Bor, Buršík near Přeckov and a brook Březinka. Dams on the brook are examples of European beaver activity.\n\nSyenitové skály near Pocoucov\n\nSyenitové skály (rocks of syenit) near Pocoucov is one of famed locations. There are interesting granite boulders. The area of the reservation is 0,77 ha.\n\nExternal links\nParts of this article or all article was translated from Czech. The original article is :cs:Přírodní park Třebíčsko.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nNature near the village Trnava which is there\n\nTřebíč\nParks in the Czech Republic\nTourist attractions in the Vysočina Region",
"Towards Artsakh () is an Armenian Entertainment television program. The series premiered on Armenia 1 on September 21, 2014.\nEach series of the TV program presents some area of life of today's hospitable Artsakh and reveals its most interesting aspects. What is Artsakh famous for? What has remained in the shadow up today? The program covers these questions as well as refers to the interests of young people and concerns of the older generation. \nArtsakh's legends and true stories are presented through the eyes of eyewitnesses.\n\nExternal links\n\n \n Towards Artsakh on Armenia 1\n\nArmenian-language television shows\nNonlinear narrative television series\nArmenia 1 television shows\nNagorno-Karabakh\n2010s Armenian television series"
]
|
[
"Ode to Billie Joe",
"Listener and author views on the story told in the song",
"What were the listeners views on the song?",
"Questions arose among listeners: what did Billie Joe and his girlfriend throw off the Tallahatchie Bridge, and why did Billie Joe commit suicide?",
"What were some other views?",
"She named flowers, an engagement ring, a draft card, a bottle of LSD pills, and an aborted baby as the most often guessed items.",
"What were the author views on the story?",
"Although she knew definitely what the item was, she would not reveal it, saying only \"Suppose it was a wedding ring.",
"What are some other interesting aspects of this article?",
"The story of Billie Joe has two more interesting underlying themes."
]
| C_65b906f192a44a1585be87b62bc41f01_0 | What were these themeS? | 5 | What were two more interesting themes to the story of Billie Joe? | Ode to Billie Joe | Questions arose among listeners: what did Billie Joe and his girlfriend throw off the Tallahatchie Bridge, and why did Billie Joe commit suicide? Speculation ran rampant after the song hit the airwaves. Gentry said in a November 1967 interview that it was the question most asked of her by everyone she met. She named flowers, an engagement ring, a draft card, a bottle of LSD pills, and an aborted baby as the most often guessed items. Although she knew definitely what the item was, she would not reveal it, saying only "Suppose it was a wedding ring." "It's in there for two reasons," she said. "First, it locks up a definite relationship between Billie Joe and the girl telling the story, the girl at the table. Second, the fact that Billie Joe was seen throwing something off the bridge - no matter what it was - provides a possible motivation as to why he jumped off the bridge the next day." When Herman Raucher met Gentry in preparation for writing a novel and screenplay based on the song, she said that she had no idea why Billie Joe killed himself. Gentry has, however, commented elsewhere on the song, saying that its real theme was indifference: Those questions are of secondary importance in my mind. The story of Billie Joe has two more interesting underlying themes. First, the illustration of a group of people's reactions to the life and death of Billie Joe, and its subsequent effect on their lives, is made. Second, the obvious gap between the girl and her mother is shown when both women experience a common loss (first Billie Joe, and later, Papa), and yet Mama and the girl are unable to recognize their mutual loss or share their grief. The bridge mentioned in this song collapsed in June 1972. It crossed the Tallahatchie River at Money, about ten miles (16 km) north of Greenwood, Mississippi, and has since been replaced. The November 10, 1967, issue of Life Magazine contained a photo of Gentry crossing the original bridge. CANNOTANSWER | First, the illustration of a group of people's reactions to the life and death of Billie Joe, and its subsequent effect on their lives, is made. | "Ode to Billie Joe" is a song by American singer-songwriter Bobbie Gentry released by Capitol Records in July 1967, and later used as the title-track of her debut album. Five weeks after its release, the song topped Billboard's Pop singles chart. It also appeared in the top 10 of the Adult Contemporary and Hot R&B singles charts, and in the top 20 of the Hot Country Songs list.
The song takes the form of a first-person narrative performed over sparse acoustic guitar accompaniment with strings in the background. It tells of a rural Mississippi family's reaction to the news of the suicide of Billie Joe McAllister, a local boy to whom the daughter (and narrator) is connected. The song received widespread attention, leaving its audience intrigued as to what the narrator and Billie Joe threw off the Tallahatchie Bridge. Gentry later clarified that she intended the song to portray the family's indifference to the suicide in what she deemed "a study in unconscious cruelty", while she remarked the object thrown was not relevant to the message.
"Ode to Billie Joe" was nominated for eight Grammy Awards; Gentry and arranger Jimmie Haskell won three between them. Gentry's writing was adapted for the 1976 film Ode to Billy Joe. The song appeared on Rolling Stone's lists, 500 Greatest Songs of All Time and Greatest Country Songs, while Pitchfork featured it on their 200 Best Songs of the 1960s list.
Background and recording
Singer-songwriter Bobbie Gentry was born in Chickasaw County, Mississippi. After her parents had divorced, she continued to live there with her paternal grandparents. At age 13, Gentry moved to California to live with her mother. She graduated from high school and entered UCLA as a philosophy major, before transferring to the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music. After she met Jody Reynolds at one of his concerts, Gentry took part in a recording session with him to sing two duets. Singer-songwriter Jim Ford introduced Gentry to labels and music publishers. Ford took Gentry to Del-Fi Records, where he presented "Ode to Billie Joe" to the label's A&R man Barry White. Ford claimed credit for writing the song, telling White he had brought Gentry along because he felt he could not sing it himself. The composition impressed White, and Ford expressed an interest in selling it to him. White took the song to Del-Fi Records president Bob Keane, who did not like it and refused to make a purchase. Ford later claimed Gentry "stole the song" from him.
Capitol Records producer Kelly Gordon received Gentry's demo for "Mississippi Delta". Gordon liked it, and he asked for a B-side for the song. Gentry planned to sell "Ode to Billie Joe" to Capitol Records, and she decided that recording the demo herself was cheaper than using a professional singer. The song's recording happened soon after Gentry's session that yielded "Mississippi Delta" in February 1967, while Bobby Paris assisted her in the studio in exchange for guitar session work on some of his own studio recordings. Gentry intended to have Lou Rawls record the song. Larry Shayne, Gentry's publisher, warned Gordon against adding a rhythm section to the track. Shayne was a friend of David Axelrod, Capitol Record's main A&R man. He sold Axelrod the song's recording rights for $10,000 (). Gordon liked Gentry's vocals on the demo, but he decided to add a sparse instrumental arrangement to the recording. Gordon called Jimmie Haskell, who prepared a string arrangement with four violins and two cellos. Jesse Erlich played one cello like an upright bass. Haskell felt the song sounded like a film and decided to write the arrangement as if it was a score. Gordon then overdubbed Gentry's recording with the strings. He determined that "Ode to Billie Joe" was going to be used for the A-side of the single.
Haskell later claimed that a seven-minute version of the song existed, but that Gordon cut it to under five minutes to favor radio play. The existence of a seven-minute version has not been confirmed. Meanwhile, a manuscript of a draft of the song donated by Gentry to the University of Mississippi contained stanzas that were not included on the final recording.
Content
"Ode to Billie Joe" takes the form of a first-person narrative by the young daughter of a Mississippi Delta family. It offers fragments of dinnertime conversation on the day that a local boy, an acquaintance of the narrator, jumped to his death from a nearby bridge. The account is interspersed with everyday, polite, mealtime conversation. The song's last verse conveys the passage of events over the following year.
The song begins on June 3 with the narrator, her brother and her father returning from farming chores to the family house for dinner. After reminding them to clean their feet, the mother announces she received news from Choctaw Ridge: "Billie Joe McAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge." The verse is repeated through the song as the story develops to "heighten the mystery". Unmoved, the father comments that "Billie Joe never had a lick of sense", before asking for the biscuits and adding "there's five more acres in the lower forty, I've got to plow". The brother then expresses his surprise, but continues eating his meal.
The mother notices her daughter is distraught, and is not eating. She mentions the "young preacher" Brother Taylor visited the house earlier and that they would have dinner with him on Sunday. As an afterthought, the mother adds the preacher saw Billie Joe with a girl that "looked a lot" like the daughter, and "she and Billie Joe was throwin' somethin' off the Tallahatchie Bridge". A year later, the brother moves to Tupelo, Mississippi, after he marries, while the father dies of an unnamed virus. Even though she expresses no sadness over her father's death, the daughter notices her mother is still distraught by it. Rather than consoling her, she routinely picks flowers and throws them off the bridge.
The song became a success because it created curiosity in listeners, as Gentry did not mention what was thrown off of the bridge or why Billie Joe committed suicide. It features perfect rhymes from the first to the sixth line of every verse. Meanwhile, the fifth and sixth lines of the song repeat the rhyme of "ridge" and "bridge" in every stanza. The composition does not have a chorus. The musical phrases begin with pickup notes, while melismas and downbeats are used for the rhymes.
Gentry's comments on the lyrics
In August 1967, Gentry told the Los Angeles Times she wanted to show "people's lack of ability" to empathize with others' "tragedy". She pointed at the mother, noticing but not understanding her daughter's lack of appetite, while later the daughter is unaware of the similarity of her mother's behavior after the father dies. Gentry explained that both characters had "isolated themselves in their own personal tragedies", and remained unconcerned for the others. The songwriter compared the end product to a play. On the object thrown off the Tallahatchie Bridge, she commented that the audience had found more meanings than she had intended. Gentry mentioned the theories she had heard at the time included a baby, a wedding ring, or flowers. While she indicated that what happened at the bridge was the motivation behind Billie Joe's suicide, she had left that open to the listener's interpretation. Gentry said she had no answer and her sole motivation was to show "people's apathy".
In an interview with the Associated Press in November 1967, Gentry called the song "a study in unconscious cruelty". Gentry told the news agency that audiences still asked her what was thrown off the bridge rather than noticing "the thoughtlessness of people expressed in the song", adding that what had been thrown was unimportant. She said people suggested to her it was a draft card, or a bottle of LSD pills. The songwriter clarified she knew what it was, but said she considered it irrelevant to the story, and repeated that she had deliberately left interpretation open. Gentry remarked the song's message revolved around the "nonchalant way" the family discussed the suicide and that what was thrown off of the bridge was included because it established a relationship between Billie Joe and the daughter, and provided "a possible motivation for his suicide the next day". The interview ended with Gentry's suggestion that it could have been a wedding ring. Gentry told The New York Times in 1969: "I had my own idea what it was while I was writing it, but it's not that important. Actually it was something symbolic. But I've never told anyone what it was, not even my own dear mother."
Release and reception
The single "Mississippi Delta"-"Ode to Billie Joe" was released in July 1967. Paris was given a co-producer credit on the single with Gordon. Five weeks after its release, it reached number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. By the sixth week, the single had sold one million copies. It also appeared at number 7 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary chart, at number 8 on the Hot R&B singles chart, and number 17 on the Hot Country Songs chart. Billboard's year-end chart placed the song at number 3, while Canada's RPM placed it at number 16.
In Australia, the song reached number 4 on Go-Set's National Top 40. Meanwhile, it peaked at number 6 on the Irish Singles Chart. On the New Zealand Listener chart, the song reached number 3.
In November 1967, Life published an article about the song's success after a visit with Gentry and her parents in Mississippi. Gentry showed the journalists a bridge in Money, Mississippi, that featured the characteristics of the one she wrote about as she clarified: "this is what I had in mind" she continued: "The river isn't very deep here, but the current is strong." Gentry was photographed crossing the bridge for the story. The single was nominated in eight categories at the 10th Annual Grammy Awards and won three: Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, Best New Artist, and Best Arrangement, Instrumental and Vocals. By 1969, Gentry estimated the single had sold three million copies.
Gentry sued Paris to have his co-producer credit removed, claiming she was the recording's sole producer. Paris's credit was removed on the album release. Soon after she left Capitol Records, Paris sued Gentry for $100,000 and the label for $300,000 in punitive damages for failing to pay him one fifth of the royalties from the song's sales. Gentry and Paris testified against one another in the 1973 case. The jury awarded Paris one percent of the total royalties from "Ode to Billie Joe" and "Mississippi Delta", that amounted to $32,277.40 (). Gentry told Penny Anderson of the New York Times in 1974 that she originally produced "Ode To Billie Joe" and most of her recordings. She added "but a woman doesn't stand much chance in a recording studio. A staff producer's name was nearly always put on the records." Gentry expressed the desire to gain more control over the production of her songs and recordings.
Critical reception
The staff of Billboard welcomed the release as "fascinating material and performance" with a "potent lyric content that is worth the unusual length of the disk". The Los Angeles Times critic Leonard Feather considered it an "aural parallel" to the film In the Heat of the Night (1967), deeming them both "sardonic, knife-edge studies of human nature". Feather concluded Gentry added "a durable new dimension" to American "contemporary folklore". The New York Times commented on the success of the song four weeks after its release. Critic John S. Wilson felt the song was "a most unlikely candidate for success", as it was "long by radio programming standards" and he considered the topic "nothing startling, nothing strange, nothing particularly original". Wilson remarked the lyrics had "something to say about indifference ... which, after a couple of clarifying hearings, drifts off into the midst of forgotten poesy".
Nixon Smiley wrote in his piece for the Miami Herald that "not since William Faulkner wrote As I Lay Dying has anything come out of Mississippi as earthy and as fundamental" as 'Ode to Billie Joe'". Smiley determined that upon "casual hearing there seems to be nothing great about the song, the lyrics or the rendition", but that it "captivated both the young and old". He noted disc jockeys were "surprised, even flabbergasted", and "sometimes disgusted".
The Montgomery Advertiser found the song "hard to classify", and remarked that it "has [a] rhythm and blues beat, and it's clever", and it noted the presence of mystery. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram called it, "One of the most haunting songs of the year." The Honolulu Star-Bulletin wrote that "the lyrics are too much" and that "after a few listenings, the subject matter becomes clear, and the message gets across". The review pointed out that, "musically, the song is as fine as it is lyrically inventive" and that it "grips with heretofore taboo themes".
Legacy
Following the success of the single, Capitol Records received 500,000 pre-orders for Ode to Billie Joe, surpassing the label's record held by the Beatles's Meet the Beatles!. Gentry began receiving offers to make a motion picture based on the film in 1967, but she rejected them, preferring to wait for an offer from a movie maker who would "portray Billie Joe and his girlfriend in a serious, sensitive manner". In 1975, Gentry and her Shayne accepted an offer from Max Baer Jr., who decided to direct the film. Baer said his interest was to have two unknown young people "because the audience has to believe they are Bobbie and Billie Joe". The film would be shot on location in Mississippi with a budget of $1.5 million (equivalent to $ million in ). Warner Bros. commissioned Herman Raucher to write an adaptation of the song for the upcoming film; Raucher's adaptation and novel were both titled Ode to Billy Joe. Gentry was present during the shooting and contributed a musical score. At the time of the production, she told United Press International that the film would "answer many questions left unanswered by the song". The film starred Robby Benson as Billy Joe and Glynnis O'Connor as Bobbie Lee. In the adaptation, the pair throw a rag doll off of the bridge, while a homosexual experience with the owner of the sawmill is established as the reason for Billy Joe's suicide.
"Ode to Billie Joe" reappeared on the charts in 1976. It charted at number 65 on the Billboard Hot 100, and in Canada at numbers 92 and 42 on the RPM Top Singles and Adult Contemporary charts, respectively.
After hearing "Ode to Billie Joe" on the radio, Tony Joe White was inspired to write songs. White felt that his own life experience resembled that of Billie Joe, as he inhabited a similar place during his childhood and he remarked that the song was "real". Soon after, White composed "Polk Salad Annie" (1969). By 1969, Leflore County established a fine of $180 () for people who jumped off of the Tallahatchie Bridge and the other bridges of the area. The county estimated that between 40 and 50 men had jumped off the structure, but none had died. The bridge collapsed in June 1972 after a fire and a new one was built in its place. In 2013, a memorial marker for the song was added south of the new bridge as part of the Mississippi Country Music Trail.
Rolling Stone included "Ode To Billie Joe" at number 419 on its 2003 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list. The publication also listed it at number 47 on its 100 Greatest Country Songs in 2014; Richard Gehr deemed the track a "sultry country blues that drifts downstream on Gentry's ominous acoustic guitar". Meanwhile, Pitchfork placed it at number 144 on its 200 Best Songs of the 1960s list.
Other versions
In August 1967, Margie Singleton released a cover of the song that reached number 40 on Billboard's Hot Country Singles. Ray Bryant's version reached number 89 on Billboard's Hot 100 and number 34 on their Adult Contemporary chart soon after. King Curtis charted with his cover at number 28 on the Billboard Hot 100, also in 1967, and at number 6 on the R&B chart. Also in 1967, Joe Dassin released a cover of the song in French, entitled "Marie-Jeanne". In the song, the main character is a man, while Marie-Jeanne jumps off of the Garonne bridge.
A parody by Bob Dylan entitled "Clothes Line Saga", originally recorded in 1967, was released on the 1975 album The Basement Tapes. It mimicked the conversational style of "Ode to Billie Joe" with lyrics concentrating on routine household chores. The shocking event buried in all the mundane details is a revelation that "The Vice-President's gone mad!." Dylan's song was originally titled "Answer to 'Ode'".
A 2008 episode of Saturday Night Live parodied the song where Kristen Wiig and host Paul Rudd play a married singer-songwriter couple who perform "Ode to Tracking Number". Jill Sobule's album California Years (2009) featured "Where is Bobbie Gentry?", which used the same melody in a lyrical sequel. The narrator, seeking the reclusive Gentry, claims to be the abandoned child of Gentry and Billie Joe. In 2016, Lorrie Morgan covered the song at a slower pace for her 2016 album Letting Go... Slow. Morgan commented on recording the song with producer Richard Landis: "Richard purposely slowed the record down to make the musical passages through there really feel kind of spooky and eerie. Everything just felt so swampy and scary. Everybody has their own interpretation of that song and just what they threw off of the Tallahatchie Bridge."
Chart performance
Bobbie Gentry
Weekly charts
Year-end charts
All-time charts
Other artists
References
Sources
External links
1967 songs
Songs written by Bobbie Gentry
Bobbie Gentry songs
Nancy Wilson (jazz singer) songs
Margie Singleton songs
The Detroit Emeralds songs
Billboard Hot 100 number-one singles
Cashbox number-one singles
RPM Top Singles number-one singles
Grammy Hall of Fame Award recipients
Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance
Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist(s)
Capitol Records singles
1967 debut singles
Teenage tragedy songs
Songs about suicide
Songs about Mississippi
Songs about rivers | false | [
"Genocide Organ is a German power electronics/martial industrial collective, formed in Mannheim, Germany in 1985. They are known for their brutal and controversial presentation in their music and attitude.\n\nMany of the themes present in their music make reference to the Ku Klux Klan, the Third Reich and war. This insistence on these themes has led to accusations of being far-right extremists, they have denied these accusations in interviews saying: “We never say what we think, and we never believe what we say, and if we tell the truth by accident, we hide it under so many lies that it is difficult to find out”. Due to this attitude, the website Discogs has blocked the sale of a number of their albums.\n\nDiscography \n\n Leichenlinie (1989)\n Save Our Slaves (1991)\n Mind Control (1995)\n Remember (1997)\n The Truth Will Make You Free (1999)\n Same (2003)\n In-Konflikt (2004)\n Under-Kontrakt (2011)\n Obituary of the Americas (2016)\n Civilization (2017)\n Movement (2019)\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n\n Tesco Organisation Webpage\n\nMusical groups established in 1985\nElectronic music groups\nExperimental music\nPower electronics (music)\nIndustrial music groups",
"\"After the News\" was a song by The Reels that was released as a single from their second album Quasimodo's Dream in July 1980. The song fared disappointingly on the charts, peaking at number 65 in Australia. The single was accompanied by a colourful video that features a puppet newsreader. The B-side, \"Media Themes\", consisted of three short songs that were later re-used for the album. A \"sequel\" for \"Media Themes\" was released as a B-side to the band's later single \"Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)\".\n\nMason later said, \"I got really pissed off about \"After the News\". People were just not accepting what we were doing. I got depressed about that.\"\n\nTrack listing\n\"After the News\" – 2:46\n\"Media Themes\" – 3:42\n\nReferences\n\nThe Reels - After the News on discogs\n\n1980 singles\nThe Reels songs\n1980 songs\nMercury Records singles\nPolyGram singles"
]
|
[
"Bohemian Rhapsody",
"Lyrics"
]
| C_169eaa51c6c243bc9069eb7c6821930d_0 | Who wrote the lyrics? | 1 | Who wrote the lyrics of Bohemiam Rhapsody? | Bohemian Rhapsody | The New York Times commented that "the song's most distinct feature is the fatalistic lyrics". Mercury refused to explain his composition other than saying it was about relationships; the band is still protective of the song's secret. Brian May supports suggestions that the song contained veiled references to Mercury's personal traumas. He recalls "Freddie was a very complex person: flippant and funny on the surface, but he concealed insecurities and problems in squaring up his life with his childhood. He never explained the lyrics, but I think he put a lot of himself into that song." May, though, says the band had agreed that the core of a lyric was a private issue for the composer. In a BBC Three documentary about the making of "Bohemian Rhapsody", Roger Taylor maintains that the true meaning of the song is "fairly self-explanatory with just a bit of nonsense in the middle". When the band released a Greatest Hits cassette in Iran, a leaflet in Persian was included with translation and explanations (refers to a book published in Iran called The March of the Black Queen by Sarah Sefati and Farhad Arkani, which included the whole biography of the band and complete lyrics with Persian translation (2000)). In the explanation, Queen states that "Bohemian Rhapsody" is about a young man who has accidentally killed someone and, like Faust, sold his soul to the devil. On the night before his execution, he calls for God saying, "Bismillah" ("In the name of God" in Arabic), and with the help of angels, regains his soul from Shaitan (the devil in Islam). Despite this, critics, both journalistic and academic, have speculated over the meaning behind the song's lyrics. Some believe the lyrics describe a suicidal murderer haunted by demons or depict events just preceding an execution. The latter explanation points to Albert Camus's novel The Stranger, in which a young man confesses to an impulsive murder and has an epiphany before he is executed, as probable inspiration. Others believe the lyrics were only written to fit with the music, and have no meaning; Kenny Everett quoted Mercury as claiming the lyrics were simply "random rhyming nonsense". Still, others interpreted them as Mercury's way of dealing with personal issues. Music scholar Sheila Whiteley observes that Mercury reached a turning point in his personal life in the year he wrote "Bohemian Rhapsody". He had been living with Mary Austin for seven years but had just embarked on his first love affair with a man. She suggests that the song provides an insight into Mercury's emotional state at the time, "living with Mary ('Mamma', as in Mother Mary) and wanting to break away ('Mamma Mia let me go')". CANNOTANSWER | Mercury reached a turning point in his personal life in the year he wrote "Bohemian Rhapsody". | "Bohemian Rhapsody" is a song by the British rock band Queen. It was written by Freddie Mercury for the band's 1975 album A Night at the Opera. The song is a six-minute suite, notable for its lack of a refraining chorus and consisting of several sections: an intro, a ballad segment, an operatic passage, a hard rock part and a reflective coda. "Bohemian Rhapsody" is one of the few songs to emerge from the 1970s progressive rock movement to achieve widespread commercial success and appeal to a mainstream audience.
"Bohemian Rhapsody" topped the UK Singles Chart for nine weeks and had sold more than a million copies by the end of January 1976. In 1991, after Mercury's death, it topped the charts for another five weeks, eventually becoming the UK's third best-selling single of all time. It is also the only song to reach the UK Christmas number one twice by the same artist. It also topped the charts in countries including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and the Netherlands, and sold over six million copies worldwide. In the United States, the song peaked at number nine in 1976, but reached a new peak of number two on the Billboard Hot 100 after being used in the film Wayne's World (1992). In 2018, the release of Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody brought the song renewed popularity and chart success worldwide. In March 2021 it was certified Diamond in the US for combined digital sales and streams equal to 10 million units.
Although critical reaction was initially mixed, "Bohemian Rhapsody" has since become Queen's most popular song and is considered one of the greatest rock songs of all time. The single was accompanied by a groundbreaking promotional video. Rolling Stone stated that its influence "cannot be overstated, practically inventing the music video seven years before MTV went on the air." The Guardian named its music video one of the 50 key events in rock music history, helping make videos a critical tool in music marketing.
In 2004, "Bohemian Rhapsody" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. It has appeared in numerous polls of the greatest songs in popular music, including a ranking at number 17 on Rolling Stones list of "the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. Mercury's vocal performance was chosen as the greatest in rock history by readers of Rolling Stone. In December 2018, it became the most streamed song from the 20th century, and it had been downloaded or streamed over 1.6 billion times.
History and recording
According to Mercury's friend Chris Smith (a keyboard player in Smile), Mercury first started developing "Bohemian Rhapsody" in the late 1960s; Mercury used to play parts of songs he was writing at the time on the piano, and one of his pieces, known simply as "The Cowboy Song", contained lyrics that ended up in the completed version produced years later, in 1975, specifically, "Mama ... just killed a man." Producer Roy Thomas Baker, who began working with Queen in 1972, related how Mercury once played the opening ballad section on the piano for him in Mercury's flat:
He played the beginning on the piano, then stopped and said, "And this is where the opera section comes in!" Then we went out to eat dinner.
Guitarist Brian May said the band thought that Mercury's blueprint for the song was "intriguing and original, and worthy of work". According to May, much of Queen's material was written in the studio, but this song "was all in Freddie's mind" before they started. In an interview during the band's Australian tour early in 1985, Mercury explained, "It was basically three songs that I wanted to put out, and I just put the three together."
Queen spent a month rehearsing at Ridge Farm Studio in Surrey in mid-1975, and drummer Roger Taylor recalled that "Bohemian Rhapsody" was one of the songs the band worked on while they were there. Recording began on 24 August 1975 at Rockfield Studio 1 near Monmouth, South Wales, after a three-week rehearsal at Penrhos Court, near Kington, Herefordshire. During the making of the track, four additional studios – Roundhouse, Sarm Studios, Scorpio Sound, and Wessex Sound Studios – were used. According to some band members, Mercury mentally prepared the song beforehand and directed the band throughout.
Mercury used a C. Bechstein concert grand piano, which he played in the promotional video and the UK tour. Due to the elaborate nature of the song, it was recorded in various sections. The piano was allegedly the same one Paul McCartney had used to record the Beatles' song "Hey Jude", as well as the same one Rick Wakeman used on David Bowie's 1971 album Hunky Dory.
Baker recalled in 1999
May, Mercury, and Taylor reportedly sang their vocal parts continually for 10 to 12 hours a day. The entire piece took three weeks to record, and in some sections featured 180 separate overdubs. Since the studios of the time only offered 24 track analogue tape, it was necessary for the three to overdub themselves many times and "bounce" these down to successive sub-mixes. In the end, eighth-generation tapes were used. The various sections of tape containing the desired sub-mixes had to be spliced (cut and assembled in the correct sequence). May recalled placing a tape in front of the light and being able to see through it, as the tape had been used so many times.
A similar story was told in 1977 by Taylor regarding the elaborate overdubs and sub-mixes for "The March of The Black Queen" for the album Queen II. At that time, the band was using 16 track equipment.
Producer Baker recalls that May's solo was done on only one track, rather than recording multiple tracks. May stated that he wanted to compose "a little tune that would be a counterpart to the main melody; I didn't just want to play the melody". The guitarist said that his better material stems from this way of working, in which he thought of the tune before playing it: "The fingers tend to be predictable unless being led by the brain." According to Baker,
... the end of the song was much heavier because it was one of the first mixes to be done with automation ... If you really listen to it, the ballad starts off clean, and as the opera section gets louder and louder, the vocals get more and more distorted. You can still hear this on the CD. They are clearly distorted.
Composition and analysis
"Bohemian Rhapsody" has been affiliated to the genres of progressive rock (sometimes called symphonic rock), hard rock, and progressive pop. The song is highly unusual for a popular single in featuring no chorus, combining disparate musical styles, and containing lyrics which eschew conventional love-based narratives, and instead make allusions to murder and nihilism. The Beach Boys' 1966 single "Good Vibrations", which also consisted of disparate music sections recorded separately, was a precursor to "Bohemian Rhapsody".
Music scholar Sheila Whiteley suggests that "the title draws strongly on contemporary rock ideology, the individualism of the bohemian artists' world, with rhapsody affirming the romantic ideals of art rock". Commenting on bohemianism, Judith Peraino said,
Mercury intended ... [this song] to be a 'mock opera', something outside the norm of rock songs, and it does follow a certain operatic logic: Choruses of multi-tracked voices alternate with aria-like solos, the emotions are excessive, the plot confusing.
"Bohemian Rhapsody" begins with an introduction, then goes into a piano ballad, before a guitar solo leads to an operatic interlude. A hard rock part follows this and it concludes with a coda. The song is in the keys of B major, E major, A major and F major, and is predominantly in meter. This musical format of writing a song as a suite with changes in style, tone, and tempo throughout was uncommon in most mainstream pop and rock music, but common in progressive rock, a genre which had reached its artistic and commercial zenith between 1970 and 1975 in the music of British bands such as Jethro Tull, Yes, Genesis, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Gentle Giant, Van der Graaf Generator, and Curved Air. The music of progressive rock was characterised by dramatic contrasts, frequent shifts in tempo and in rhythmic character from one section of a composition to the next. Bands from the genre blended rock with classical music, including its structural features, compositional practices, and instrumentation. Queen had embraced progressive rock as one of their many diverse influences.
"Bohemian Rhapsody" parodies many different elements of opera by using bombastic choruses, sarcastic recitative, and distorted Italian operatic phrases. An embryonic version of this style had already been used in Mercury's earlier compositions for the band "My Fairy King" (1973) and "The March of the Black Queen" (1974).
Intro (0:00–0:49)
The song begins with a close five-part harmony a cappella introduction in B major—as evidenced by the presence of a V–I cadence (F7–B) multi-track recordings of Mercury although the video has all four members lip-syncing this part. The lyrics question whether life is "real" or "just fantasy caught in a landslide" before concluding that there can be "no escape from reality".
After 20 seconds, the grand piano enters, the song modulates briefly to E major via another perfect cadence (B7–E) and Mercury's voice alternates with the other vocal parts. The narrator introduces himself as "just a poor boy" but declares that he "needs no sympathy" because he is "easy come, easy go" and then "little high, little low" (when heard in stereo, the words "little high" come from the left speaker and "little low" comes from the right, the other respective speaker plays the piano at the same time); chromatic side-slipping on "easy come, easy go" highlights the dream-like atmosphere. The end of this section is marked by the bass entrance and the cross-handed piano vamp in B.
Ballad (0:49–2:37)
The piano begins in B major along with the entrance of John Deacon's bass guitar, marking the onset of this section. After it plays twice, Mercury's vocals enter. Throughout the section, the vocals evolve from a softly sung harmony to an impassioned solo performance by Mercury. The narrator explains to his mother that he has "just killed a man", with "a gun against his head" and in doing so, has thrown his life away. This "confessional" section, Whiteley comments, is "affirmative of the nurturant and life-giving force of the feminine and the need for absolution". In the middle of the verse (1:19), Taylor's drums enter, and a descending chromatic run leads to a temporary modulation to E major (up one fourth). The narrator makes the second of several invocations to his "mama" in the new key, continuing the original theme. The narrator explains his regret over "mak[ing] you cry" and urging "mama" to "carry on as if nothing really matters". A brief, descending variation of the piano phrase connects to the second verse.
Then the piano intro plays, marking the start of the second verse. As the ballad proceeds into its second verse, the speaker confesses how ashamed he is by his act of murder (as May enters on guitar and mimics the upper range of the piano at 1:50). May imitates a bell tree during the line "sends shivers down my spine", by playing the strings of his guitar on the other side of the bridge. The narrator bids the world goodbye announcing he has "got to go" and prepares to "face the truth" admitting "I don't want to die / I sometimes wish I'd never been born at all". This is where the guitar solo enters.
Guitar solo (2:37–3:05)
Towards the end of the ballad section, the band builds in intensity, incorporating a guitar solo (in E major) played and composed by Brian May. The intensity continues to build, but once the bass line completes its descent establishing modulation to the new key (A major), the entire band cuts out abruptly at 3:03 except for quiet, staccato A major quaver (eighth-note) chords on the piano, marking the start of the "Opera" section.
Opera (3:05–4:07)
A rapid series of rhythmic and harmonic changes introduces a pseudo-operatic midsection, which contains the bulk of the elaborate vocal multi-tracking, depicting the narrator's descent into hell. While the underlying pulse of the song is maintained, the dynamics vary greatly from bar to bar, from only Mercury's voice accompanied by a piano to a multi-voice choir supported by drums, bass, piano, and timpani. The choir effect was created by having May, Mercury, and Taylor repeatedly sing their vocal parts, resulting in 180 separate overdubs. These overdubs were then combined into successive submixes. According to Roger Taylor, the voices of May, Mercury, and himself combined created a wide vocal range: "Brian could get down quite low, Freddie had a powerful voice through the middle, and I was good at the high stuff." The band wanted to create "a wall of sound, that starts down and goes all the way up". The band used the bell effect for lyrics "Magnifico" and "let me go". Also, on "let him go", Taylor singing the top section carries his note on further after the rest of the "choir" have stopped singing.
Lyrical references in this passage include Scaramouche, the fandango, Galileo Galilei, Figaro, and Beelzebub, with cries of "Bismillah! [Arabic: "In the name of God!"] we will not let you go!", as rival factions fight over his soul, some wishing to "let [him] go" and "spare him his life from this monstrosity", with others sending him "thunderbolts and lightning – very, very frightening [to him]". In Freddie Mercury: The definitive biography, Lesley-Ann Jones theorises that it is also a figurative representation of the four members: Mercury, May, Taylor, and Deacon respectively. The section concludes with a full choral treatment of the lyric "Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me!", on a block B major chord. Roger Taylor tops the final chord with a falsetto B in the fifth octave (B5).
Using the 24 track technology available at the time, the "opera" section took about three weeks to finish. Producer Roy Thomas Baker said, "Every time Freddie came up with another Galileo, I would add another piece of tape to the reel." Baker recalls that they kept wearing out the tape, which meant having to do transfers.
Hard rock (4:07–4:54)
The operatic section leads into a rock interlude with a guitar riff written by Mercury. At 4:15, a quadruple-tracked Mercury (in stereo, the four parts are panned two on the left and two on the right) sings angry lyrics addressed to an unspecified "you", accusing them of betrayal and abuse and insisting "can't do this to me, baby", before the final lines conclude that the singer "just gotta get right outta" an unspecified "here". Three ascending guitar runs follow. Mercury then plays a similar B run on the piano, as the song builds up to the finale with a ritardando.
Outro (4:54–5:55)
After Mercury plays ascending octaves of notes from the B mixolydian mode (composed of the notes from the E scale), the song then returns to the tempo and form of the introduction, initially in E major, before quickly modulating to C minor, only to soon go through an abrupt short series of modulations, bringing it back to C minor again in time for the final "nothing really matters" section. A guitar accompanies the chorus "ooh, ooh yeah, ooh yeah". A double-tracked twin guitar melody is played through an amplifier designed by John Deacon, affectionately nicknamed the "Deacy Amp". Mercury's line "Nothing really matters ..." appears again, "cradled by light piano arpeggios suggesting both resignation (minor tonalities) and a new sense of freedom in the wide vocal span". After the line "nothing really matters" is repeated multiple times, the song finally concludes in the key of E major, but then changes again to F major just before it ends. The final line, "Any way the wind blows", is followed by the quiet sound of a large tam-tam that finally expels the tension built up throughout the song.
Lyrics
The New York Times commented that "the song's most distinct feature is the fatalistic lyrics". Mercury refused to explain his composition other than to say it was about relationships; the band is still protective of the song's secret. Brian May supports suggestions that the song contained veiled references to Mercury's personal traumas. He recalls "Freddie was a very complex person: flippant and funny on the surface, but he concealed insecurities and problems in squaring up his life with his childhood. He never explained the lyrics, but I think he put a lot of himself into that song." May, though, says the band had agreed that the core of a lyric was a private issue for the composer. In a BBC Three documentary about the making of "Bohemian Rhapsody", Roger Taylor maintains that the true meaning of the song is "fairly self-explanatory with just a bit of nonsense in the middle".
Despite this, critics, both journalistic and academic, have speculated over the meaning behind the song's lyrics. Some believe the lyrics describe a suicidal murderer haunted by demons or depict events just preceding an execution. The latter explanation points to Albert Camus's novel The Stranger, in which a young man confesses to an impulsive murder and has an epiphany before he is executed, as probable inspiration. When the band released a Greatest Hits cassette in Iran, a leaflet in Persian was included with translation and explanations. In the explanation, Queen states that "Bohemian Rhapsody" is about a young man who has accidentally killed someone and, like Faust, sold his soul to the devil. On the night before his execution, he calls for God saying, "Bismillah" ("In the name of God" in Arabic), and with the help of angels, regains his soul from Shaitan (the devil in Arabic).
Other critics interpreted the lyrics as Mercury's way of dealing with personal issues. Music scholar Sheila Whiteley observes that Mercury reached a turning point in his personal life in the year he wrote "Bohemian Rhapsody". He had been living with Mary Austin for seven years but had just embarked on his first love affair with a man. She suggests that the song provides an insight into Mercury's emotional state at the time, "living with Mary ('Mamma', as in Mother Mary) and wanting to break away ('Mamma mia let me go')". Others suggest it as a veiled reference to coming out, and dealing with the repercussions of the sodomy laws of the time.
Still others believe the lyrics were only written to fit with the music, and had no intended meaning; the D.J., television entertainer, and comedian Kenny Everett, who played an influential role in popularising the single on his radio show on Capital Radio, quoted Mercury as claiming the lyrics were simply "random rhyming nonsense".
Release
When the band wanted to release the single in 1975, various executives suggested to them, that at 5 minutes and 55 seconds it was too long, and would never be a hit. The song was played to other musicians who commented the band had no hope of it ever being played on radio. According to producer Roy Thomas Baker, he and the band bypassed this corporate assessment by playing the song for Capital Radio D.J. Kenny Everett:
"we had a reel-to-reel copy but we told him he could only have it if he promised not to play it. 'I won't play it,' he said, winking ..."
The plan worked — Everett teased his listeners by playing only parts of the song. Audience demand intensified when Everett played the full song on his show 14 times in 2 days. Hordes of fans attempted to buy the single the following Monday, only to be told by record stores that it had not yet been released. The same weekend, Paul Drew, who ran the RKO General stations in the U.S, heard the track on Everett's show in London. Drew managed to get a copy of the tape and started to play it in the U.S, which forced the hand of Queen's US label, Elektra. In an interview with Sound on Sound, Baker reflects that "it was a strange situation where radio on both sides of the Atlantic was breaking a record that the record companies said would never get airplay!"
Eventually the unedited single was released, with "I'm in Love with My Car" as the B-side. Following Everett's escapade in October 1975, Eric Hall, a record plugger, gave a copy to David "Diddy" Hamilton to play on his weekday Radio One show. Hall stated "Monster, Monster! This could be a hit!"
The song became the 1975 UK Christmas number one, holding the top position for nine weeks. "Bohemian Rhapsody" was the first song ever to get to number one in the UK twice with the same version, and is also the only single to have been Christmas number one twice with the same version. The second was upon its re-release (as a double A-side single with "These Are the Days of Our Lives") in 1991, following Mercury's death, staying at number 1 for 5 weeks. The re-released version sold 673,000 copies in 1991 in the UK.
In the U.S, the single was also a success, although initially to a lesser extent than in the UK. The single, released in December 1975, reached number 9 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America for sales of one million copies.
In a retrospective article, Anthony DeCurtis of Rolling Stone explained why the song performed less strongly in the US charts by saying that it is "the quintessential example of the kind of thing that doesn't exactly go over well in America". Its chart run of 24 weeks, however, placed it at number 18 on Billboards year-end chart, higher than some number 1s of the year. With the Canadian record-buying public, the single fared better, reaching number one in the RPM national singles chart for the week ending 1 May 1976.
"Bohemian Rhapsody" was re-released as a double A-side cassette single with "The Show Must Go On" in January 1992, following the death of Freddie Mercury, with proceeds going to the Magic Johnson Foundation for AIDS research. The song re-entered the Billboard Hot 100 chart after 16 years, reaching number 2, and spending 17 weeks on the chart. After the release of the Queen biopic named after the song, it re-entered the charts for a third time at number 33, marking 26 years since it last charted.
In March 2021 it was certified Diamond (10× platinum) in the US for combined digital sales and streams equal to 10 million units. It had sold 4.4 million digital copies in the US .
Promotional video
Though some artists had made video clips to accompany songs (including Queen themselves; for example, their earlier singles "Keep Yourself Alive", "Liar", "Seven Seas of Rhye" and "Killer Queen" already had "pop promos", as they were known at the time), it was only after the success of "Bohemian Rhapsody" that it became a regular practice for record companies to produce promotional videos for artists' single releases. The Guardian stated it "ensured videos would henceforth be a mandatory tool in the marketing of music". These videos could then be shown on television shows around the world, such as the BBC's Top of the Pops, without the need for the artist to appear in person. A promo video also allowed the artist to have their music broadcast and accompanied by their own choice of visuals, rather than dancers such as Pan's People. According to May, the video was produced so that the band could avoid miming on Top of the Pops since they would have looked off miming to such a complex song. He also said that the band knew they would be set to appear at Dundee's Caird Hall on tour, a date which clashed with the programme, thus a promo would solve the issue. The video has been hailed as launching the MTV age.
The band used Trillion, a subsidiary of Trident Studios, their former management company and recording studio. They hired one of their trucks and got it to Elstree Studios, where the band was rehearsing for their tour. The video was directed by Bruce Gowers, who had directed a video of the band's 1974 performance at the Rainbow Theatre in London, and was recorded by cameraman Barry Dodd and assistant director/floor manager Jim McCutcheon. The video was recorded in just four hours on 10 November 1975, at a cost of £4,500. Gowers reported that the band was involved in the discussion of the video and the result, and "was a co-operative to that extent, but there was only one leader."
The video opens with a shot of the four band members standing in diamond formation with their heads tilted back in near darkness as they sing the a cappella part. The lights fade up, and the shots cross-fade into close-ups of Mercury. The composition of the shot is the same as Mick Rock's cover photograph for their second album Queen II. The photo, inspired by a photograph of actress Marlene Dietrich, was the band's favourite image of themselves. The video then fades into them playing their instruments. In the opera section of the video, the scene reverts to the Queen II standing positions, after which they perform once again on stage during the hard rock segment. In the closing seconds of the video Roger Taylor is depicted stripped to the waist, striking the tam tam in the manner of the trademark of the Rank Organisation's Gongman, familiar in the UK as the opening of all Rank film productions.
All of the special effects were achieved during the recording, rather than editing. The visual effect of Mercury's face cascading away (during the echoed lines "Magnifico" and "Let me go") was accomplished by pointing the camera at a monitor, giving visual feedback, a glare analogous to audio feedback. The honeycomb illusion was created using a shaped lens. The video was edited within five hours because it was due to be broadcast the same week in which it was taped. The video was sent to the BBC as soon as it was completed and aired for the first time on Top of the Pops in November 1975.
Critical reception
Although the song has become one of the most revered in popular music history, the initial critical reaction was mixed. The UK music papers reacted with bemusement, recognising that the song was original and technically accomplished, but they mostly remained indifferent. Pete Erskine of NME observed that, "It'll be interesting to see whether it'll be played in its entirety on the radio. It's performed extremely well, but more in terms of production than anything else... Someone somewhere has decided that the boys' next release must sound 'epic'. And it does. They sound extremely self-important."
Allan Jones of Melody Maker was unimpressed, describing the song as "a superficially impressive pastiche of incongruous musical styles" and that Queen "contrived to approximate the demented fury of the Balham Amateur Operatic Society performing The Pirates of Penzance... 'Bohemian Rhapsody' is full of drama, passion and romance and sounds rather like one of those mini-opera affairs that Pete Townsend [sic] used to tack on to the end of Who albums", before concluding, "The significance of the composition eludes me totally, though I must admit to finding it horrifically fascinating. It's likely to be a hit of enormous proportions despite its length." Ray Fox-Cumming of Record Mirror was also left unmoved, saying, "It has no immediate selling point whatsoever: among its many parts. there's scarcely a shred of a tune and certainly no one line to latch onto. There's no denying that it's devilishly clever, encompassing everything from bits of operatic harmonies to snatches that sound like Sparks and David Cassidy, but, in the end the whole adds up to less than the sum of its parts." He did, however, say that it was "unthinkable" that it wouldn't be a hit. The most positive review came from Sounds, which called it "impossibly disjointed and complex, but a dazzlingly clever epic from the fevered mind of Freddie Mercury". Cash Box called it "a softly sung ode to the prospect of moving on from staid ways with "good singing" and "good production."
Legacy
Musical impact
In 1976, when asked for his opinion on "Bohemian Rhapsody", the Beach Boys' leader Brian Wilson praised the song as "the most competitive thing that's come along in ages" and "a fulfillment and an answer to a teenage prayer—of artistic music". Producer Steve Levine said the track broke "all sonic production barriers" in a fashion similar to the Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations" (1966), Phil Spector's "Be My Baby" (1963), and 10cc's "I'm Not in Love" (1975). Greg Lake, whose song "I Believe in Father Christmas" was kept from number one in the UK by "Bohemian Rhapsody" when it was released in 1975, acknowledged that he was "beaten by one of the greatest records ever made", describing it as "a once-in-a-lifetime recording".
Addressing the song's enduring popularity, author and music lecturer Jochen Eisentraut wrote in 2012: "A year before punk made it unfashionable, progressive rock had an astounding success with the theoretically over-length (nearly 6-minute) single 'Bohemian Rhapsody' which bore many of the hallmarks of the 'prog' genre". He said it was "unique at this point to hear a hit single in this style", it was "more accessible than other music of the genre" and was "able to communicate beyond the usual confines of the style". Author and progressive rock historian Stephen Lambe called it a "remarkable" single and said it "provides a neat but coincidental bridge between prog in its prime and the move to more aggressive songwriting", suggesting the song "feels like a grotesque (although probably unintentional) parody of progressive rock". The New Rolling Stone Album Guide described it as "either a prog-rock benchmark or the most convoluted novelty song ever recorded". Writing for the BBC in 2015, the Chicago Tribunes music critic Greg Kot called it a "prog-rock pocket operetta" and said the song's "reign as a work of wigged-out genius rather than a dated gimmick testifies to its go-for-broke attitude—one that has resonated across generations".
In 2009, The Guardians music critic, Tom Service, examined the song's relationship with the traditions of classical music, describing its popularity as "one of the strangest musical phenomena out there":
A comparison was also made between the song and Led Zeppelin's 1971 epic "Stairway to Heaven" by music writers Pete Prown and HP Newquist. They observed both songs were "a slow, introspective beginning and gradual climb to a raging metal jam and back again", with the notable distinction being "while Zeppelin meshed folk influences with heavy metal, Queen opted for the light grandeur of the operetta as part of its hard rock". They said "for sheer cleverness alone, not to mention May's riveting electric work, 'Bohemian Rhapsody' rightfully became one of the top singles of 1975 and established Queen in the elite of seventies rock bands".
In 2015, The Economist described it as "one of the most innovative pieces of the progressive rock era". It wrote "though Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones and the Beatles' Paul McCartney had experimented with symphonic elements, and Roger Waters of Pink Floyd and Pete Townshend of the Who had created narrative albums with distinct 'movements', none had had the audacity to import a miniature opera into rock music."
Wayne's World
In 1992, the song enjoyed renewed popularity in the United States after being featured in a scene in the film Wayne's World, in which the titular character and his friends headbang in a car to the rock part near the end of the song. The film's director, Penelope Spheeris, was hesitant to use the song, as it did not entirely fit with the lead characters, who were fans of less flamboyant hard rock and heavy metal. Mike Myers insisted that the song fit the scene. According to music scholar Theodore Gracyk, by 1992, when the film was released, even "classic rock" stations had stopped playing the almost six-minute song. Gracyk suggests that beginning the tape in the middle of the song after "the lyrics which provide the song's narrative ... forces the film's audience to respond to its presence in the scene without the 'commentary' of the lyrics". Helped by the song, the soundtrack album of the film was a major hit.
In connection with this, a new video was released, interspersing excerpts from the film with footage from the original Queen video, along with some live footage of the band. Myers was horrified that the record company had mixed clips from Wayne's World with Queen's original video, fearing that this would upset the band. He said, "they've just whizzed on a Picasso." He asked the record company to tell Queen that the video was not his idea and that he apologised to them. The band, though, sent a reply simply saying, "Thank you for using our song." This astonished Myers, who responded, "Thank you for even letting me touch the hem of your garments!"
The Wayne's World video version of "Bohemian Rhapsody" won Queen its only MTV Video Music Award for "Best Video from a Film". When remaining members Brian May and Roger Taylor took the stage to accept the award, Brian May was overcome with emotion and said that "Freddie would be tickled." In the final scene of the video, a pose of the band from the video from the original "Bohemian Rhapsody" clip morphs into an identically posed 1985 photo, first featured in the "One Vision" video.
In the 2018 Queen biopic feature film Bohemian Rhapsody, Myers makes a cameo as a fictional record executive who pans the song and refuses to release it as a single, proclaiming that it is too long for radio and that it is not a song that "teenagers can crank up the volume in their car and bang their heads to", a reference to the iconic scene in Wayne's World.
Achievements and accolades
The song has won numerous awards and has been covered and parodied by many artists. At the 19th Annual Grammy Awards in February 1977, "Bohemian Rhapsody" received two Grammy Award nominations for Best Pop Vocal Performance by a Duo, Group or Chorus and Best Arrangement for Voices. In October 1977, only two years after its release, the British Phonographic Industry named "Bohemian Rhapsody" as the best British single of the period 1952–77. It is a regular entry in greatest-songs polls, and it was named by the Guinness Book of Records in 2002 as the top British single of all time. The song is also listed in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll.
In 2004, the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. , "Bohemian Rhapsody" is the second most-played song on British radio, in clubs and on jukeboxes collectively, after Procol Harum's "A Whiter Shade of Pale". On 30 September 2007 for BBC Radio 1's 40th birthday, it was revealed on The Radio 1 Chart Show that "Bohemian Rhapsody" had been the most played song since Radio 1's launch.
In December 2018, "Bohemian Rhapsody" officially became the most-streamed song from the 20th century, surpassing Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and Guns N' Roses' "Sweet Child o' Mine". "Bohemian Rhapsody" also became the most-streamed classic rock song of all time. The number of downloads of the song and original video exceeded 1.6 billion downloads across global on-demand streaming services. The video surpassed one billion views on YouTube in July 2019, making it the oldest music video to reach one billion on the platform, and the first pre-1990s song to reach that figure.
Polls
In a 2001 poll of more than 50,000 readers of The Observer newspaper and viewers of British TV's Channel 4 for the 100 best number-one singles of all time, the song came second to John Lennon's "Imagine". In a 2002 poll of more than 31,000 people conducted for Guinness World Records' British Hit Singles, "Bohemian Rhapsody" was voted Britain's favourite single, beating Lennon's "Imagine" to the top spot.
In 2002, it came in 10th in a BBC World Service poll to find the world's favourite song. It has been in the top five of the Dutch annual "Top 100 Aller Tijden" ("All-Time Top 100 [Singles]") since 1977, reaching number one on eight occasions, more than any other artist. In 1999, the annual "Top 2000" poll commenced to find the best songs ever made, and "Bohemian Rhapsody" has been ranked number one in all but five years (2005, 2010, 2014, 2015 and 2020 when it was number two). In a 2012 readers poll conducted by Rolling Stone magazine, "Bohemian Rhapsody" was voted the best vocal performance in rock history. In 2010, the song ranked at 166 on Rolling Stones "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" list, and was re-ranked at number 17 in 2021.
In 2012, the song topped an ITV poll in the UK to find "The Nation's Favourite Number One" over 60 years of music, ahead of Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" (number two), Adele's "Someone like You" (number three), Oasis' "Don't Look Back in Anger" (number four) and The Beatles' "Hey Jude" (number five). The song was also ranked number five in RadioMafia's list of "Top 500 Songs".
Cover versions
Over two dozen artists have recorded or performed cover versions of "Bohemian Rhapsody", including charted single releases by:
Bad News – a 1986 spoof version produced by Brian May which reached UK number 44
The Braids – an R&B version recorded for the soundtrack to the 1996 film High School High and which peaked at UK number 21, US number 42, and Canada number 13
Panic! at the Disco – a version recorded for the soundtrack of the 2016 film Suicide Squad and which peaked at UK number 80, US number 64 and Canada number 47
A video cover featuring The Muppets also went viral and was subsequently released as a single in late 2009, peaking at number 32 in the UK.
"Weird Al" Yankovic's 1993 album Alapalooza includes a version of the song entitled "Bohemian Polka", which is a rearrangement of the entire song as a polka.
40th anniversary
To mark the 40th anniversary of "Bohemian Rhapsody", the song was released on a limited edition 12" vinyl with the original B-side "I'm In Love With My Car" on 27 November 2015 for Record Store Day 2015. Queen also released A Night At The Odeon, Live At Hammersmith 75, on CD, DVD-Video and Blu-ray. This includes the first live "professionally" recorded performance of "Bohemian Rhapsody". However, the very first recording and live performance of "Bohemian Rhapsody" was the performance on 14 November 1975 in Liverpool.
Live performances
The a cappella opening was too complex to perform live, so Mercury tried various ways of introducing the song. When "Mustapha" became a live favourite, Mercury would often sub in that song's a cappella opening, which was easier to reproduce live as it was only one voice—this combination features in their 1979 live album Live Killers. During their 1982 Hot Space Tour, and occasionally at other times, Mercury would do a piano improvisation (generally the introduction to "Death on Two Legs") that ended with the first notes of the song. Often, the preceding song would end, and Mercury would sit at the piano, say a quick word, and start playing the ballad section. At Live Aid where "Bohemian Rhapsody" was their opening song, Mercury commenced with the ballad section.
Initially following the song's release, the operatic middle section proved a problem for the band. Because of extensive multi-tracking, it could not be performed on stage. The band did not have enough of a break between the Sheer Heart Attack and A Night at the Opera tours to find a way to make it work live, so they split the song into three sections that were played throughout the night. The opening and closing ballads were played as part of a medley, with "Killer Queen" and "March of the Black Queen" taking the place of the operatic and hard rock sections. In 1976 concerts where the same medley was played, the operatic section from the album would be played from tape as the introduction to the setlist. During this playback, Mercury would appear briefly to sing live for the line, "I see a little sillhouetto of a man". As the song segued into the hard rock section, the band would emerge on the smoke-filled stage—the playback would end at this point, and the hard rock section would be performed live (without the final ballad section, which appeared later in the set).
Starting with the A Day at the Races Tour in 1977, the band adopted their lasting way of playing the song live. The opening ballad would be played on stage, and after May's guitar solo, the lights would go down, the band would leave the stage, and the operatic section would be played from tape, while coloured stage lights provided a light show based around the voices of the opera section. Most playings of the opera section from the tape would often be accompanied by a portion of the song's music video containing the footage used for the operatic portion of the song. Other playings would be played over montages of footage filmed from the band members' other experiences throughout their daily lives. A blast of pyrotechnics after Taylor's high note on the final "for me" would announce the band's return for the hard rock section and closing ballad. Queen played the song in this form all through the Magic Tour of 1986. This style was also used for the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert, with Elton John singing the opening ballad and then after the taped operatic section, Axl Rose singing the hard rock section. John and Rose sang the closing ballad part together in a duet.
"Bohemian Rhapsody" was performed by Queen + Paul Rodgers throughout their tours, accompanied by a video of Mercury. Footage from the Live at Wembley '86 was used for the 2005–06 tour, and the 1981 Montreal performance used for the Rock the Cosmos Tour. As with the Queen tours, the band went backstage for the operatic section, which was accompanied by a video tribute to Freddie Mercury. When the hard rock section began, the lights came back up to the full band on stage, including Rodgers, who took over lead vocals. Rodgers duetted with the recording of Mercury for the "outro" section, allowing the audience to sing the final "Nothing really matters to me", while the taped Mercury took a bow for the crowd. Rodgers would then repeat the line, and the final line ("Any way the wind blows") was delivered with one last shot of Mercury smiling at the audience. Commenting upon this staging, Brian May says that they "had to rise to the challenge of getting Freddie in there in a way which gave him his rightful place, but without demeaning Paul in any way. It also kept us live and 'present', although conscious and proud of our past, as we logically should be."
Since 2012, May and Taylor have toured with former American Idol contestant Adam Lambert under the name Queen + Adam Lambert (following two one-off performances together in 2009 and 2011), with "Bohemian Rhapsody" regularly included at the end of their set.
Charts
Weekly charts
Year-end charts
Decade-end charts
All-time charts
Sales and certifications
Queen comments on the song
Personnel
Source:
Freddie Mercury – lead and backing vocals, piano, operatic vocals (middle register)
Brian May – electric guitar, operatic vocals (low register)
Roger Taylor – drums, timpani, gong, operatic vocals (high register)
John Deacon – bass guitar
See also
List of Bohemian Rhapsody cover versions
List of best-selling singles in the United Kingdom
List of best-selling singles in the United States
Citations
General references
External links
1975 singles
1975 songs
1976 singles
1991 singles
1992 singles
Brit Award for British Single
British hard rock songs
British progressive rock songs
British rock songs
Christmas number-one singles in the United Kingdom
Dutch Top 40 number-one singles
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EMI Records singles
Grammy Hall of Fame Award recipients
Hollywood Records singles
Irish Singles Chart number-one singles
Music based on the Faust legend
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Number-one singles in Spain
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UK Singles Chart number-one singles
Virgin EMI Records singles | true | [
"Arthur Anderson (1873–1942) was an English dramatist and lyricist, who is best known for his libretti for Edwardian musical comedies.\n\nBiography\nAnderson was born in London, the son of James H. Anderson and Lydia Warren Townley. He attended the Leys School for Boys in Cambridge. He married Helen Peel Massy (died 1947) in 1908, and they had one child, Aileen Peel Anderson (born 1912).\n\nHe collaborated on the libretti for Edwardian musical comedies, including The White Chrysanthemum (1905; with Leedham Bantock; Anderson also wrote the lyrics), The Girl Behind the Counter (1906; with Bantok; Anderson also wrote the lyrics), Two Merry Monarchs (1910; with George Levy; Anderson also wrote the lyrics), Two Little Brides (1912; with Harold R. Atteridge; Anderson also wrote the lyrics) and The Joy-Ride Lady (1914; with Hartley Carrick). He wrote the lyrics for The Nightbirds (1911; adapted from Die Fledermaus; titled The Merry Countess in the 1912 Broadway production), The Marriage Market (1913) and The Beauty Spot (1917). He also contributed lyrics for the Broadway production of Chu Chin Chow (1917) and wrote the lyrics to many popular songs. His musical burlesques included The Bill-Poster (1910, with music by Herman Finck), and his comedy plays included John Berkeley's Ghost (1910 with Hartley Carrick).\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\n1942 deaths\nEnglish lyricists\nEnglish musical theatre lyricists\n1873 births\nEnglish male dramatists and playwrights",
"Herbert Desmond Carter (15 June 1895 – 3 February 1939) was a British lyricist who worked with George and Ira Gershwin, Ivor Novello, and others, and also wrote one of the first English language versions of the notorious \"suicide song\", \"Gloomy Sunday\".\n\nHe was born in Bristol. In 1924 he wrote most of the lyrics for the London musical Primrose, for which Gershwin wrote the music, his first commission outside the US. The musical was revived in 2003, when one reviewer wrote: \"...by far the most outstanding contribution to Primrose is the comedy lyrics of Desmond Carter, who penned the words to seventeen of the score's twenty-two songs and collaborated with Ira Gershwin on four of the remaining five. Two among them, \"Isn't It Horrible What They Did to Mary, Queen of Scots\" and \"That New Fangled Mother of Mine,\" shine with humor and wordplay worthy of Noel Coward.\"\n\nIn 1936, Carter wrote English lyrics for the song \"Gloomy Sunday\" (\"Szomorú vasárnap\"), which had been written by Hungarian composer Rezső Seress with lyrics by László Jávor. Carter's lyrics were performed and recorded by Paul Robeson, whose recording was successful although most later versions of the song used alternative lyrics by American writer Sam M. Lewis.\n\nCarter also collaborated with leading English popular composers of the period, including Ivor Novello and Noel Gay. He died in London at the age of 43.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\n1895 births\n1939 deaths\nEnglish lyricists\nEnglish musical theatre lyricists"
]
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[
"Bohemian Rhapsody",
"Lyrics",
"Who wrote the lyrics?",
"Mercury reached a turning point in his personal life in the year he wrote \"Bohemian Rhapsody\"."
]
| C_169eaa51c6c243bc9069eb7c6821930d_0 | What was the song about? | 2 | What was the song Bohemian Rhapsody about? | Bohemian Rhapsody | The New York Times commented that "the song's most distinct feature is the fatalistic lyrics". Mercury refused to explain his composition other than saying it was about relationships; the band is still protective of the song's secret. Brian May supports suggestions that the song contained veiled references to Mercury's personal traumas. He recalls "Freddie was a very complex person: flippant and funny on the surface, but he concealed insecurities and problems in squaring up his life with his childhood. He never explained the lyrics, but I think he put a lot of himself into that song." May, though, says the band had agreed that the core of a lyric was a private issue for the composer. In a BBC Three documentary about the making of "Bohemian Rhapsody", Roger Taylor maintains that the true meaning of the song is "fairly self-explanatory with just a bit of nonsense in the middle". When the band released a Greatest Hits cassette in Iran, a leaflet in Persian was included with translation and explanations (refers to a book published in Iran called The March of the Black Queen by Sarah Sefati and Farhad Arkani, which included the whole biography of the band and complete lyrics with Persian translation (2000)). In the explanation, Queen states that "Bohemian Rhapsody" is about a young man who has accidentally killed someone and, like Faust, sold his soul to the devil. On the night before his execution, he calls for God saying, "Bismillah" ("In the name of God" in Arabic), and with the help of angels, regains his soul from Shaitan (the devil in Islam). Despite this, critics, both journalistic and academic, have speculated over the meaning behind the song's lyrics. Some believe the lyrics describe a suicidal murderer haunted by demons or depict events just preceding an execution. The latter explanation points to Albert Camus's novel The Stranger, in which a young man confesses to an impulsive murder and has an epiphany before he is executed, as probable inspiration. Others believe the lyrics were only written to fit with the music, and have no meaning; Kenny Everett quoted Mercury as claiming the lyrics were simply "random rhyming nonsense". Still, others interpreted them as Mercury's way of dealing with personal issues. Music scholar Sheila Whiteley observes that Mercury reached a turning point in his personal life in the year he wrote "Bohemian Rhapsody". He had been living with Mary Austin for seven years but had just embarked on his first love affair with a man. She suggests that the song provides an insight into Mercury's emotional state at the time, "living with Mary ('Mamma', as in Mother Mary) and wanting to break away ('Mamma Mia let me go')". CANNOTANSWER | Mercury refused to explain his composition other than saying it was about relationships; the band is still protective of the song's secret. | "Bohemian Rhapsody" is a song by the British rock band Queen. It was written by Freddie Mercury for the band's 1975 album A Night at the Opera. The song is a six-minute suite, notable for its lack of a refraining chorus and consisting of several sections: an intro, a ballad segment, an operatic passage, a hard rock part and a reflective coda. "Bohemian Rhapsody" is one of the few songs to emerge from the 1970s progressive rock movement to achieve widespread commercial success and appeal to a mainstream audience.
"Bohemian Rhapsody" topped the UK Singles Chart for nine weeks and had sold more than a million copies by the end of January 1976. In 1991, after Mercury's death, it topped the charts for another five weeks, eventually becoming the UK's third best-selling single of all time. It is also the only song to reach the UK Christmas number one twice by the same artist. It also topped the charts in countries including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and the Netherlands, and sold over six million copies worldwide. In the United States, the song peaked at number nine in 1976, but reached a new peak of number two on the Billboard Hot 100 after being used in the film Wayne's World (1992). In 2018, the release of Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody brought the song renewed popularity and chart success worldwide. In March 2021 it was certified Diamond in the US for combined digital sales and streams equal to 10 million units.
Although critical reaction was initially mixed, "Bohemian Rhapsody" has since become Queen's most popular song and is considered one of the greatest rock songs of all time. The single was accompanied by a groundbreaking promotional video. Rolling Stone stated that its influence "cannot be overstated, practically inventing the music video seven years before MTV went on the air." The Guardian named its music video one of the 50 key events in rock music history, helping make videos a critical tool in music marketing.
In 2004, "Bohemian Rhapsody" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. It has appeared in numerous polls of the greatest songs in popular music, including a ranking at number 17 on Rolling Stones list of "the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. Mercury's vocal performance was chosen as the greatest in rock history by readers of Rolling Stone. In December 2018, it became the most streamed song from the 20th century, and it had been downloaded or streamed over 1.6 billion times.
History and recording
According to Mercury's friend Chris Smith (a keyboard player in Smile), Mercury first started developing "Bohemian Rhapsody" in the late 1960s; Mercury used to play parts of songs he was writing at the time on the piano, and one of his pieces, known simply as "The Cowboy Song", contained lyrics that ended up in the completed version produced years later, in 1975, specifically, "Mama ... just killed a man." Producer Roy Thomas Baker, who began working with Queen in 1972, related how Mercury once played the opening ballad section on the piano for him in Mercury's flat:
He played the beginning on the piano, then stopped and said, "And this is where the opera section comes in!" Then we went out to eat dinner.
Guitarist Brian May said the band thought that Mercury's blueprint for the song was "intriguing and original, and worthy of work". According to May, much of Queen's material was written in the studio, but this song "was all in Freddie's mind" before they started. In an interview during the band's Australian tour early in 1985, Mercury explained, "It was basically three songs that I wanted to put out, and I just put the three together."
Queen spent a month rehearsing at Ridge Farm Studio in Surrey in mid-1975, and drummer Roger Taylor recalled that "Bohemian Rhapsody" was one of the songs the band worked on while they were there. Recording began on 24 August 1975 at Rockfield Studio 1 near Monmouth, South Wales, after a three-week rehearsal at Penrhos Court, near Kington, Herefordshire. During the making of the track, four additional studios – Roundhouse, Sarm Studios, Scorpio Sound, and Wessex Sound Studios – were used. According to some band members, Mercury mentally prepared the song beforehand and directed the band throughout.
Mercury used a C. Bechstein concert grand piano, which he played in the promotional video and the UK tour. Due to the elaborate nature of the song, it was recorded in various sections. The piano was allegedly the same one Paul McCartney had used to record the Beatles' song "Hey Jude", as well as the same one Rick Wakeman used on David Bowie's 1971 album Hunky Dory.
Baker recalled in 1999
May, Mercury, and Taylor reportedly sang their vocal parts continually for 10 to 12 hours a day. The entire piece took three weeks to record, and in some sections featured 180 separate overdubs. Since the studios of the time only offered 24 track analogue tape, it was necessary for the three to overdub themselves many times and "bounce" these down to successive sub-mixes. In the end, eighth-generation tapes were used. The various sections of tape containing the desired sub-mixes had to be spliced (cut and assembled in the correct sequence). May recalled placing a tape in front of the light and being able to see through it, as the tape had been used so many times.
A similar story was told in 1977 by Taylor regarding the elaborate overdubs and sub-mixes for "The March of The Black Queen" for the album Queen II. At that time, the band was using 16 track equipment.
Producer Baker recalls that May's solo was done on only one track, rather than recording multiple tracks. May stated that he wanted to compose "a little tune that would be a counterpart to the main melody; I didn't just want to play the melody". The guitarist said that his better material stems from this way of working, in which he thought of the tune before playing it: "The fingers tend to be predictable unless being led by the brain." According to Baker,
... the end of the song was much heavier because it was one of the first mixes to be done with automation ... If you really listen to it, the ballad starts off clean, and as the opera section gets louder and louder, the vocals get more and more distorted. You can still hear this on the CD. They are clearly distorted.
Composition and analysis
"Bohemian Rhapsody" has been affiliated to the genres of progressive rock (sometimes called symphonic rock), hard rock, and progressive pop. The song is highly unusual for a popular single in featuring no chorus, combining disparate musical styles, and containing lyrics which eschew conventional love-based narratives, and instead make allusions to murder and nihilism. The Beach Boys' 1966 single "Good Vibrations", which also consisted of disparate music sections recorded separately, was a precursor to "Bohemian Rhapsody".
Music scholar Sheila Whiteley suggests that "the title draws strongly on contemporary rock ideology, the individualism of the bohemian artists' world, with rhapsody affirming the romantic ideals of art rock". Commenting on bohemianism, Judith Peraino said,
Mercury intended ... [this song] to be a 'mock opera', something outside the norm of rock songs, and it does follow a certain operatic logic: Choruses of multi-tracked voices alternate with aria-like solos, the emotions are excessive, the plot confusing.
"Bohemian Rhapsody" begins with an introduction, then goes into a piano ballad, before a guitar solo leads to an operatic interlude. A hard rock part follows this and it concludes with a coda. The song is in the keys of B major, E major, A major and F major, and is predominantly in meter. This musical format of writing a song as a suite with changes in style, tone, and tempo throughout was uncommon in most mainstream pop and rock music, but common in progressive rock, a genre which had reached its artistic and commercial zenith between 1970 and 1975 in the music of British bands such as Jethro Tull, Yes, Genesis, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Gentle Giant, Van der Graaf Generator, and Curved Air. The music of progressive rock was characterised by dramatic contrasts, frequent shifts in tempo and in rhythmic character from one section of a composition to the next. Bands from the genre blended rock with classical music, including its structural features, compositional practices, and instrumentation. Queen had embraced progressive rock as one of their many diverse influences.
"Bohemian Rhapsody" parodies many different elements of opera by using bombastic choruses, sarcastic recitative, and distorted Italian operatic phrases. An embryonic version of this style had already been used in Mercury's earlier compositions for the band "My Fairy King" (1973) and "The March of the Black Queen" (1974).
Intro (0:00–0:49)
The song begins with a close five-part harmony a cappella introduction in B major—as evidenced by the presence of a V–I cadence (F7–B) multi-track recordings of Mercury although the video has all four members lip-syncing this part. The lyrics question whether life is "real" or "just fantasy caught in a landslide" before concluding that there can be "no escape from reality".
After 20 seconds, the grand piano enters, the song modulates briefly to E major via another perfect cadence (B7–E) and Mercury's voice alternates with the other vocal parts. The narrator introduces himself as "just a poor boy" but declares that he "needs no sympathy" because he is "easy come, easy go" and then "little high, little low" (when heard in stereo, the words "little high" come from the left speaker and "little low" comes from the right, the other respective speaker plays the piano at the same time); chromatic side-slipping on "easy come, easy go" highlights the dream-like atmosphere. The end of this section is marked by the bass entrance and the cross-handed piano vamp in B.
Ballad (0:49–2:37)
The piano begins in B major along with the entrance of John Deacon's bass guitar, marking the onset of this section. After it plays twice, Mercury's vocals enter. Throughout the section, the vocals evolve from a softly sung harmony to an impassioned solo performance by Mercury. The narrator explains to his mother that he has "just killed a man", with "a gun against his head" and in doing so, has thrown his life away. This "confessional" section, Whiteley comments, is "affirmative of the nurturant and life-giving force of the feminine and the need for absolution". In the middle of the verse (1:19), Taylor's drums enter, and a descending chromatic run leads to a temporary modulation to E major (up one fourth). The narrator makes the second of several invocations to his "mama" in the new key, continuing the original theme. The narrator explains his regret over "mak[ing] you cry" and urging "mama" to "carry on as if nothing really matters". A brief, descending variation of the piano phrase connects to the second verse.
Then the piano intro plays, marking the start of the second verse. As the ballad proceeds into its second verse, the speaker confesses how ashamed he is by his act of murder (as May enters on guitar and mimics the upper range of the piano at 1:50). May imitates a bell tree during the line "sends shivers down my spine", by playing the strings of his guitar on the other side of the bridge. The narrator bids the world goodbye announcing he has "got to go" and prepares to "face the truth" admitting "I don't want to die / I sometimes wish I'd never been born at all". This is where the guitar solo enters.
Guitar solo (2:37–3:05)
Towards the end of the ballad section, the band builds in intensity, incorporating a guitar solo (in E major) played and composed by Brian May. The intensity continues to build, but once the bass line completes its descent establishing modulation to the new key (A major), the entire band cuts out abruptly at 3:03 except for quiet, staccato A major quaver (eighth-note) chords on the piano, marking the start of the "Opera" section.
Opera (3:05–4:07)
A rapid series of rhythmic and harmonic changes introduces a pseudo-operatic midsection, which contains the bulk of the elaborate vocal multi-tracking, depicting the narrator's descent into hell. While the underlying pulse of the song is maintained, the dynamics vary greatly from bar to bar, from only Mercury's voice accompanied by a piano to a multi-voice choir supported by drums, bass, piano, and timpani. The choir effect was created by having May, Mercury, and Taylor repeatedly sing their vocal parts, resulting in 180 separate overdubs. These overdubs were then combined into successive submixes. According to Roger Taylor, the voices of May, Mercury, and himself combined created a wide vocal range: "Brian could get down quite low, Freddie had a powerful voice through the middle, and I was good at the high stuff." The band wanted to create "a wall of sound, that starts down and goes all the way up". The band used the bell effect for lyrics "Magnifico" and "let me go". Also, on "let him go", Taylor singing the top section carries his note on further after the rest of the "choir" have stopped singing.
Lyrical references in this passage include Scaramouche, the fandango, Galileo Galilei, Figaro, and Beelzebub, with cries of "Bismillah! [Arabic: "In the name of God!"] we will not let you go!", as rival factions fight over his soul, some wishing to "let [him] go" and "spare him his life from this monstrosity", with others sending him "thunderbolts and lightning – very, very frightening [to him]". In Freddie Mercury: The definitive biography, Lesley-Ann Jones theorises that it is also a figurative representation of the four members: Mercury, May, Taylor, and Deacon respectively. The section concludes with a full choral treatment of the lyric "Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me!", on a block B major chord. Roger Taylor tops the final chord with a falsetto B in the fifth octave (B5).
Using the 24 track technology available at the time, the "opera" section took about three weeks to finish. Producer Roy Thomas Baker said, "Every time Freddie came up with another Galileo, I would add another piece of tape to the reel." Baker recalls that they kept wearing out the tape, which meant having to do transfers.
Hard rock (4:07–4:54)
The operatic section leads into a rock interlude with a guitar riff written by Mercury. At 4:15, a quadruple-tracked Mercury (in stereo, the four parts are panned two on the left and two on the right) sings angry lyrics addressed to an unspecified "you", accusing them of betrayal and abuse and insisting "can't do this to me, baby", before the final lines conclude that the singer "just gotta get right outta" an unspecified "here". Three ascending guitar runs follow. Mercury then plays a similar B run on the piano, as the song builds up to the finale with a ritardando.
Outro (4:54–5:55)
After Mercury plays ascending octaves of notes from the B mixolydian mode (composed of the notes from the E scale), the song then returns to the tempo and form of the introduction, initially in E major, before quickly modulating to C minor, only to soon go through an abrupt short series of modulations, bringing it back to C minor again in time for the final "nothing really matters" section. A guitar accompanies the chorus "ooh, ooh yeah, ooh yeah". A double-tracked twin guitar melody is played through an amplifier designed by John Deacon, affectionately nicknamed the "Deacy Amp". Mercury's line "Nothing really matters ..." appears again, "cradled by light piano arpeggios suggesting both resignation (minor tonalities) and a new sense of freedom in the wide vocal span". After the line "nothing really matters" is repeated multiple times, the song finally concludes in the key of E major, but then changes again to F major just before it ends. The final line, "Any way the wind blows", is followed by the quiet sound of a large tam-tam that finally expels the tension built up throughout the song.
Lyrics
The New York Times commented that "the song's most distinct feature is the fatalistic lyrics". Mercury refused to explain his composition other than to say it was about relationships; the band is still protective of the song's secret. Brian May supports suggestions that the song contained veiled references to Mercury's personal traumas. He recalls "Freddie was a very complex person: flippant and funny on the surface, but he concealed insecurities and problems in squaring up his life with his childhood. He never explained the lyrics, but I think he put a lot of himself into that song." May, though, says the band had agreed that the core of a lyric was a private issue for the composer. In a BBC Three documentary about the making of "Bohemian Rhapsody", Roger Taylor maintains that the true meaning of the song is "fairly self-explanatory with just a bit of nonsense in the middle".
Despite this, critics, both journalistic and academic, have speculated over the meaning behind the song's lyrics. Some believe the lyrics describe a suicidal murderer haunted by demons or depict events just preceding an execution. The latter explanation points to Albert Camus's novel The Stranger, in which a young man confesses to an impulsive murder and has an epiphany before he is executed, as probable inspiration. When the band released a Greatest Hits cassette in Iran, a leaflet in Persian was included with translation and explanations. In the explanation, Queen states that "Bohemian Rhapsody" is about a young man who has accidentally killed someone and, like Faust, sold his soul to the devil. On the night before his execution, he calls for God saying, "Bismillah" ("In the name of God" in Arabic), and with the help of angels, regains his soul from Shaitan (the devil in Arabic).
Other critics interpreted the lyrics as Mercury's way of dealing with personal issues. Music scholar Sheila Whiteley observes that Mercury reached a turning point in his personal life in the year he wrote "Bohemian Rhapsody". He had been living with Mary Austin for seven years but had just embarked on his first love affair with a man. She suggests that the song provides an insight into Mercury's emotional state at the time, "living with Mary ('Mamma', as in Mother Mary) and wanting to break away ('Mamma mia let me go')". Others suggest it as a veiled reference to coming out, and dealing with the repercussions of the sodomy laws of the time.
Still others believe the lyrics were only written to fit with the music, and had no intended meaning; the D.J., television entertainer, and comedian Kenny Everett, who played an influential role in popularising the single on his radio show on Capital Radio, quoted Mercury as claiming the lyrics were simply "random rhyming nonsense".
Release
When the band wanted to release the single in 1975, various executives suggested to them, that at 5 minutes and 55 seconds it was too long, and would never be a hit. The song was played to other musicians who commented the band had no hope of it ever being played on radio. According to producer Roy Thomas Baker, he and the band bypassed this corporate assessment by playing the song for Capital Radio D.J. Kenny Everett:
"we had a reel-to-reel copy but we told him he could only have it if he promised not to play it. 'I won't play it,' he said, winking ..."
The plan worked — Everett teased his listeners by playing only parts of the song. Audience demand intensified when Everett played the full song on his show 14 times in 2 days. Hordes of fans attempted to buy the single the following Monday, only to be told by record stores that it had not yet been released. The same weekend, Paul Drew, who ran the RKO General stations in the U.S, heard the track on Everett's show in London. Drew managed to get a copy of the tape and started to play it in the U.S, which forced the hand of Queen's US label, Elektra. In an interview with Sound on Sound, Baker reflects that "it was a strange situation where radio on both sides of the Atlantic was breaking a record that the record companies said would never get airplay!"
Eventually the unedited single was released, with "I'm in Love with My Car" as the B-side. Following Everett's escapade in October 1975, Eric Hall, a record plugger, gave a copy to David "Diddy" Hamilton to play on his weekday Radio One show. Hall stated "Monster, Monster! This could be a hit!"
The song became the 1975 UK Christmas number one, holding the top position for nine weeks. "Bohemian Rhapsody" was the first song ever to get to number one in the UK twice with the same version, and is also the only single to have been Christmas number one twice with the same version. The second was upon its re-release (as a double A-side single with "These Are the Days of Our Lives") in 1991, following Mercury's death, staying at number 1 for 5 weeks. The re-released version sold 673,000 copies in 1991 in the UK.
In the U.S, the single was also a success, although initially to a lesser extent than in the UK. The single, released in December 1975, reached number 9 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America for sales of one million copies.
In a retrospective article, Anthony DeCurtis of Rolling Stone explained why the song performed less strongly in the US charts by saying that it is "the quintessential example of the kind of thing that doesn't exactly go over well in America". Its chart run of 24 weeks, however, placed it at number 18 on Billboards year-end chart, higher than some number 1s of the year. With the Canadian record-buying public, the single fared better, reaching number one in the RPM national singles chart for the week ending 1 May 1976.
"Bohemian Rhapsody" was re-released as a double A-side cassette single with "The Show Must Go On" in January 1992, following the death of Freddie Mercury, with proceeds going to the Magic Johnson Foundation for AIDS research. The song re-entered the Billboard Hot 100 chart after 16 years, reaching number 2, and spending 17 weeks on the chart. After the release of the Queen biopic named after the song, it re-entered the charts for a third time at number 33, marking 26 years since it last charted.
In March 2021 it was certified Diamond (10× platinum) in the US for combined digital sales and streams equal to 10 million units. It had sold 4.4 million digital copies in the US .
Promotional video
Though some artists had made video clips to accompany songs (including Queen themselves; for example, their earlier singles "Keep Yourself Alive", "Liar", "Seven Seas of Rhye" and "Killer Queen" already had "pop promos", as they were known at the time), it was only after the success of "Bohemian Rhapsody" that it became a regular practice for record companies to produce promotional videos for artists' single releases. The Guardian stated it "ensured videos would henceforth be a mandatory tool in the marketing of music". These videos could then be shown on television shows around the world, such as the BBC's Top of the Pops, without the need for the artist to appear in person. A promo video also allowed the artist to have their music broadcast and accompanied by their own choice of visuals, rather than dancers such as Pan's People. According to May, the video was produced so that the band could avoid miming on Top of the Pops since they would have looked off miming to such a complex song. He also said that the band knew they would be set to appear at Dundee's Caird Hall on tour, a date which clashed with the programme, thus a promo would solve the issue. The video has been hailed as launching the MTV age.
The band used Trillion, a subsidiary of Trident Studios, their former management company and recording studio. They hired one of their trucks and got it to Elstree Studios, where the band was rehearsing for their tour. The video was directed by Bruce Gowers, who had directed a video of the band's 1974 performance at the Rainbow Theatre in London, and was recorded by cameraman Barry Dodd and assistant director/floor manager Jim McCutcheon. The video was recorded in just four hours on 10 November 1975, at a cost of £4,500. Gowers reported that the band was involved in the discussion of the video and the result, and "was a co-operative to that extent, but there was only one leader."
The video opens with a shot of the four band members standing in diamond formation with their heads tilted back in near darkness as they sing the a cappella part. The lights fade up, and the shots cross-fade into close-ups of Mercury. The composition of the shot is the same as Mick Rock's cover photograph for their second album Queen II. The photo, inspired by a photograph of actress Marlene Dietrich, was the band's favourite image of themselves. The video then fades into them playing their instruments. In the opera section of the video, the scene reverts to the Queen II standing positions, after which they perform once again on stage during the hard rock segment. In the closing seconds of the video Roger Taylor is depicted stripped to the waist, striking the tam tam in the manner of the trademark of the Rank Organisation's Gongman, familiar in the UK as the opening of all Rank film productions.
All of the special effects were achieved during the recording, rather than editing. The visual effect of Mercury's face cascading away (during the echoed lines "Magnifico" and "Let me go") was accomplished by pointing the camera at a monitor, giving visual feedback, a glare analogous to audio feedback. The honeycomb illusion was created using a shaped lens. The video was edited within five hours because it was due to be broadcast the same week in which it was taped. The video was sent to the BBC as soon as it was completed and aired for the first time on Top of the Pops in November 1975.
Critical reception
Although the song has become one of the most revered in popular music history, the initial critical reaction was mixed. The UK music papers reacted with bemusement, recognising that the song was original and technically accomplished, but they mostly remained indifferent. Pete Erskine of NME observed that, "It'll be interesting to see whether it'll be played in its entirety on the radio. It's performed extremely well, but more in terms of production than anything else... Someone somewhere has decided that the boys' next release must sound 'epic'. And it does. They sound extremely self-important."
Allan Jones of Melody Maker was unimpressed, describing the song as "a superficially impressive pastiche of incongruous musical styles" and that Queen "contrived to approximate the demented fury of the Balham Amateur Operatic Society performing The Pirates of Penzance... 'Bohemian Rhapsody' is full of drama, passion and romance and sounds rather like one of those mini-opera affairs that Pete Townsend [sic] used to tack on to the end of Who albums", before concluding, "The significance of the composition eludes me totally, though I must admit to finding it horrifically fascinating. It's likely to be a hit of enormous proportions despite its length." Ray Fox-Cumming of Record Mirror was also left unmoved, saying, "It has no immediate selling point whatsoever: among its many parts. there's scarcely a shred of a tune and certainly no one line to latch onto. There's no denying that it's devilishly clever, encompassing everything from bits of operatic harmonies to snatches that sound like Sparks and David Cassidy, but, in the end the whole adds up to less than the sum of its parts." He did, however, say that it was "unthinkable" that it wouldn't be a hit. The most positive review came from Sounds, which called it "impossibly disjointed and complex, but a dazzlingly clever epic from the fevered mind of Freddie Mercury". Cash Box called it "a softly sung ode to the prospect of moving on from staid ways with "good singing" and "good production."
Legacy
Musical impact
In 1976, when asked for his opinion on "Bohemian Rhapsody", the Beach Boys' leader Brian Wilson praised the song as "the most competitive thing that's come along in ages" and "a fulfillment and an answer to a teenage prayer—of artistic music". Producer Steve Levine said the track broke "all sonic production barriers" in a fashion similar to the Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations" (1966), Phil Spector's "Be My Baby" (1963), and 10cc's "I'm Not in Love" (1975). Greg Lake, whose song "I Believe in Father Christmas" was kept from number one in the UK by "Bohemian Rhapsody" when it was released in 1975, acknowledged that he was "beaten by one of the greatest records ever made", describing it as "a once-in-a-lifetime recording".
Addressing the song's enduring popularity, author and music lecturer Jochen Eisentraut wrote in 2012: "A year before punk made it unfashionable, progressive rock had an astounding success with the theoretically over-length (nearly 6-minute) single 'Bohemian Rhapsody' which bore many of the hallmarks of the 'prog' genre". He said it was "unique at this point to hear a hit single in this style", it was "more accessible than other music of the genre" and was "able to communicate beyond the usual confines of the style". Author and progressive rock historian Stephen Lambe called it a "remarkable" single and said it "provides a neat but coincidental bridge between prog in its prime and the move to more aggressive songwriting", suggesting the song "feels like a grotesque (although probably unintentional) parody of progressive rock". The New Rolling Stone Album Guide described it as "either a prog-rock benchmark or the most convoluted novelty song ever recorded". Writing for the BBC in 2015, the Chicago Tribunes music critic Greg Kot called it a "prog-rock pocket operetta" and said the song's "reign as a work of wigged-out genius rather than a dated gimmick testifies to its go-for-broke attitude—one that has resonated across generations".
In 2009, The Guardians music critic, Tom Service, examined the song's relationship with the traditions of classical music, describing its popularity as "one of the strangest musical phenomena out there":
A comparison was also made between the song and Led Zeppelin's 1971 epic "Stairway to Heaven" by music writers Pete Prown and HP Newquist. They observed both songs were "a slow, introspective beginning and gradual climb to a raging metal jam and back again", with the notable distinction being "while Zeppelin meshed folk influences with heavy metal, Queen opted for the light grandeur of the operetta as part of its hard rock". They said "for sheer cleverness alone, not to mention May's riveting electric work, 'Bohemian Rhapsody' rightfully became one of the top singles of 1975 and established Queen in the elite of seventies rock bands".
In 2015, The Economist described it as "one of the most innovative pieces of the progressive rock era". It wrote "though Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones and the Beatles' Paul McCartney had experimented with symphonic elements, and Roger Waters of Pink Floyd and Pete Townshend of the Who had created narrative albums with distinct 'movements', none had had the audacity to import a miniature opera into rock music."
Wayne's World
In 1992, the song enjoyed renewed popularity in the United States after being featured in a scene in the film Wayne's World, in which the titular character and his friends headbang in a car to the rock part near the end of the song. The film's director, Penelope Spheeris, was hesitant to use the song, as it did not entirely fit with the lead characters, who were fans of less flamboyant hard rock and heavy metal. Mike Myers insisted that the song fit the scene. According to music scholar Theodore Gracyk, by 1992, when the film was released, even "classic rock" stations had stopped playing the almost six-minute song. Gracyk suggests that beginning the tape in the middle of the song after "the lyrics which provide the song's narrative ... forces the film's audience to respond to its presence in the scene without the 'commentary' of the lyrics". Helped by the song, the soundtrack album of the film was a major hit.
In connection with this, a new video was released, interspersing excerpts from the film with footage from the original Queen video, along with some live footage of the band. Myers was horrified that the record company had mixed clips from Wayne's World with Queen's original video, fearing that this would upset the band. He said, "they've just whizzed on a Picasso." He asked the record company to tell Queen that the video was not his idea and that he apologised to them. The band, though, sent a reply simply saying, "Thank you for using our song." This astonished Myers, who responded, "Thank you for even letting me touch the hem of your garments!"
The Wayne's World video version of "Bohemian Rhapsody" won Queen its only MTV Video Music Award for "Best Video from a Film". When remaining members Brian May and Roger Taylor took the stage to accept the award, Brian May was overcome with emotion and said that "Freddie would be tickled." In the final scene of the video, a pose of the band from the video from the original "Bohemian Rhapsody" clip morphs into an identically posed 1985 photo, first featured in the "One Vision" video.
In the 2018 Queen biopic feature film Bohemian Rhapsody, Myers makes a cameo as a fictional record executive who pans the song and refuses to release it as a single, proclaiming that it is too long for radio and that it is not a song that "teenagers can crank up the volume in their car and bang their heads to", a reference to the iconic scene in Wayne's World.
Achievements and accolades
The song has won numerous awards and has been covered and parodied by many artists. At the 19th Annual Grammy Awards in February 1977, "Bohemian Rhapsody" received two Grammy Award nominations for Best Pop Vocal Performance by a Duo, Group or Chorus and Best Arrangement for Voices. In October 1977, only two years after its release, the British Phonographic Industry named "Bohemian Rhapsody" as the best British single of the period 1952–77. It is a regular entry in greatest-songs polls, and it was named by the Guinness Book of Records in 2002 as the top British single of all time. The song is also listed in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll.
In 2004, the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. , "Bohemian Rhapsody" is the second most-played song on British radio, in clubs and on jukeboxes collectively, after Procol Harum's "A Whiter Shade of Pale". On 30 September 2007 for BBC Radio 1's 40th birthday, it was revealed on The Radio 1 Chart Show that "Bohemian Rhapsody" had been the most played song since Radio 1's launch.
In December 2018, "Bohemian Rhapsody" officially became the most-streamed song from the 20th century, surpassing Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and Guns N' Roses' "Sweet Child o' Mine". "Bohemian Rhapsody" also became the most-streamed classic rock song of all time. The number of downloads of the song and original video exceeded 1.6 billion downloads across global on-demand streaming services. The video surpassed one billion views on YouTube in July 2019, making it the oldest music video to reach one billion on the platform, and the first pre-1990s song to reach that figure.
Polls
In a 2001 poll of more than 50,000 readers of The Observer newspaper and viewers of British TV's Channel 4 for the 100 best number-one singles of all time, the song came second to John Lennon's "Imagine". In a 2002 poll of more than 31,000 people conducted for Guinness World Records' British Hit Singles, "Bohemian Rhapsody" was voted Britain's favourite single, beating Lennon's "Imagine" to the top spot.
In 2002, it came in 10th in a BBC World Service poll to find the world's favourite song. It has been in the top five of the Dutch annual "Top 100 Aller Tijden" ("All-Time Top 100 [Singles]") since 1977, reaching number one on eight occasions, more than any other artist. In 1999, the annual "Top 2000" poll commenced to find the best songs ever made, and "Bohemian Rhapsody" has been ranked number one in all but five years (2005, 2010, 2014, 2015 and 2020 when it was number two). In a 2012 readers poll conducted by Rolling Stone magazine, "Bohemian Rhapsody" was voted the best vocal performance in rock history. In 2010, the song ranked at 166 on Rolling Stones "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" list, and was re-ranked at number 17 in 2021.
In 2012, the song topped an ITV poll in the UK to find "The Nation's Favourite Number One" over 60 years of music, ahead of Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" (number two), Adele's "Someone like You" (number three), Oasis' "Don't Look Back in Anger" (number four) and The Beatles' "Hey Jude" (number five). The song was also ranked number five in RadioMafia's list of "Top 500 Songs".
Cover versions
Over two dozen artists have recorded or performed cover versions of "Bohemian Rhapsody", including charted single releases by:
Bad News – a 1986 spoof version produced by Brian May which reached UK number 44
The Braids – an R&B version recorded for the soundtrack to the 1996 film High School High and which peaked at UK number 21, US number 42, and Canada number 13
Panic! at the Disco – a version recorded for the soundtrack of the 2016 film Suicide Squad and which peaked at UK number 80, US number 64 and Canada number 47
A video cover featuring The Muppets also went viral and was subsequently released as a single in late 2009, peaking at number 32 in the UK.
"Weird Al" Yankovic's 1993 album Alapalooza includes a version of the song entitled "Bohemian Polka", which is a rearrangement of the entire song as a polka.
40th anniversary
To mark the 40th anniversary of "Bohemian Rhapsody", the song was released on a limited edition 12" vinyl with the original B-side "I'm In Love With My Car" on 27 November 2015 for Record Store Day 2015. Queen also released A Night At The Odeon, Live At Hammersmith 75, on CD, DVD-Video and Blu-ray. This includes the first live "professionally" recorded performance of "Bohemian Rhapsody". However, the very first recording and live performance of "Bohemian Rhapsody" was the performance on 14 November 1975 in Liverpool.
Live performances
The a cappella opening was too complex to perform live, so Mercury tried various ways of introducing the song. When "Mustapha" became a live favourite, Mercury would often sub in that song's a cappella opening, which was easier to reproduce live as it was only one voice—this combination features in their 1979 live album Live Killers. During their 1982 Hot Space Tour, and occasionally at other times, Mercury would do a piano improvisation (generally the introduction to "Death on Two Legs") that ended with the first notes of the song. Often, the preceding song would end, and Mercury would sit at the piano, say a quick word, and start playing the ballad section. At Live Aid where "Bohemian Rhapsody" was their opening song, Mercury commenced with the ballad section.
Initially following the song's release, the operatic middle section proved a problem for the band. Because of extensive multi-tracking, it could not be performed on stage. The band did not have enough of a break between the Sheer Heart Attack and A Night at the Opera tours to find a way to make it work live, so they split the song into three sections that were played throughout the night. The opening and closing ballads were played as part of a medley, with "Killer Queen" and "March of the Black Queen" taking the place of the operatic and hard rock sections. In 1976 concerts where the same medley was played, the operatic section from the album would be played from tape as the introduction to the setlist. During this playback, Mercury would appear briefly to sing live for the line, "I see a little sillhouetto of a man". As the song segued into the hard rock section, the band would emerge on the smoke-filled stage—the playback would end at this point, and the hard rock section would be performed live (without the final ballad section, which appeared later in the set).
Starting with the A Day at the Races Tour in 1977, the band adopted their lasting way of playing the song live. The opening ballad would be played on stage, and after May's guitar solo, the lights would go down, the band would leave the stage, and the operatic section would be played from tape, while coloured stage lights provided a light show based around the voices of the opera section. Most playings of the opera section from the tape would often be accompanied by a portion of the song's music video containing the footage used for the operatic portion of the song. Other playings would be played over montages of footage filmed from the band members' other experiences throughout their daily lives. A blast of pyrotechnics after Taylor's high note on the final "for me" would announce the band's return for the hard rock section and closing ballad. Queen played the song in this form all through the Magic Tour of 1986. This style was also used for the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert, with Elton John singing the opening ballad and then after the taped operatic section, Axl Rose singing the hard rock section. John and Rose sang the closing ballad part together in a duet.
"Bohemian Rhapsody" was performed by Queen + Paul Rodgers throughout their tours, accompanied by a video of Mercury. Footage from the Live at Wembley '86 was used for the 2005–06 tour, and the 1981 Montreal performance used for the Rock the Cosmos Tour. As with the Queen tours, the band went backstage for the operatic section, which was accompanied by a video tribute to Freddie Mercury. When the hard rock section began, the lights came back up to the full band on stage, including Rodgers, who took over lead vocals. Rodgers duetted with the recording of Mercury for the "outro" section, allowing the audience to sing the final "Nothing really matters to me", while the taped Mercury took a bow for the crowd. Rodgers would then repeat the line, and the final line ("Any way the wind blows") was delivered with one last shot of Mercury smiling at the audience. Commenting upon this staging, Brian May says that they "had to rise to the challenge of getting Freddie in there in a way which gave him his rightful place, but without demeaning Paul in any way. It also kept us live and 'present', although conscious and proud of our past, as we logically should be."
Since 2012, May and Taylor have toured with former American Idol contestant Adam Lambert under the name Queen + Adam Lambert (following two one-off performances together in 2009 and 2011), with "Bohemian Rhapsody" regularly included at the end of their set.
Charts
Weekly charts
Year-end charts
Decade-end charts
All-time charts
Sales and certifications
Queen comments on the song
Personnel
Source:
Freddie Mercury – lead and backing vocals, piano, operatic vocals (middle register)
Brian May – electric guitar, operatic vocals (low register)
Roger Taylor – drums, timpani, gong, operatic vocals (high register)
John Deacon – bass guitar
See also
List of Bohemian Rhapsody cover versions
List of best-selling singles in the United Kingdom
List of best-selling singles in the United States
Citations
General references
External links
1975 singles
1975 songs
1976 singles
1991 singles
1992 singles
Brit Award for British Single
British hard rock songs
British progressive rock songs
British rock songs
Christmas number-one singles in the United Kingdom
Dutch Top 40 number-one singles
Elektra Records singles
EMI Records singles
Grammy Hall of Fame Award recipients
Hollywood Records singles
Irish Singles Chart number-one singles
Music based on the Faust legend
Never Shout Never songs
Number-one singles in Australia
Number-one singles in New Zealand
Number-one singles in Spain
Parlophone singles
Progressive pop songs
Queen (band) songs
RPM Top Singles number-one singles
Signature songs
Single Top 100 number-one singles
Song recordings produced by Roy Thomas Baker
Songs about crime
Songs about death
Songs composed in B-flat major
Songs written by Freddie Mercury
Symphonic rock songs
The Flaming Lips songs
The Muppets songs
UK Singles Chart number-one singles
Virgin EMI Records singles | false | [
"\"What About Love\" is a song originally recorded by Canadian rock group Toronto, re-released in 1985 by the American rock group Heart. The song was Heart's \"comeback\" single. It was the first Heart track to reach the top 40 in three years, and their first top 10 hit in five. It was released as the first single from the band's self-titled 1985 album, Heart, as well as their first hit single on their new record label, Capitol Records. Grace Slick and Mickey Thomas, co-lead vocalists of Starship at the time, provide additional background vocals on the song.\n\nBackground\nThe song was originally recorded in 1983 by Canadian rock group Toronto, of which songwriters Sheron Alton and Brian Allen were members. (The other songwriter, Jim Vallance, was not a member of Toronto, though he played drums on Toronto's recording of the song.) However, the rest of the band elected not to release the song, and the frustration Allen and Alton faced in being unable to convince their bandmates to feature this and other material on Toronto's albums led to their departure from the group.\n\nLater, Michael McCarty at ATV Music Publishing was reviewing his song catalogue when he came across \"What About Love\". He offered the song to Heart, who turned it into a worldwide hit. Toronto's original version remained commercially unreleased until 2002, when it appeared as a bonus cut on the CDs Get It On Credit and Toronto: The Greatest Hits.\n\nReception\nThe song's sound marked a considerable change in the musical direction for Heart, moving from the hard rock and folk rock of their earlier work to a more polished, power ballad sound. \"What About Love\" received extensive airplay on MTV and returned Heart to the top-10 of the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 for the first time in five years, peaking at No. 10.\n\nThe song peaked at No. 14 on the UK Singles Chart upon its re-release in 1988. Exclusively in its UK release, \"What About Love\" was also featured in an extended version on 12\" and CD single versions.\n\nThe song's chorus was featured in a series of Swiffer WetJet TV commercials from late 2010 into the following year. The campaign followed a series of previous Swiffer commercials using popular songs of the 1970s and 1980s.\n\nCharts\n\nWeekly charts\n\nYear-end charts\n\nCover versions and samples\nMari Hamada covered the song in her 1985 album Blue Revolution.\nOn the compilation album of the 2006 season of American Idol, the song was performed by finalist Melissa McGhee. Janell Wheeler performed the song in Season 9 of the series. Season 11 Erika Van Pelt sang the song in the top 12 Girls night. In Season 12, Amber Holcomb sang it during the Top 7's Rock week.\nRick Ross samples \"What About Love\" in his song \"Shot to the Heart.\"\nLil Wayne samples \"What About Love\" in his song \"Something You Forgot.\"\nOn the TV show Pussycat Dolls Present: Girlicious, finalist Chrystina performs this song in the series finale, which eventually leads to her making the final group.\nRytmus samples \"What About Love\" in his song \"Na Toto Som Cakal.\"\nKelly Clarkson covered the song during as part of her 2012 Stronger Tour, performing the song during a Boston, Massachusetts appearance.\nAndy Lau once covered this song in Cantonese language, titled 永遠愛你 (Forever Loving You) which was taken on his second solo album (情感的禁區/Forbidden Emotional)\n\nReferences\n\nHeart (band) songs\n1982 songs\n1985 singles\nHard rock ballads\nSongs written by Jim Vallance\nSong recordings produced by Ron Nevison\nCapitol Records singles\n1980s ballads",
"\"Six Feet Apart\" is a song recorded by American country music singer Luke Combs. It was released on May 1, 2020 as a direct response to the COVID-19 pandemic and was added to the digital version of his second album, What You See Is What You Get. It was also later added to the deluxe version of the album, What You See Ain't Always What You Get. Combs wrote the song with Brent Cobb and Rob Snyder.\n\nContent\nBefore the pandemic had hit, Combs was scheduled to meet with songwriters Brent Cobb and Rob Snyder on April 14 for a writing session. Combs said that all three of them had wanted to write a song about the COVID-19 pandemic but he was initially apprehensive because he thought the concept would be \"too cheesy\". Combs uploaded an acoustic version of the song to YouTube. After the video trended on that site, he performed it on the Grand Ole Opry. Combs then recorded a studio version and noted that during the recording session, everyone involved wore masks and was in a different room. The studio version of the song was officially sent to country radio on May 1, 2020. The song has a theme of missing major activities due to the pandemic, such as the arrival of the spring season and touring as a musician.\n\nCharts\n\nWeekly charts\n\nYear-end charts\n\nCertifications\n\nReferences\n\n2020 songs\n2020 singles\nLuke Combs songs\nSongs written by Luke Combs\nColumbia Records singles\nSongs about the COVID-19 pandemic"
]
|
[
"Bohemian Rhapsody",
"Lyrics",
"Who wrote the lyrics?",
"Mercury reached a turning point in his personal life in the year he wrote \"Bohemian Rhapsody\".",
"What was the song about?",
"Mercury refused to explain his composition other than saying it was about relationships; the band is still protective of the song's secret."
]
| C_169eaa51c6c243bc9069eb7c6821930d_0 | When were the lyrics written? | 3 | When were Bohemian Rhapsody written? | Bohemian Rhapsody | The New York Times commented that "the song's most distinct feature is the fatalistic lyrics". Mercury refused to explain his composition other than saying it was about relationships; the band is still protective of the song's secret. Brian May supports suggestions that the song contained veiled references to Mercury's personal traumas. He recalls "Freddie was a very complex person: flippant and funny on the surface, but he concealed insecurities and problems in squaring up his life with his childhood. He never explained the lyrics, but I think he put a lot of himself into that song." May, though, says the band had agreed that the core of a lyric was a private issue for the composer. In a BBC Three documentary about the making of "Bohemian Rhapsody", Roger Taylor maintains that the true meaning of the song is "fairly self-explanatory with just a bit of nonsense in the middle". When the band released a Greatest Hits cassette in Iran, a leaflet in Persian was included with translation and explanations (refers to a book published in Iran called The March of the Black Queen by Sarah Sefati and Farhad Arkani, which included the whole biography of the band and complete lyrics with Persian translation (2000)). In the explanation, Queen states that "Bohemian Rhapsody" is about a young man who has accidentally killed someone and, like Faust, sold his soul to the devil. On the night before his execution, he calls for God saying, "Bismillah" ("In the name of God" in Arabic), and with the help of angels, regains his soul from Shaitan (the devil in Islam). Despite this, critics, both journalistic and academic, have speculated over the meaning behind the song's lyrics. Some believe the lyrics describe a suicidal murderer haunted by demons or depict events just preceding an execution. The latter explanation points to Albert Camus's novel The Stranger, in which a young man confesses to an impulsive murder and has an epiphany before he is executed, as probable inspiration. Others believe the lyrics were only written to fit with the music, and have no meaning; Kenny Everett quoted Mercury as claiming the lyrics were simply "random rhyming nonsense". Still, others interpreted them as Mercury's way of dealing with personal issues. Music scholar Sheila Whiteley observes that Mercury reached a turning point in his personal life in the year he wrote "Bohemian Rhapsody". He had been living with Mary Austin for seven years but had just embarked on his first love affair with a man. She suggests that the song provides an insight into Mercury's emotional state at the time, "living with Mary ('Mamma', as in Mother Mary) and wanting to break away ('Mamma Mia let me go')". CANNOTANSWER | The March of the Black Queen by Sarah Sefati and Farhad Arkani, which included the whole biography of the band and complete lyrics with Persian translation (2000)). | "Bohemian Rhapsody" is a song by the British rock band Queen. It was written by Freddie Mercury for the band's 1975 album A Night at the Opera. The song is a six-minute suite, notable for its lack of a refraining chorus and consisting of several sections: an intro, a ballad segment, an operatic passage, a hard rock part and a reflective coda. "Bohemian Rhapsody" is one of the few songs to emerge from the 1970s progressive rock movement to achieve widespread commercial success and appeal to a mainstream audience.
"Bohemian Rhapsody" topped the UK Singles Chart for nine weeks and had sold more than a million copies by the end of January 1976. In 1991, after Mercury's death, it topped the charts for another five weeks, eventually becoming the UK's third best-selling single of all time. It is also the only song to reach the UK Christmas number one twice by the same artist. It also topped the charts in countries including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and the Netherlands, and sold over six million copies worldwide. In the United States, the song peaked at number nine in 1976, but reached a new peak of number two on the Billboard Hot 100 after being used in the film Wayne's World (1992). In 2018, the release of Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody brought the song renewed popularity and chart success worldwide. In March 2021 it was certified Diamond in the US for combined digital sales and streams equal to 10 million units.
Although critical reaction was initially mixed, "Bohemian Rhapsody" has since become Queen's most popular song and is considered one of the greatest rock songs of all time. The single was accompanied by a groundbreaking promotional video. Rolling Stone stated that its influence "cannot be overstated, practically inventing the music video seven years before MTV went on the air." The Guardian named its music video one of the 50 key events in rock music history, helping make videos a critical tool in music marketing.
In 2004, "Bohemian Rhapsody" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. It has appeared in numerous polls of the greatest songs in popular music, including a ranking at number 17 on Rolling Stones list of "the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. Mercury's vocal performance was chosen as the greatest in rock history by readers of Rolling Stone. In December 2018, it became the most streamed song from the 20th century, and it had been downloaded or streamed over 1.6 billion times.
History and recording
According to Mercury's friend Chris Smith (a keyboard player in Smile), Mercury first started developing "Bohemian Rhapsody" in the late 1960s; Mercury used to play parts of songs he was writing at the time on the piano, and one of his pieces, known simply as "The Cowboy Song", contained lyrics that ended up in the completed version produced years later, in 1975, specifically, "Mama ... just killed a man." Producer Roy Thomas Baker, who began working with Queen in 1972, related how Mercury once played the opening ballad section on the piano for him in Mercury's flat:
He played the beginning on the piano, then stopped and said, "And this is where the opera section comes in!" Then we went out to eat dinner.
Guitarist Brian May said the band thought that Mercury's blueprint for the song was "intriguing and original, and worthy of work". According to May, much of Queen's material was written in the studio, but this song "was all in Freddie's mind" before they started. In an interview during the band's Australian tour early in 1985, Mercury explained, "It was basically three songs that I wanted to put out, and I just put the three together."
Queen spent a month rehearsing at Ridge Farm Studio in Surrey in mid-1975, and drummer Roger Taylor recalled that "Bohemian Rhapsody" was one of the songs the band worked on while they were there. Recording began on 24 August 1975 at Rockfield Studio 1 near Monmouth, South Wales, after a three-week rehearsal at Penrhos Court, near Kington, Herefordshire. During the making of the track, four additional studios – Roundhouse, Sarm Studios, Scorpio Sound, and Wessex Sound Studios – were used. According to some band members, Mercury mentally prepared the song beforehand and directed the band throughout.
Mercury used a C. Bechstein concert grand piano, which he played in the promotional video and the UK tour. Due to the elaborate nature of the song, it was recorded in various sections. The piano was allegedly the same one Paul McCartney had used to record the Beatles' song "Hey Jude", as well as the same one Rick Wakeman used on David Bowie's 1971 album Hunky Dory.
Baker recalled in 1999
May, Mercury, and Taylor reportedly sang their vocal parts continually for 10 to 12 hours a day. The entire piece took three weeks to record, and in some sections featured 180 separate overdubs. Since the studios of the time only offered 24 track analogue tape, it was necessary for the three to overdub themselves many times and "bounce" these down to successive sub-mixes. In the end, eighth-generation tapes were used. The various sections of tape containing the desired sub-mixes had to be spliced (cut and assembled in the correct sequence). May recalled placing a tape in front of the light and being able to see through it, as the tape had been used so many times.
A similar story was told in 1977 by Taylor regarding the elaborate overdubs and sub-mixes for "The March of The Black Queen" for the album Queen II. At that time, the band was using 16 track equipment.
Producer Baker recalls that May's solo was done on only one track, rather than recording multiple tracks. May stated that he wanted to compose "a little tune that would be a counterpart to the main melody; I didn't just want to play the melody". The guitarist said that his better material stems from this way of working, in which he thought of the tune before playing it: "The fingers tend to be predictable unless being led by the brain." According to Baker,
... the end of the song was much heavier because it was one of the first mixes to be done with automation ... If you really listen to it, the ballad starts off clean, and as the opera section gets louder and louder, the vocals get more and more distorted. You can still hear this on the CD. They are clearly distorted.
Composition and analysis
"Bohemian Rhapsody" has been affiliated to the genres of progressive rock (sometimes called symphonic rock), hard rock, and progressive pop. The song is highly unusual for a popular single in featuring no chorus, combining disparate musical styles, and containing lyrics which eschew conventional love-based narratives, and instead make allusions to murder and nihilism. The Beach Boys' 1966 single "Good Vibrations", which also consisted of disparate music sections recorded separately, was a precursor to "Bohemian Rhapsody".
Music scholar Sheila Whiteley suggests that "the title draws strongly on contemporary rock ideology, the individualism of the bohemian artists' world, with rhapsody affirming the romantic ideals of art rock". Commenting on bohemianism, Judith Peraino said,
Mercury intended ... [this song] to be a 'mock opera', something outside the norm of rock songs, and it does follow a certain operatic logic: Choruses of multi-tracked voices alternate with aria-like solos, the emotions are excessive, the plot confusing.
"Bohemian Rhapsody" begins with an introduction, then goes into a piano ballad, before a guitar solo leads to an operatic interlude. A hard rock part follows this and it concludes with a coda. The song is in the keys of B major, E major, A major and F major, and is predominantly in meter. This musical format of writing a song as a suite with changes in style, tone, and tempo throughout was uncommon in most mainstream pop and rock music, but common in progressive rock, a genre which had reached its artistic and commercial zenith between 1970 and 1975 in the music of British bands such as Jethro Tull, Yes, Genesis, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Gentle Giant, Van der Graaf Generator, and Curved Air. The music of progressive rock was characterised by dramatic contrasts, frequent shifts in tempo and in rhythmic character from one section of a composition to the next. Bands from the genre blended rock with classical music, including its structural features, compositional practices, and instrumentation. Queen had embraced progressive rock as one of their many diverse influences.
"Bohemian Rhapsody" parodies many different elements of opera by using bombastic choruses, sarcastic recitative, and distorted Italian operatic phrases. An embryonic version of this style had already been used in Mercury's earlier compositions for the band "My Fairy King" (1973) and "The March of the Black Queen" (1974).
Intro (0:00–0:49)
The song begins with a close five-part harmony a cappella introduction in B major—as evidenced by the presence of a V–I cadence (F7–B) multi-track recordings of Mercury although the video has all four members lip-syncing this part. The lyrics question whether life is "real" or "just fantasy caught in a landslide" before concluding that there can be "no escape from reality".
After 20 seconds, the grand piano enters, the song modulates briefly to E major via another perfect cadence (B7–E) and Mercury's voice alternates with the other vocal parts. The narrator introduces himself as "just a poor boy" but declares that he "needs no sympathy" because he is "easy come, easy go" and then "little high, little low" (when heard in stereo, the words "little high" come from the left speaker and "little low" comes from the right, the other respective speaker plays the piano at the same time); chromatic side-slipping on "easy come, easy go" highlights the dream-like atmosphere. The end of this section is marked by the bass entrance and the cross-handed piano vamp in B.
Ballad (0:49–2:37)
The piano begins in B major along with the entrance of John Deacon's bass guitar, marking the onset of this section. After it plays twice, Mercury's vocals enter. Throughout the section, the vocals evolve from a softly sung harmony to an impassioned solo performance by Mercury. The narrator explains to his mother that he has "just killed a man", with "a gun against his head" and in doing so, has thrown his life away. This "confessional" section, Whiteley comments, is "affirmative of the nurturant and life-giving force of the feminine and the need for absolution". In the middle of the verse (1:19), Taylor's drums enter, and a descending chromatic run leads to a temporary modulation to E major (up one fourth). The narrator makes the second of several invocations to his "mama" in the new key, continuing the original theme. The narrator explains his regret over "mak[ing] you cry" and urging "mama" to "carry on as if nothing really matters". A brief, descending variation of the piano phrase connects to the second verse.
Then the piano intro plays, marking the start of the second verse. As the ballad proceeds into its second verse, the speaker confesses how ashamed he is by his act of murder (as May enters on guitar and mimics the upper range of the piano at 1:50). May imitates a bell tree during the line "sends shivers down my spine", by playing the strings of his guitar on the other side of the bridge. The narrator bids the world goodbye announcing he has "got to go" and prepares to "face the truth" admitting "I don't want to die / I sometimes wish I'd never been born at all". This is where the guitar solo enters.
Guitar solo (2:37–3:05)
Towards the end of the ballad section, the band builds in intensity, incorporating a guitar solo (in E major) played and composed by Brian May. The intensity continues to build, but once the bass line completes its descent establishing modulation to the new key (A major), the entire band cuts out abruptly at 3:03 except for quiet, staccato A major quaver (eighth-note) chords on the piano, marking the start of the "Opera" section.
Opera (3:05–4:07)
A rapid series of rhythmic and harmonic changes introduces a pseudo-operatic midsection, which contains the bulk of the elaborate vocal multi-tracking, depicting the narrator's descent into hell. While the underlying pulse of the song is maintained, the dynamics vary greatly from bar to bar, from only Mercury's voice accompanied by a piano to a multi-voice choir supported by drums, bass, piano, and timpani. The choir effect was created by having May, Mercury, and Taylor repeatedly sing their vocal parts, resulting in 180 separate overdubs. These overdubs were then combined into successive submixes. According to Roger Taylor, the voices of May, Mercury, and himself combined created a wide vocal range: "Brian could get down quite low, Freddie had a powerful voice through the middle, and I was good at the high stuff." The band wanted to create "a wall of sound, that starts down and goes all the way up". The band used the bell effect for lyrics "Magnifico" and "let me go". Also, on "let him go", Taylor singing the top section carries his note on further after the rest of the "choir" have stopped singing.
Lyrical references in this passage include Scaramouche, the fandango, Galileo Galilei, Figaro, and Beelzebub, with cries of "Bismillah! [Arabic: "In the name of God!"] we will not let you go!", as rival factions fight over his soul, some wishing to "let [him] go" and "spare him his life from this monstrosity", with others sending him "thunderbolts and lightning – very, very frightening [to him]". In Freddie Mercury: The definitive biography, Lesley-Ann Jones theorises that it is also a figurative representation of the four members: Mercury, May, Taylor, and Deacon respectively. The section concludes with a full choral treatment of the lyric "Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me!", on a block B major chord. Roger Taylor tops the final chord with a falsetto B in the fifth octave (B5).
Using the 24 track technology available at the time, the "opera" section took about three weeks to finish. Producer Roy Thomas Baker said, "Every time Freddie came up with another Galileo, I would add another piece of tape to the reel." Baker recalls that they kept wearing out the tape, which meant having to do transfers.
Hard rock (4:07–4:54)
The operatic section leads into a rock interlude with a guitar riff written by Mercury. At 4:15, a quadruple-tracked Mercury (in stereo, the four parts are panned two on the left and two on the right) sings angry lyrics addressed to an unspecified "you", accusing them of betrayal and abuse and insisting "can't do this to me, baby", before the final lines conclude that the singer "just gotta get right outta" an unspecified "here". Three ascending guitar runs follow. Mercury then plays a similar B run on the piano, as the song builds up to the finale with a ritardando.
Outro (4:54–5:55)
After Mercury plays ascending octaves of notes from the B mixolydian mode (composed of the notes from the E scale), the song then returns to the tempo and form of the introduction, initially in E major, before quickly modulating to C minor, only to soon go through an abrupt short series of modulations, bringing it back to C minor again in time for the final "nothing really matters" section. A guitar accompanies the chorus "ooh, ooh yeah, ooh yeah". A double-tracked twin guitar melody is played through an amplifier designed by John Deacon, affectionately nicknamed the "Deacy Amp". Mercury's line "Nothing really matters ..." appears again, "cradled by light piano arpeggios suggesting both resignation (minor tonalities) and a new sense of freedom in the wide vocal span". After the line "nothing really matters" is repeated multiple times, the song finally concludes in the key of E major, but then changes again to F major just before it ends. The final line, "Any way the wind blows", is followed by the quiet sound of a large tam-tam that finally expels the tension built up throughout the song.
Lyrics
The New York Times commented that "the song's most distinct feature is the fatalistic lyrics". Mercury refused to explain his composition other than to say it was about relationships; the band is still protective of the song's secret. Brian May supports suggestions that the song contained veiled references to Mercury's personal traumas. He recalls "Freddie was a very complex person: flippant and funny on the surface, but he concealed insecurities and problems in squaring up his life with his childhood. He never explained the lyrics, but I think he put a lot of himself into that song." May, though, says the band had agreed that the core of a lyric was a private issue for the composer. In a BBC Three documentary about the making of "Bohemian Rhapsody", Roger Taylor maintains that the true meaning of the song is "fairly self-explanatory with just a bit of nonsense in the middle".
Despite this, critics, both journalistic and academic, have speculated over the meaning behind the song's lyrics. Some believe the lyrics describe a suicidal murderer haunted by demons or depict events just preceding an execution. The latter explanation points to Albert Camus's novel The Stranger, in which a young man confesses to an impulsive murder and has an epiphany before he is executed, as probable inspiration. When the band released a Greatest Hits cassette in Iran, a leaflet in Persian was included with translation and explanations. In the explanation, Queen states that "Bohemian Rhapsody" is about a young man who has accidentally killed someone and, like Faust, sold his soul to the devil. On the night before his execution, he calls for God saying, "Bismillah" ("In the name of God" in Arabic), and with the help of angels, regains his soul from Shaitan (the devil in Arabic).
Other critics interpreted the lyrics as Mercury's way of dealing with personal issues. Music scholar Sheila Whiteley observes that Mercury reached a turning point in his personal life in the year he wrote "Bohemian Rhapsody". He had been living with Mary Austin for seven years but had just embarked on his first love affair with a man. She suggests that the song provides an insight into Mercury's emotional state at the time, "living with Mary ('Mamma', as in Mother Mary) and wanting to break away ('Mamma mia let me go')". Others suggest it as a veiled reference to coming out, and dealing with the repercussions of the sodomy laws of the time.
Still others believe the lyrics were only written to fit with the music, and had no intended meaning; the D.J., television entertainer, and comedian Kenny Everett, who played an influential role in popularising the single on his radio show on Capital Radio, quoted Mercury as claiming the lyrics were simply "random rhyming nonsense".
Release
When the band wanted to release the single in 1975, various executives suggested to them, that at 5 minutes and 55 seconds it was too long, and would never be a hit. The song was played to other musicians who commented the band had no hope of it ever being played on radio. According to producer Roy Thomas Baker, he and the band bypassed this corporate assessment by playing the song for Capital Radio D.J. Kenny Everett:
"we had a reel-to-reel copy but we told him he could only have it if he promised not to play it. 'I won't play it,' he said, winking ..."
The plan worked — Everett teased his listeners by playing only parts of the song. Audience demand intensified when Everett played the full song on his show 14 times in 2 days. Hordes of fans attempted to buy the single the following Monday, only to be told by record stores that it had not yet been released. The same weekend, Paul Drew, who ran the RKO General stations in the U.S, heard the track on Everett's show in London. Drew managed to get a copy of the tape and started to play it in the U.S, which forced the hand of Queen's US label, Elektra. In an interview with Sound on Sound, Baker reflects that "it was a strange situation where radio on both sides of the Atlantic was breaking a record that the record companies said would never get airplay!"
Eventually the unedited single was released, with "I'm in Love with My Car" as the B-side. Following Everett's escapade in October 1975, Eric Hall, a record plugger, gave a copy to David "Diddy" Hamilton to play on his weekday Radio One show. Hall stated "Monster, Monster! This could be a hit!"
The song became the 1975 UK Christmas number one, holding the top position for nine weeks. "Bohemian Rhapsody" was the first song ever to get to number one in the UK twice with the same version, and is also the only single to have been Christmas number one twice with the same version. The second was upon its re-release (as a double A-side single with "These Are the Days of Our Lives") in 1991, following Mercury's death, staying at number 1 for 5 weeks. The re-released version sold 673,000 copies in 1991 in the UK.
In the U.S, the single was also a success, although initially to a lesser extent than in the UK. The single, released in December 1975, reached number 9 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America for sales of one million copies.
In a retrospective article, Anthony DeCurtis of Rolling Stone explained why the song performed less strongly in the US charts by saying that it is "the quintessential example of the kind of thing that doesn't exactly go over well in America". Its chart run of 24 weeks, however, placed it at number 18 on Billboards year-end chart, higher than some number 1s of the year. With the Canadian record-buying public, the single fared better, reaching number one in the RPM national singles chart for the week ending 1 May 1976.
"Bohemian Rhapsody" was re-released as a double A-side cassette single with "The Show Must Go On" in January 1992, following the death of Freddie Mercury, with proceeds going to the Magic Johnson Foundation for AIDS research. The song re-entered the Billboard Hot 100 chart after 16 years, reaching number 2, and spending 17 weeks on the chart. After the release of the Queen biopic named after the song, it re-entered the charts for a third time at number 33, marking 26 years since it last charted.
In March 2021 it was certified Diamond (10× platinum) in the US for combined digital sales and streams equal to 10 million units. It had sold 4.4 million digital copies in the US .
Promotional video
Though some artists had made video clips to accompany songs (including Queen themselves; for example, their earlier singles "Keep Yourself Alive", "Liar", "Seven Seas of Rhye" and "Killer Queen" already had "pop promos", as they were known at the time), it was only after the success of "Bohemian Rhapsody" that it became a regular practice for record companies to produce promotional videos for artists' single releases. The Guardian stated it "ensured videos would henceforth be a mandatory tool in the marketing of music". These videos could then be shown on television shows around the world, such as the BBC's Top of the Pops, without the need for the artist to appear in person. A promo video also allowed the artist to have their music broadcast and accompanied by their own choice of visuals, rather than dancers such as Pan's People. According to May, the video was produced so that the band could avoid miming on Top of the Pops since they would have looked off miming to such a complex song. He also said that the band knew they would be set to appear at Dundee's Caird Hall on tour, a date which clashed with the programme, thus a promo would solve the issue. The video has been hailed as launching the MTV age.
The band used Trillion, a subsidiary of Trident Studios, their former management company and recording studio. They hired one of their trucks and got it to Elstree Studios, where the band was rehearsing for their tour. The video was directed by Bruce Gowers, who had directed a video of the band's 1974 performance at the Rainbow Theatre in London, and was recorded by cameraman Barry Dodd and assistant director/floor manager Jim McCutcheon. The video was recorded in just four hours on 10 November 1975, at a cost of £4,500. Gowers reported that the band was involved in the discussion of the video and the result, and "was a co-operative to that extent, but there was only one leader."
The video opens with a shot of the four band members standing in diamond formation with their heads tilted back in near darkness as they sing the a cappella part. The lights fade up, and the shots cross-fade into close-ups of Mercury. The composition of the shot is the same as Mick Rock's cover photograph for their second album Queen II. The photo, inspired by a photograph of actress Marlene Dietrich, was the band's favourite image of themselves. The video then fades into them playing their instruments. In the opera section of the video, the scene reverts to the Queen II standing positions, after which they perform once again on stage during the hard rock segment. In the closing seconds of the video Roger Taylor is depicted stripped to the waist, striking the tam tam in the manner of the trademark of the Rank Organisation's Gongman, familiar in the UK as the opening of all Rank film productions.
All of the special effects were achieved during the recording, rather than editing. The visual effect of Mercury's face cascading away (during the echoed lines "Magnifico" and "Let me go") was accomplished by pointing the camera at a monitor, giving visual feedback, a glare analogous to audio feedback. The honeycomb illusion was created using a shaped lens. The video was edited within five hours because it was due to be broadcast the same week in which it was taped. The video was sent to the BBC as soon as it was completed and aired for the first time on Top of the Pops in November 1975.
Critical reception
Although the song has become one of the most revered in popular music history, the initial critical reaction was mixed. The UK music papers reacted with bemusement, recognising that the song was original and technically accomplished, but they mostly remained indifferent. Pete Erskine of NME observed that, "It'll be interesting to see whether it'll be played in its entirety on the radio. It's performed extremely well, but more in terms of production than anything else... Someone somewhere has decided that the boys' next release must sound 'epic'. And it does. They sound extremely self-important."
Allan Jones of Melody Maker was unimpressed, describing the song as "a superficially impressive pastiche of incongruous musical styles" and that Queen "contrived to approximate the demented fury of the Balham Amateur Operatic Society performing The Pirates of Penzance... 'Bohemian Rhapsody' is full of drama, passion and romance and sounds rather like one of those mini-opera affairs that Pete Townsend [sic] used to tack on to the end of Who albums", before concluding, "The significance of the composition eludes me totally, though I must admit to finding it horrifically fascinating. It's likely to be a hit of enormous proportions despite its length." Ray Fox-Cumming of Record Mirror was also left unmoved, saying, "It has no immediate selling point whatsoever: among its many parts. there's scarcely a shred of a tune and certainly no one line to latch onto. There's no denying that it's devilishly clever, encompassing everything from bits of operatic harmonies to snatches that sound like Sparks and David Cassidy, but, in the end the whole adds up to less than the sum of its parts." He did, however, say that it was "unthinkable" that it wouldn't be a hit. The most positive review came from Sounds, which called it "impossibly disjointed and complex, but a dazzlingly clever epic from the fevered mind of Freddie Mercury". Cash Box called it "a softly sung ode to the prospect of moving on from staid ways with "good singing" and "good production."
Legacy
Musical impact
In 1976, when asked for his opinion on "Bohemian Rhapsody", the Beach Boys' leader Brian Wilson praised the song as "the most competitive thing that's come along in ages" and "a fulfillment and an answer to a teenage prayer—of artistic music". Producer Steve Levine said the track broke "all sonic production barriers" in a fashion similar to the Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations" (1966), Phil Spector's "Be My Baby" (1963), and 10cc's "I'm Not in Love" (1975). Greg Lake, whose song "I Believe in Father Christmas" was kept from number one in the UK by "Bohemian Rhapsody" when it was released in 1975, acknowledged that he was "beaten by one of the greatest records ever made", describing it as "a once-in-a-lifetime recording".
Addressing the song's enduring popularity, author and music lecturer Jochen Eisentraut wrote in 2012: "A year before punk made it unfashionable, progressive rock had an astounding success with the theoretically over-length (nearly 6-minute) single 'Bohemian Rhapsody' which bore many of the hallmarks of the 'prog' genre". He said it was "unique at this point to hear a hit single in this style", it was "more accessible than other music of the genre" and was "able to communicate beyond the usual confines of the style". Author and progressive rock historian Stephen Lambe called it a "remarkable" single and said it "provides a neat but coincidental bridge between prog in its prime and the move to more aggressive songwriting", suggesting the song "feels like a grotesque (although probably unintentional) parody of progressive rock". The New Rolling Stone Album Guide described it as "either a prog-rock benchmark or the most convoluted novelty song ever recorded". Writing for the BBC in 2015, the Chicago Tribunes music critic Greg Kot called it a "prog-rock pocket operetta" and said the song's "reign as a work of wigged-out genius rather than a dated gimmick testifies to its go-for-broke attitude—one that has resonated across generations".
In 2009, The Guardians music critic, Tom Service, examined the song's relationship with the traditions of classical music, describing its popularity as "one of the strangest musical phenomena out there":
A comparison was also made between the song and Led Zeppelin's 1971 epic "Stairway to Heaven" by music writers Pete Prown and HP Newquist. They observed both songs were "a slow, introspective beginning and gradual climb to a raging metal jam and back again", with the notable distinction being "while Zeppelin meshed folk influences with heavy metal, Queen opted for the light grandeur of the operetta as part of its hard rock". They said "for sheer cleverness alone, not to mention May's riveting electric work, 'Bohemian Rhapsody' rightfully became one of the top singles of 1975 and established Queen in the elite of seventies rock bands".
In 2015, The Economist described it as "one of the most innovative pieces of the progressive rock era". It wrote "though Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones and the Beatles' Paul McCartney had experimented with symphonic elements, and Roger Waters of Pink Floyd and Pete Townshend of the Who had created narrative albums with distinct 'movements', none had had the audacity to import a miniature opera into rock music."
Wayne's World
In 1992, the song enjoyed renewed popularity in the United States after being featured in a scene in the film Wayne's World, in which the titular character and his friends headbang in a car to the rock part near the end of the song. The film's director, Penelope Spheeris, was hesitant to use the song, as it did not entirely fit with the lead characters, who were fans of less flamboyant hard rock and heavy metal. Mike Myers insisted that the song fit the scene. According to music scholar Theodore Gracyk, by 1992, when the film was released, even "classic rock" stations had stopped playing the almost six-minute song. Gracyk suggests that beginning the tape in the middle of the song after "the lyrics which provide the song's narrative ... forces the film's audience to respond to its presence in the scene without the 'commentary' of the lyrics". Helped by the song, the soundtrack album of the film was a major hit.
In connection with this, a new video was released, interspersing excerpts from the film with footage from the original Queen video, along with some live footage of the band. Myers was horrified that the record company had mixed clips from Wayne's World with Queen's original video, fearing that this would upset the band. He said, "they've just whizzed on a Picasso." He asked the record company to tell Queen that the video was not his idea and that he apologised to them. The band, though, sent a reply simply saying, "Thank you for using our song." This astonished Myers, who responded, "Thank you for even letting me touch the hem of your garments!"
The Wayne's World video version of "Bohemian Rhapsody" won Queen its only MTV Video Music Award for "Best Video from a Film". When remaining members Brian May and Roger Taylor took the stage to accept the award, Brian May was overcome with emotion and said that "Freddie would be tickled." In the final scene of the video, a pose of the band from the video from the original "Bohemian Rhapsody" clip morphs into an identically posed 1985 photo, first featured in the "One Vision" video.
In the 2018 Queen biopic feature film Bohemian Rhapsody, Myers makes a cameo as a fictional record executive who pans the song and refuses to release it as a single, proclaiming that it is too long for radio and that it is not a song that "teenagers can crank up the volume in their car and bang their heads to", a reference to the iconic scene in Wayne's World.
Achievements and accolades
The song has won numerous awards and has been covered and parodied by many artists. At the 19th Annual Grammy Awards in February 1977, "Bohemian Rhapsody" received two Grammy Award nominations for Best Pop Vocal Performance by a Duo, Group or Chorus and Best Arrangement for Voices. In October 1977, only two years after its release, the British Phonographic Industry named "Bohemian Rhapsody" as the best British single of the period 1952–77. It is a regular entry in greatest-songs polls, and it was named by the Guinness Book of Records in 2002 as the top British single of all time. The song is also listed in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll.
In 2004, the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. , "Bohemian Rhapsody" is the second most-played song on British radio, in clubs and on jukeboxes collectively, after Procol Harum's "A Whiter Shade of Pale". On 30 September 2007 for BBC Radio 1's 40th birthday, it was revealed on The Radio 1 Chart Show that "Bohemian Rhapsody" had been the most played song since Radio 1's launch.
In December 2018, "Bohemian Rhapsody" officially became the most-streamed song from the 20th century, surpassing Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and Guns N' Roses' "Sweet Child o' Mine". "Bohemian Rhapsody" also became the most-streamed classic rock song of all time. The number of downloads of the song and original video exceeded 1.6 billion downloads across global on-demand streaming services. The video surpassed one billion views on YouTube in July 2019, making it the oldest music video to reach one billion on the platform, and the first pre-1990s song to reach that figure.
Polls
In a 2001 poll of more than 50,000 readers of The Observer newspaper and viewers of British TV's Channel 4 for the 100 best number-one singles of all time, the song came second to John Lennon's "Imagine". In a 2002 poll of more than 31,000 people conducted for Guinness World Records' British Hit Singles, "Bohemian Rhapsody" was voted Britain's favourite single, beating Lennon's "Imagine" to the top spot.
In 2002, it came in 10th in a BBC World Service poll to find the world's favourite song. It has been in the top five of the Dutch annual "Top 100 Aller Tijden" ("All-Time Top 100 [Singles]") since 1977, reaching number one on eight occasions, more than any other artist. In 1999, the annual "Top 2000" poll commenced to find the best songs ever made, and "Bohemian Rhapsody" has been ranked number one in all but five years (2005, 2010, 2014, 2015 and 2020 when it was number two). In a 2012 readers poll conducted by Rolling Stone magazine, "Bohemian Rhapsody" was voted the best vocal performance in rock history. In 2010, the song ranked at 166 on Rolling Stones "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" list, and was re-ranked at number 17 in 2021.
In 2012, the song topped an ITV poll in the UK to find "The Nation's Favourite Number One" over 60 years of music, ahead of Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" (number two), Adele's "Someone like You" (number three), Oasis' "Don't Look Back in Anger" (number four) and The Beatles' "Hey Jude" (number five). The song was also ranked number five in RadioMafia's list of "Top 500 Songs".
Cover versions
Over two dozen artists have recorded or performed cover versions of "Bohemian Rhapsody", including charted single releases by:
Bad News – a 1986 spoof version produced by Brian May which reached UK number 44
The Braids – an R&B version recorded for the soundtrack to the 1996 film High School High and which peaked at UK number 21, US number 42, and Canada number 13
Panic! at the Disco – a version recorded for the soundtrack of the 2016 film Suicide Squad and which peaked at UK number 80, US number 64 and Canada number 47
A video cover featuring The Muppets also went viral and was subsequently released as a single in late 2009, peaking at number 32 in the UK.
"Weird Al" Yankovic's 1993 album Alapalooza includes a version of the song entitled "Bohemian Polka", which is a rearrangement of the entire song as a polka.
40th anniversary
To mark the 40th anniversary of "Bohemian Rhapsody", the song was released on a limited edition 12" vinyl with the original B-side "I'm In Love With My Car" on 27 November 2015 for Record Store Day 2015. Queen also released A Night At The Odeon, Live At Hammersmith 75, on CD, DVD-Video and Blu-ray. This includes the first live "professionally" recorded performance of "Bohemian Rhapsody". However, the very first recording and live performance of "Bohemian Rhapsody" was the performance on 14 November 1975 in Liverpool.
Live performances
The a cappella opening was too complex to perform live, so Mercury tried various ways of introducing the song. When "Mustapha" became a live favourite, Mercury would often sub in that song's a cappella opening, which was easier to reproduce live as it was only one voice—this combination features in their 1979 live album Live Killers. During their 1982 Hot Space Tour, and occasionally at other times, Mercury would do a piano improvisation (generally the introduction to "Death on Two Legs") that ended with the first notes of the song. Often, the preceding song would end, and Mercury would sit at the piano, say a quick word, and start playing the ballad section. At Live Aid where "Bohemian Rhapsody" was their opening song, Mercury commenced with the ballad section.
Initially following the song's release, the operatic middle section proved a problem for the band. Because of extensive multi-tracking, it could not be performed on stage. The band did not have enough of a break between the Sheer Heart Attack and A Night at the Opera tours to find a way to make it work live, so they split the song into three sections that were played throughout the night. The opening and closing ballads were played as part of a medley, with "Killer Queen" and "March of the Black Queen" taking the place of the operatic and hard rock sections. In 1976 concerts where the same medley was played, the operatic section from the album would be played from tape as the introduction to the setlist. During this playback, Mercury would appear briefly to sing live for the line, "I see a little sillhouetto of a man". As the song segued into the hard rock section, the band would emerge on the smoke-filled stage—the playback would end at this point, and the hard rock section would be performed live (without the final ballad section, which appeared later in the set).
Starting with the A Day at the Races Tour in 1977, the band adopted their lasting way of playing the song live. The opening ballad would be played on stage, and after May's guitar solo, the lights would go down, the band would leave the stage, and the operatic section would be played from tape, while coloured stage lights provided a light show based around the voices of the opera section. Most playings of the opera section from the tape would often be accompanied by a portion of the song's music video containing the footage used for the operatic portion of the song. Other playings would be played over montages of footage filmed from the band members' other experiences throughout their daily lives. A blast of pyrotechnics after Taylor's high note on the final "for me" would announce the band's return for the hard rock section and closing ballad. Queen played the song in this form all through the Magic Tour of 1986. This style was also used for the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert, with Elton John singing the opening ballad and then after the taped operatic section, Axl Rose singing the hard rock section. John and Rose sang the closing ballad part together in a duet.
"Bohemian Rhapsody" was performed by Queen + Paul Rodgers throughout their tours, accompanied by a video of Mercury. Footage from the Live at Wembley '86 was used for the 2005–06 tour, and the 1981 Montreal performance used for the Rock the Cosmos Tour. As with the Queen tours, the band went backstage for the operatic section, which was accompanied by a video tribute to Freddie Mercury. When the hard rock section began, the lights came back up to the full band on stage, including Rodgers, who took over lead vocals. Rodgers duetted with the recording of Mercury for the "outro" section, allowing the audience to sing the final "Nothing really matters to me", while the taped Mercury took a bow for the crowd. Rodgers would then repeat the line, and the final line ("Any way the wind blows") was delivered with one last shot of Mercury smiling at the audience. Commenting upon this staging, Brian May says that they "had to rise to the challenge of getting Freddie in there in a way which gave him his rightful place, but without demeaning Paul in any way. It also kept us live and 'present', although conscious and proud of our past, as we logically should be."
Since 2012, May and Taylor have toured with former American Idol contestant Adam Lambert under the name Queen + Adam Lambert (following two one-off performances together in 2009 and 2011), with "Bohemian Rhapsody" regularly included at the end of their set.
Charts
Weekly charts
Year-end charts
Decade-end charts
All-time charts
Sales and certifications
Queen comments on the song
Personnel
Source:
Freddie Mercury – lead and backing vocals, piano, operatic vocals (middle register)
Brian May – electric guitar, operatic vocals (low register)
Roger Taylor – drums, timpani, gong, operatic vocals (high register)
John Deacon – bass guitar
See also
List of Bohemian Rhapsody cover versions
List of best-selling singles in the United Kingdom
List of best-selling singles in the United States
Citations
General references
External links
1975 singles
1975 songs
1976 singles
1991 singles
1992 singles
Brit Award for British Single
British hard rock songs
British progressive rock songs
British rock songs
Christmas number-one singles in the United Kingdom
Dutch Top 40 number-one singles
Elektra Records singles
EMI Records singles
Grammy Hall of Fame Award recipients
Hollywood Records singles
Irish Singles Chart number-one singles
Music based on the Faust legend
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Number-one singles in Spain
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UK Singles Chart number-one singles
Virgin EMI Records singles | false | [
"\"China Heroically Stands in the Universe\" was the national anthem of China from 1915 to 1921.\n\nHistory \n\nIt was issued by the Ritual Regulations Office () in June 1915 as the national anthem of the Republic of China and was adopted on 23 May 1915. Its lyrics were written by Yin Chang () and music by Wang Lu ().\n\nAfter Yuan Shikai declared himself Emperor of China in December 1915, the lyrics of the anthem were slightly modified and turned into the national anthem of the Empire of China. The lyrics were abolished again in 1916 after his death and replaced by lyrics written by Zhang Zuolin. The song was no longer the official anthem after 31 March 1921, when Song to the Auspicious Cloud again became the national anthem.\n\nLyrics\n\nOriginal Lyrics during the Republic of China (May–Dec. 1915)\n\nLyrics during the Empire of China (1916)\n\nShanrang (Demise) referred to the ancient system of Chinese emperors relinquishing their positions to each other in Yao and Shun's era.\n\nLyrics during the Republic of China (1916–1921)\n\nSee also \nHistorical Chinese anthems\n\nExternal links \n \n \n Music, lyrics, and sheet music\n\nHistorical national anthems\nNational symbols of the Republic of China (1912–1949)\nChinese patriotic songs\n1915 songs\nAsian anthems\nSongs about China",
"The state anthem of the Republic of Karelia was approved by law on 6 April 1993. The music of the anthem was composed by Alexander Beloborodov and in most parts follows the melody of the Finnish traditional song \"Karjalan kunnailla\". The Russian lyrics were written by Armas Mishin and Ivan Kostin; the Finnish lyrics were written by Mishin alone, Karelian text was written by Alexander Volkov. Since December 2001, the Russian lyrics is the official one.\n\nLyrics\n\nSee also\n\nAnthem of the Karelo-Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nAn introduction from government page.\nRussian vocal version from government page and Andrew Heninen's site.\nRussian lyrics.\nFinnish lyrics.\ntranslated English lyrics.\n\nRepublic of Karelia\nRegional songs\nKarelia\nKarelia\nNational anthem compositions in E major"
]
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"Bohemian Rhapsody",
"Lyrics",
"Who wrote the lyrics?",
"Mercury reached a turning point in his personal life in the year he wrote \"Bohemian Rhapsody\".",
"What was the song about?",
"Mercury refused to explain his composition other than saying it was about relationships; the band is still protective of the song's secret.",
"When were the lyrics written?",
"The March of the Black Queen by Sarah Sefati and Farhad Arkani, which included the whole biography of the band and complete lyrics with Persian translation (2000))."
]
| C_169eaa51c6c243bc9069eb7c6821930d_0 | Who sings the song? | 4 | Who sings Bohemian Rhapsody? | Bohemian Rhapsody | The New York Times commented that "the song's most distinct feature is the fatalistic lyrics". Mercury refused to explain his composition other than saying it was about relationships; the band is still protective of the song's secret. Brian May supports suggestions that the song contained veiled references to Mercury's personal traumas. He recalls "Freddie was a very complex person: flippant and funny on the surface, but he concealed insecurities and problems in squaring up his life with his childhood. He never explained the lyrics, but I think he put a lot of himself into that song." May, though, says the band had agreed that the core of a lyric was a private issue for the composer. In a BBC Three documentary about the making of "Bohemian Rhapsody", Roger Taylor maintains that the true meaning of the song is "fairly self-explanatory with just a bit of nonsense in the middle". When the band released a Greatest Hits cassette in Iran, a leaflet in Persian was included with translation and explanations (refers to a book published in Iran called The March of the Black Queen by Sarah Sefati and Farhad Arkani, which included the whole biography of the band and complete lyrics with Persian translation (2000)). In the explanation, Queen states that "Bohemian Rhapsody" is about a young man who has accidentally killed someone and, like Faust, sold his soul to the devil. On the night before his execution, he calls for God saying, "Bismillah" ("In the name of God" in Arabic), and with the help of angels, regains his soul from Shaitan (the devil in Islam). Despite this, critics, both journalistic and academic, have speculated over the meaning behind the song's lyrics. Some believe the lyrics describe a suicidal murderer haunted by demons or depict events just preceding an execution. The latter explanation points to Albert Camus's novel The Stranger, in which a young man confesses to an impulsive murder and has an epiphany before he is executed, as probable inspiration. Others believe the lyrics were only written to fit with the music, and have no meaning; Kenny Everett quoted Mercury as claiming the lyrics were simply "random rhyming nonsense". Still, others interpreted them as Mercury's way of dealing with personal issues. Music scholar Sheila Whiteley observes that Mercury reached a turning point in his personal life in the year he wrote "Bohemian Rhapsody". He had been living with Mary Austin for seven years but had just embarked on his first love affair with a man. She suggests that the song provides an insight into Mercury's emotional state at the time, "living with Mary ('Mamma', as in Mother Mary) and wanting to break away ('Mamma Mia let me go')". CANNOTANSWER | the band | "Bohemian Rhapsody" is a song by the British rock band Queen. It was written by Freddie Mercury for the band's 1975 album A Night at the Opera. The song is a six-minute suite, notable for its lack of a refraining chorus and consisting of several sections: an intro, a ballad segment, an operatic passage, a hard rock part and a reflective coda. "Bohemian Rhapsody" is one of the few songs to emerge from the 1970s progressive rock movement to achieve widespread commercial success and appeal to a mainstream audience.
"Bohemian Rhapsody" topped the UK Singles Chart for nine weeks and had sold more than a million copies by the end of January 1976. In 1991, after Mercury's death, it topped the charts for another five weeks, eventually becoming the UK's third best-selling single of all time. It is also the only song to reach the UK Christmas number one twice by the same artist. It also topped the charts in countries including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and the Netherlands, and sold over six million copies worldwide. In the United States, the song peaked at number nine in 1976, but reached a new peak of number two on the Billboard Hot 100 after being used in the film Wayne's World (1992). In 2018, the release of Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody brought the song renewed popularity and chart success worldwide. In March 2021 it was certified Diamond in the US for combined digital sales and streams equal to 10 million units.
Although critical reaction was initially mixed, "Bohemian Rhapsody" has since become Queen's most popular song and is considered one of the greatest rock songs of all time. The single was accompanied by a groundbreaking promotional video. Rolling Stone stated that its influence "cannot be overstated, practically inventing the music video seven years before MTV went on the air." The Guardian named its music video one of the 50 key events in rock music history, helping make videos a critical tool in music marketing.
In 2004, "Bohemian Rhapsody" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. It has appeared in numerous polls of the greatest songs in popular music, including a ranking at number 17 on Rolling Stones list of "the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. Mercury's vocal performance was chosen as the greatest in rock history by readers of Rolling Stone. In December 2018, it became the most streamed song from the 20th century, and it had been downloaded or streamed over 1.6 billion times.
History and recording
According to Mercury's friend Chris Smith (a keyboard player in Smile), Mercury first started developing "Bohemian Rhapsody" in the late 1960s; Mercury used to play parts of songs he was writing at the time on the piano, and one of his pieces, known simply as "The Cowboy Song", contained lyrics that ended up in the completed version produced years later, in 1975, specifically, "Mama ... just killed a man." Producer Roy Thomas Baker, who began working with Queen in 1972, related how Mercury once played the opening ballad section on the piano for him in Mercury's flat:
He played the beginning on the piano, then stopped and said, "And this is where the opera section comes in!" Then we went out to eat dinner.
Guitarist Brian May said the band thought that Mercury's blueprint for the song was "intriguing and original, and worthy of work". According to May, much of Queen's material was written in the studio, but this song "was all in Freddie's mind" before they started. In an interview during the band's Australian tour early in 1985, Mercury explained, "It was basically three songs that I wanted to put out, and I just put the three together."
Queen spent a month rehearsing at Ridge Farm Studio in Surrey in mid-1975, and drummer Roger Taylor recalled that "Bohemian Rhapsody" was one of the songs the band worked on while they were there. Recording began on 24 August 1975 at Rockfield Studio 1 near Monmouth, South Wales, after a three-week rehearsal at Penrhos Court, near Kington, Herefordshire. During the making of the track, four additional studios – Roundhouse, Sarm Studios, Scorpio Sound, and Wessex Sound Studios – were used. According to some band members, Mercury mentally prepared the song beforehand and directed the band throughout.
Mercury used a C. Bechstein concert grand piano, which he played in the promotional video and the UK tour. Due to the elaborate nature of the song, it was recorded in various sections. The piano was allegedly the same one Paul McCartney had used to record the Beatles' song "Hey Jude", as well as the same one Rick Wakeman used on David Bowie's 1971 album Hunky Dory.
Baker recalled in 1999
May, Mercury, and Taylor reportedly sang their vocal parts continually for 10 to 12 hours a day. The entire piece took three weeks to record, and in some sections featured 180 separate overdubs. Since the studios of the time only offered 24 track analogue tape, it was necessary for the three to overdub themselves many times and "bounce" these down to successive sub-mixes. In the end, eighth-generation tapes were used. The various sections of tape containing the desired sub-mixes had to be spliced (cut and assembled in the correct sequence). May recalled placing a tape in front of the light and being able to see through it, as the tape had been used so many times.
A similar story was told in 1977 by Taylor regarding the elaborate overdubs and sub-mixes for "The March of The Black Queen" for the album Queen II. At that time, the band was using 16 track equipment.
Producer Baker recalls that May's solo was done on only one track, rather than recording multiple tracks. May stated that he wanted to compose "a little tune that would be a counterpart to the main melody; I didn't just want to play the melody". The guitarist said that his better material stems from this way of working, in which he thought of the tune before playing it: "The fingers tend to be predictable unless being led by the brain." According to Baker,
... the end of the song was much heavier because it was one of the first mixes to be done with automation ... If you really listen to it, the ballad starts off clean, and as the opera section gets louder and louder, the vocals get more and more distorted. You can still hear this on the CD. They are clearly distorted.
Composition and analysis
"Bohemian Rhapsody" has been affiliated to the genres of progressive rock (sometimes called symphonic rock), hard rock, and progressive pop. The song is highly unusual for a popular single in featuring no chorus, combining disparate musical styles, and containing lyrics which eschew conventional love-based narratives, and instead make allusions to murder and nihilism. The Beach Boys' 1966 single "Good Vibrations", which also consisted of disparate music sections recorded separately, was a precursor to "Bohemian Rhapsody".
Music scholar Sheila Whiteley suggests that "the title draws strongly on contemporary rock ideology, the individualism of the bohemian artists' world, with rhapsody affirming the romantic ideals of art rock". Commenting on bohemianism, Judith Peraino said,
Mercury intended ... [this song] to be a 'mock opera', something outside the norm of rock songs, and it does follow a certain operatic logic: Choruses of multi-tracked voices alternate with aria-like solos, the emotions are excessive, the plot confusing.
"Bohemian Rhapsody" begins with an introduction, then goes into a piano ballad, before a guitar solo leads to an operatic interlude. A hard rock part follows this and it concludes with a coda. The song is in the keys of B major, E major, A major and F major, and is predominantly in meter. This musical format of writing a song as a suite with changes in style, tone, and tempo throughout was uncommon in most mainstream pop and rock music, but common in progressive rock, a genre which had reached its artistic and commercial zenith between 1970 and 1975 in the music of British bands such as Jethro Tull, Yes, Genesis, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Gentle Giant, Van der Graaf Generator, and Curved Air. The music of progressive rock was characterised by dramatic contrasts, frequent shifts in tempo and in rhythmic character from one section of a composition to the next. Bands from the genre blended rock with classical music, including its structural features, compositional practices, and instrumentation. Queen had embraced progressive rock as one of their many diverse influences.
"Bohemian Rhapsody" parodies many different elements of opera by using bombastic choruses, sarcastic recitative, and distorted Italian operatic phrases. An embryonic version of this style had already been used in Mercury's earlier compositions for the band "My Fairy King" (1973) and "The March of the Black Queen" (1974).
Intro (0:00–0:49)
The song begins with a close five-part harmony a cappella introduction in B major—as evidenced by the presence of a V–I cadence (F7–B) multi-track recordings of Mercury although the video has all four members lip-syncing this part. The lyrics question whether life is "real" or "just fantasy caught in a landslide" before concluding that there can be "no escape from reality".
After 20 seconds, the grand piano enters, the song modulates briefly to E major via another perfect cadence (B7–E) and Mercury's voice alternates with the other vocal parts. The narrator introduces himself as "just a poor boy" but declares that he "needs no sympathy" because he is "easy come, easy go" and then "little high, little low" (when heard in stereo, the words "little high" come from the left speaker and "little low" comes from the right, the other respective speaker plays the piano at the same time); chromatic side-slipping on "easy come, easy go" highlights the dream-like atmosphere. The end of this section is marked by the bass entrance and the cross-handed piano vamp in B.
Ballad (0:49–2:37)
The piano begins in B major along with the entrance of John Deacon's bass guitar, marking the onset of this section. After it plays twice, Mercury's vocals enter. Throughout the section, the vocals evolve from a softly sung harmony to an impassioned solo performance by Mercury. The narrator explains to his mother that he has "just killed a man", with "a gun against his head" and in doing so, has thrown his life away. This "confessional" section, Whiteley comments, is "affirmative of the nurturant and life-giving force of the feminine and the need for absolution". In the middle of the verse (1:19), Taylor's drums enter, and a descending chromatic run leads to a temporary modulation to E major (up one fourth). The narrator makes the second of several invocations to his "mama" in the new key, continuing the original theme. The narrator explains his regret over "mak[ing] you cry" and urging "mama" to "carry on as if nothing really matters". A brief, descending variation of the piano phrase connects to the second verse.
Then the piano intro plays, marking the start of the second verse. As the ballad proceeds into its second verse, the speaker confesses how ashamed he is by his act of murder (as May enters on guitar and mimics the upper range of the piano at 1:50). May imitates a bell tree during the line "sends shivers down my spine", by playing the strings of his guitar on the other side of the bridge. The narrator bids the world goodbye announcing he has "got to go" and prepares to "face the truth" admitting "I don't want to die / I sometimes wish I'd never been born at all". This is where the guitar solo enters.
Guitar solo (2:37–3:05)
Towards the end of the ballad section, the band builds in intensity, incorporating a guitar solo (in E major) played and composed by Brian May. The intensity continues to build, but once the bass line completes its descent establishing modulation to the new key (A major), the entire band cuts out abruptly at 3:03 except for quiet, staccato A major quaver (eighth-note) chords on the piano, marking the start of the "Opera" section.
Opera (3:05–4:07)
A rapid series of rhythmic and harmonic changes introduces a pseudo-operatic midsection, which contains the bulk of the elaborate vocal multi-tracking, depicting the narrator's descent into hell. While the underlying pulse of the song is maintained, the dynamics vary greatly from bar to bar, from only Mercury's voice accompanied by a piano to a multi-voice choir supported by drums, bass, piano, and timpani. The choir effect was created by having May, Mercury, and Taylor repeatedly sing their vocal parts, resulting in 180 separate overdubs. These overdubs were then combined into successive submixes. According to Roger Taylor, the voices of May, Mercury, and himself combined created a wide vocal range: "Brian could get down quite low, Freddie had a powerful voice through the middle, and I was good at the high stuff." The band wanted to create "a wall of sound, that starts down and goes all the way up". The band used the bell effect for lyrics "Magnifico" and "let me go". Also, on "let him go", Taylor singing the top section carries his note on further after the rest of the "choir" have stopped singing.
Lyrical references in this passage include Scaramouche, the fandango, Galileo Galilei, Figaro, and Beelzebub, with cries of "Bismillah! [Arabic: "In the name of God!"] we will not let you go!", as rival factions fight over his soul, some wishing to "let [him] go" and "spare him his life from this monstrosity", with others sending him "thunderbolts and lightning – very, very frightening [to him]". In Freddie Mercury: The definitive biography, Lesley-Ann Jones theorises that it is also a figurative representation of the four members: Mercury, May, Taylor, and Deacon respectively. The section concludes with a full choral treatment of the lyric "Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me!", on a block B major chord. Roger Taylor tops the final chord with a falsetto B in the fifth octave (B5).
Using the 24 track technology available at the time, the "opera" section took about three weeks to finish. Producer Roy Thomas Baker said, "Every time Freddie came up with another Galileo, I would add another piece of tape to the reel." Baker recalls that they kept wearing out the tape, which meant having to do transfers.
Hard rock (4:07–4:54)
The operatic section leads into a rock interlude with a guitar riff written by Mercury. At 4:15, a quadruple-tracked Mercury (in stereo, the four parts are panned two on the left and two on the right) sings angry lyrics addressed to an unspecified "you", accusing them of betrayal and abuse and insisting "can't do this to me, baby", before the final lines conclude that the singer "just gotta get right outta" an unspecified "here". Three ascending guitar runs follow. Mercury then plays a similar B run on the piano, as the song builds up to the finale with a ritardando.
Outro (4:54–5:55)
After Mercury plays ascending octaves of notes from the B mixolydian mode (composed of the notes from the E scale), the song then returns to the tempo and form of the introduction, initially in E major, before quickly modulating to C minor, only to soon go through an abrupt short series of modulations, bringing it back to C minor again in time for the final "nothing really matters" section. A guitar accompanies the chorus "ooh, ooh yeah, ooh yeah". A double-tracked twin guitar melody is played through an amplifier designed by John Deacon, affectionately nicknamed the "Deacy Amp". Mercury's line "Nothing really matters ..." appears again, "cradled by light piano arpeggios suggesting both resignation (minor tonalities) and a new sense of freedom in the wide vocal span". After the line "nothing really matters" is repeated multiple times, the song finally concludes in the key of E major, but then changes again to F major just before it ends. The final line, "Any way the wind blows", is followed by the quiet sound of a large tam-tam that finally expels the tension built up throughout the song.
Lyrics
The New York Times commented that "the song's most distinct feature is the fatalistic lyrics". Mercury refused to explain his composition other than to say it was about relationships; the band is still protective of the song's secret. Brian May supports suggestions that the song contained veiled references to Mercury's personal traumas. He recalls "Freddie was a very complex person: flippant and funny on the surface, but he concealed insecurities and problems in squaring up his life with his childhood. He never explained the lyrics, but I think he put a lot of himself into that song." May, though, says the band had agreed that the core of a lyric was a private issue for the composer. In a BBC Three documentary about the making of "Bohemian Rhapsody", Roger Taylor maintains that the true meaning of the song is "fairly self-explanatory with just a bit of nonsense in the middle".
Despite this, critics, both journalistic and academic, have speculated over the meaning behind the song's lyrics. Some believe the lyrics describe a suicidal murderer haunted by demons or depict events just preceding an execution. The latter explanation points to Albert Camus's novel The Stranger, in which a young man confesses to an impulsive murder and has an epiphany before he is executed, as probable inspiration. When the band released a Greatest Hits cassette in Iran, a leaflet in Persian was included with translation and explanations. In the explanation, Queen states that "Bohemian Rhapsody" is about a young man who has accidentally killed someone and, like Faust, sold his soul to the devil. On the night before his execution, he calls for God saying, "Bismillah" ("In the name of God" in Arabic), and with the help of angels, regains his soul from Shaitan (the devil in Arabic).
Other critics interpreted the lyrics as Mercury's way of dealing with personal issues. Music scholar Sheila Whiteley observes that Mercury reached a turning point in his personal life in the year he wrote "Bohemian Rhapsody". He had been living with Mary Austin for seven years but had just embarked on his first love affair with a man. She suggests that the song provides an insight into Mercury's emotional state at the time, "living with Mary ('Mamma', as in Mother Mary) and wanting to break away ('Mamma mia let me go')". Others suggest it as a veiled reference to coming out, and dealing with the repercussions of the sodomy laws of the time.
Still others believe the lyrics were only written to fit with the music, and had no intended meaning; the D.J., television entertainer, and comedian Kenny Everett, who played an influential role in popularising the single on his radio show on Capital Radio, quoted Mercury as claiming the lyrics were simply "random rhyming nonsense".
Release
When the band wanted to release the single in 1975, various executives suggested to them, that at 5 minutes and 55 seconds it was too long, and would never be a hit. The song was played to other musicians who commented the band had no hope of it ever being played on radio. According to producer Roy Thomas Baker, he and the band bypassed this corporate assessment by playing the song for Capital Radio D.J. Kenny Everett:
"we had a reel-to-reel copy but we told him he could only have it if he promised not to play it. 'I won't play it,' he said, winking ..."
The plan worked — Everett teased his listeners by playing only parts of the song. Audience demand intensified when Everett played the full song on his show 14 times in 2 days. Hordes of fans attempted to buy the single the following Monday, only to be told by record stores that it had not yet been released. The same weekend, Paul Drew, who ran the RKO General stations in the U.S, heard the track on Everett's show in London. Drew managed to get a copy of the tape and started to play it in the U.S, which forced the hand of Queen's US label, Elektra. In an interview with Sound on Sound, Baker reflects that "it was a strange situation where radio on both sides of the Atlantic was breaking a record that the record companies said would never get airplay!"
Eventually the unedited single was released, with "I'm in Love with My Car" as the B-side. Following Everett's escapade in October 1975, Eric Hall, a record plugger, gave a copy to David "Diddy" Hamilton to play on his weekday Radio One show. Hall stated "Monster, Monster! This could be a hit!"
The song became the 1975 UK Christmas number one, holding the top position for nine weeks. "Bohemian Rhapsody" was the first song ever to get to number one in the UK twice with the same version, and is also the only single to have been Christmas number one twice with the same version. The second was upon its re-release (as a double A-side single with "These Are the Days of Our Lives") in 1991, following Mercury's death, staying at number 1 for 5 weeks. The re-released version sold 673,000 copies in 1991 in the UK.
In the U.S, the single was also a success, although initially to a lesser extent than in the UK. The single, released in December 1975, reached number 9 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America for sales of one million copies.
In a retrospective article, Anthony DeCurtis of Rolling Stone explained why the song performed less strongly in the US charts by saying that it is "the quintessential example of the kind of thing that doesn't exactly go over well in America". Its chart run of 24 weeks, however, placed it at number 18 on Billboards year-end chart, higher than some number 1s of the year. With the Canadian record-buying public, the single fared better, reaching number one in the RPM national singles chart for the week ending 1 May 1976.
"Bohemian Rhapsody" was re-released as a double A-side cassette single with "The Show Must Go On" in January 1992, following the death of Freddie Mercury, with proceeds going to the Magic Johnson Foundation for AIDS research. The song re-entered the Billboard Hot 100 chart after 16 years, reaching number 2, and spending 17 weeks on the chart. After the release of the Queen biopic named after the song, it re-entered the charts for a third time at number 33, marking 26 years since it last charted.
In March 2021 it was certified Diamond (10× platinum) in the US for combined digital sales and streams equal to 10 million units. It had sold 4.4 million digital copies in the US .
Promotional video
Though some artists had made video clips to accompany songs (including Queen themselves; for example, their earlier singles "Keep Yourself Alive", "Liar", "Seven Seas of Rhye" and "Killer Queen" already had "pop promos", as they were known at the time), it was only after the success of "Bohemian Rhapsody" that it became a regular practice for record companies to produce promotional videos for artists' single releases. The Guardian stated it "ensured videos would henceforth be a mandatory tool in the marketing of music". These videos could then be shown on television shows around the world, such as the BBC's Top of the Pops, without the need for the artist to appear in person. A promo video also allowed the artist to have their music broadcast and accompanied by their own choice of visuals, rather than dancers such as Pan's People. According to May, the video was produced so that the band could avoid miming on Top of the Pops since they would have looked off miming to such a complex song. He also said that the band knew they would be set to appear at Dundee's Caird Hall on tour, a date which clashed with the programme, thus a promo would solve the issue. The video has been hailed as launching the MTV age.
The band used Trillion, a subsidiary of Trident Studios, their former management company and recording studio. They hired one of their trucks and got it to Elstree Studios, where the band was rehearsing for their tour. The video was directed by Bruce Gowers, who had directed a video of the band's 1974 performance at the Rainbow Theatre in London, and was recorded by cameraman Barry Dodd and assistant director/floor manager Jim McCutcheon. The video was recorded in just four hours on 10 November 1975, at a cost of £4,500. Gowers reported that the band was involved in the discussion of the video and the result, and "was a co-operative to that extent, but there was only one leader."
The video opens with a shot of the four band members standing in diamond formation with their heads tilted back in near darkness as they sing the a cappella part. The lights fade up, and the shots cross-fade into close-ups of Mercury. The composition of the shot is the same as Mick Rock's cover photograph for their second album Queen II. The photo, inspired by a photograph of actress Marlene Dietrich, was the band's favourite image of themselves. The video then fades into them playing their instruments. In the opera section of the video, the scene reverts to the Queen II standing positions, after which they perform once again on stage during the hard rock segment. In the closing seconds of the video Roger Taylor is depicted stripped to the waist, striking the tam tam in the manner of the trademark of the Rank Organisation's Gongman, familiar in the UK as the opening of all Rank film productions.
All of the special effects were achieved during the recording, rather than editing. The visual effect of Mercury's face cascading away (during the echoed lines "Magnifico" and "Let me go") was accomplished by pointing the camera at a monitor, giving visual feedback, a glare analogous to audio feedback. The honeycomb illusion was created using a shaped lens. The video was edited within five hours because it was due to be broadcast the same week in which it was taped. The video was sent to the BBC as soon as it was completed and aired for the first time on Top of the Pops in November 1975.
Critical reception
Although the song has become one of the most revered in popular music history, the initial critical reaction was mixed. The UK music papers reacted with bemusement, recognising that the song was original and technically accomplished, but they mostly remained indifferent. Pete Erskine of NME observed that, "It'll be interesting to see whether it'll be played in its entirety on the radio. It's performed extremely well, but more in terms of production than anything else... Someone somewhere has decided that the boys' next release must sound 'epic'. And it does. They sound extremely self-important."
Allan Jones of Melody Maker was unimpressed, describing the song as "a superficially impressive pastiche of incongruous musical styles" and that Queen "contrived to approximate the demented fury of the Balham Amateur Operatic Society performing The Pirates of Penzance... 'Bohemian Rhapsody' is full of drama, passion and romance and sounds rather like one of those mini-opera affairs that Pete Townsend [sic] used to tack on to the end of Who albums", before concluding, "The significance of the composition eludes me totally, though I must admit to finding it horrifically fascinating. It's likely to be a hit of enormous proportions despite its length." Ray Fox-Cumming of Record Mirror was also left unmoved, saying, "It has no immediate selling point whatsoever: among its many parts. there's scarcely a shred of a tune and certainly no one line to latch onto. There's no denying that it's devilishly clever, encompassing everything from bits of operatic harmonies to snatches that sound like Sparks and David Cassidy, but, in the end the whole adds up to less than the sum of its parts." He did, however, say that it was "unthinkable" that it wouldn't be a hit. The most positive review came from Sounds, which called it "impossibly disjointed and complex, but a dazzlingly clever epic from the fevered mind of Freddie Mercury". Cash Box called it "a softly sung ode to the prospect of moving on from staid ways with "good singing" and "good production."
Legacy
Musical impact
In 1976, when asked for his opinion on "Bohemian Rhapsody", the Beach Boys' leader Brian Wilson praised the song as "the most competitive thing that's come along in ages" and "a fulfillment and an answer to a teenage prayer—of artistic music". Producer Steve Levine said the track broke "all sonic production barriers" in a fashion similar to the Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations" (1966), Phil Spector's "Be My Baby" (1963), and 10cc's "I'm Not in Love" (1975). Greg Lake, whose song "I Believe in Father Christmas" was kept from number one in the UK by "Bohemian Rhapsody" when it was released in 1975, acknowledged that he was "beaten by one of the greatest records ever made", describing it as "a once-in-a-lifetime recording".
Addressing the song's enduring popularity, author and music lecturer Jochen Eisentraut wrote in 2012: "A year before punk made it unfashionable, progressive rock had an astounding success with the theoretically over-length (nearly 6-minute) single 'Bohemian Rhapsody' which bore many of the hallmarks of the 'prog' genre". He said it was "unique at this point to hear a hit single in this style", it was "more accessible than other music of the genre" and was "able to communicate beyond the usual confines of the style". Author and progressive rock historian Stephen Lambe called it a "remarkable" single and said it "provides a neat but coincidental bridge between prog in its prime and the move to more aggressive songwriting", suggesting the song "feels like a grotesque (although probably unintentional) parody of progressive rock". The New Rolling Stone Album Guide described it as "either a prog-rock benchmark or the most convoluted novelty song ever recorded". Writing for the BBC in 2015, the Chicago Tribunes music critic Greg Kot called it a "prog-rock pocket operetta" and said the song's "reign as a work of wigged-out genius rather than a dated gimmick testifies to its go-for-broke attitude—one that has resonated across generations".
In 2009, The Guardians music critic, Tom Service, examined the song's relationship with the traditions of classical music, describing its popularity as "one of the strangest musical phenomena out there":
A comparison was also made between the song and Led Zeppelin's 1971 epic "Stairway to Heaven" by music writers Pete Prown and HP Newquist. They observed both songs were "a slow, introspective beginning and gradual climb to a raging metal jam and back again", with the notable distinction being "while Zeppelin meshed folk influences with heavy metal, Queen opted for the light grandeur of the operetta as part of its hard rock". They said "for sheer cleverness alone, not to mention May's riveting electric work, 'Bohemian Rhapsody' rightfully became one of the top singles of 1975 and established Queen in the elite of seventies rock bands".
In 2015, The Economist described it as "one of the most innovative pieces of the progressive rock era". It wrote "though Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones and the Beatles' Paul McCartney had experimented with symphonic elements, and Roger Waters of Pink Floyd and Pete Townshend of the Who had created narrative albums with distinct 'movements', none had had the audacity to import a miniature opera into rock music."
Wayne's World
In 1992, the song enjoyed renewed popularity in the United States after being featured in a scene in the film Wayne's World, in which the titular character and his friends headbang in a car to the rock part near the end of the song. The film's director, Penelope Spheeris, was hesitant to use the song, as it did not entirely fit with the lead characters, who were fans of less flamboyant hard rock and heavy metal. Mike Myers insisted that the song fit the scene. According to music scholar Theodore Gracyk, by 1992, when the film was released, even "classic rock" stations had stopped playing the almost six-minute song. Gracyk suggests that beginning the tape in the middle of the song after "the lyrics which provide the song's narrative ... forces the film's audience to respond to its presence in the scene without the 'commentary' of the lyrics". Helped by the song, the soundtrack album of the film was a major hit.
In connection with this, a new video was released, interspersing excerpts from the film with footage from the original Queen video, along with some live footage of the band. Myers was horrified that the record company had mixed clips from Wayne's World with Queen's original video, fearing that this would upset the band. He said, "they've just whizzed on a Picasso." He asked the record company to tell Queen that the video was not his idea and that he apologised to them. The band, though, sent a reply simply saying, "Thank you for using our song." This astonished Myers, who responded, "Thank you for even letting me touch the hem of your garments!"
The Wayne's World video version of "Bohemian Rhapsody" won Queen its only MTV Video Music Award for "Best Video from a Film". When remaining members Brian May and Roger Taylor took the stage to accept the award, Brian May was overcome with emotion and said that "Freddie would be tickled." In the final scene of the video, a pose of the band from the video from the original "Bohemian Rhapsody" clip morphs into an identically posed 1985 photo, first featured in the "One Vision" video.
In the 2018 Queen biopic feature film Bohemian Rhapsody, Myers makes a cameo as a fictional record executive who pans the song and refuses to release it as a single, proclaiming that it is too long for radio and that it is not a song that "teenagers can crank up the volume in their car and bang their heads to", a reference to the iconic scene in Wayne's World.
Achievements and accolades
The song has won numerous awards and has been covered and parodied by many artists. At the 19th Annual Grammy Awards in February 1977, "Bohemian Rhapsody" received two Grammy Award nominations for Best Pop Vocal Performance by a Duo, Group or Chorus and Best Arrangement for Voices. In October 1977, only two years after its release, the British Phonographic Industry named "Bohemian Rhapsody" as the best British single of the period 1952–77. It is a regular entry in greatest-songs polls, and it was named by the Guinness Book of Records in 2002 as the top British single of all time. The song is also listed in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll.
In 2004, the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. , "Bohemian Rhapsody" is the second most-played song on British radio, in clubs and on jukeboxes collectively, after Procol Harum's "A Whiter Shade of Pale". On 30 September 2007 for BBC Radio 1's 40th birthday, it was revealed on The Radio 1 Chart Show that "Bohemian Rhapsody" had been the most played song since Radio 1's launch.
In December 2018, "Bohemian Rhapsody" officially became the most-streamed song from the 20th century, surpassing Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and Guns N' Roses' "Sweet Child o' Mine". "Bohemian Rhapsody" also became the most-streamed classic rock song of all time. The number of downloads of the song and original video exceeded 1.6 billion downloads across global on-demand streaming services. The video surpassed one billion views on YouTube in July 2019, making it the oldest music video to reach one billion on the platform, and the first pre-1990s song to reach that figure.
Polls
In a 2001 poll of more than 50,000 readers of The Observer newspaper and viewers of British TV's Channel 4 for the 100 best number-one singles of all time, the song came second to John Lennon's "Imagine". In a 2002 poll of more than 31,000 people conducted for Guinness World Records' British Hit Singles, "Bohemian Rhapsody" was voted Britain's favourite single, beating Lennon's "Imagine" to the top spot.
In 2002, it came in 10th in a BBC World Service poll to find the world's favourite song. It has been in the top five of the Dutch annual "Top 100 Aller Tijden" ("All-Time Top 100 [Singles]") since 1977, reaching number one on eight occasions, more than any other artist. In 1999, the annual "Top 2000" poll commenced to find the best songs ever made, and "Bohemian Rhapsody" has been ranked number one in all but five years (2005, 2010, 2014, 2015 and 2020 when it was number two). In a 2012 readers poll conducted by Rolling Stone magazine, "Bohemian Rhapsody" was voted the best vocal performance in rock history. In 2010, the song ranked at 166 on Rolling Stones "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" list, and was re-ranked at number 17 in 2021.
In 2012, the song topped an ITV poll in the UK to find "The Nation's Favourite Number One" over 60 years of music, ahead of Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" (number two), Adele's "Someone like You" (number three), Oasis' "Don't Look Back in Anger" (number four) and The Beatles' "Hey Jude" (number five). The song was also ranked number five in RadioMafia's list of "Top 500 Songs".
Cover versions
Over two dozen artists have recorded or performed cover versions of "Bohemian Rhapsody", including charted single releases by:
Bad News – a 1986 spoof version produced by Brian May which reached UK number 44
The Braids – an R&B version recorded for the soundtrack to the 1996 film High School High and which peaked at UK number 21, US number 42, and Canada number 13
Panic! at the Disco – a version recorded for the soundtrack of the 2016 film Suicide Squad and which peaked at UK number 80, US number 64 and Canada number 47
A video cover featuring The Muppets also went viral and was subsequently released as a single in late 2009, peaking at number 32 in the UK.
"Weird Al" Yankovic's 1993 album Alapalooza includes a version of the song entitled "Bohemian Polka", which is a rearrangement of the entire song as a polka.
40th anniversary
To mark the 40th anniversary of "Bohemian Rhapsody", the song was released on a limited edition 12" vinyl with the original B-side "I'm In Love With My Car" on 27 November 2015 for Record Store Day 2015. Queen also released A Night At The Odeon, Live At Hammersmith 75, on CD, DVD-Video and Blu-ray. This includes the first live "professionally" recorded performance of "Bohemian Rhapsody". However, the very first recording and live performance of "Bohemian Rhapsody" was the performance on 14 November 1975 in Liverpool.
Live performances
The a cappella opening was too complex to perform live, so Mercury tried various ways of introducing the song. When "Mustapha" became a live favourite, Mercury would often sub in that song's a cappella opening, which was easier to reproduce live as it was only one voice—this combination features in their 1979 live album Live Killers. During their 1982 Hot Space Tour, and occasionally at other times, Mercury would do a piano improvisation (generally the introduction to "Death on Two Legs") that ended with the first notes of the song. Often, the preceding song would end, and Mercury would sit at the piano, say a quick word, and start playing the ballad section. At Live Aid where "Bohemian Rhapsody" was their opening song, Mercury commenced with the ballad section.
Initially following the song's release, the operatic middle section proved a problem for the band. Because of extensive multi-tracking, it could not be performed on stage. The band did not have enough of a break between the Sheer Heart Attack and A Night at the Opera tours to find a way to make it work live, so they split the song into three sections that were played throughout the night. The opening and closing ballads were played as part of a medley, with "Killer Queen" and "March of the Black Queen" taking the place of the operatic and hard rock sections. In 1976 concerts where the same medley was played, the operatic section from the album would be played from tape as the introduction to the setlist. During this playback, Mercury would appear briefly to sing live for the line, "I see a little sillhouetto of a man". As the song segued into the hard rock section, the band would emerge on the smoke-filled stage—the playback would end at this point, and the hard rock section would be performed live (without the final ballad section, which appeared later in the set).
Starting with the A Day at the Races Tour in 1977, the band adopted their lasting way of playing the song live. The opening ballad would be played on stage, and after May's guitar solo, the lights would go down, the band would leave the stage, and the operatic section would be played from tape, while coloured stage lights provided a light show based around the voices of the opera section. Most playings of the opera section from the tape would often be accompanied by a portion of the song's music video containing the footage used for the operatic portion of the song. Other playings would be played over montages of footage filmed from the band members' other experiences throughout their daily lives. A blast of pyrotechnics after Taylor's high note on the final "for me" would announce the band's return for the hard rock section and closing ballad. Queen played the song in this form all through the Magic Tour of 1986. This style was also used for the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert, with Elton John singing the opening ballad and then after the taped operatic section, Axl Rose singing the hard rock section. John and Rose sang the closing ballad part together in a duet.
"Bohemian Rhapsody" was performed by Queen + Paul Rodgers throughout their tours, accompanied by a video of Mercury. Footage from the Live at Wembley '86 was used for the 2005–06 tour, and the 1981 Montreal performance used for the Rock the Cosmos Tour. As with the Queen tours, the band went backstage for the operatic section, which was accompanied by a video tribute to Freddie Mercury. When the hard rock section began, the lights came back up to the full band on stage, including Rodgers, who took over lead vocals. Rodgers duetted with the recording of Mercury for the "outro" section, allowing the audience to sing the final "Nothing really matters to me", while the taped Mercury took a bow for the crowd. Rodgers would then repeat the line, and the final line ("Any way the wind blows") was delivered with one last shot of Mercury smiling at the audience. Commenting upon this staging, Brian May says that they "had to rise to the challenge of getting Freddie in there in a way which gave him his rightful place, but without demeaning Paul in any way. It also kept us live and 'present', although conscious and proud of our past, as we logically should be."
Since 2012, May and Taylor have toured with former American Idol contestant Adam Lambert under the name Queen + Adam Lambert (following two one-off performances together in 2009 and 2011), with "Bohemian Rhapsody" regularly included at the end of their set.
Charts
Weekly charts
Year-end charts
Decade-end charts
All-time charts
Sales and certifications
Queen comments on the song
Personnel
Source:
Freddie Mercury – lead and backing vocals, piano, operatic vocals (middle register)
Brian May – electric guitar, operatic vocals (low register)
Roger Taylor – drums, timpani, gong, operatic vocals (high register)
John Deacon – bass guitar
See also
List of Bohemian Rhapsody cover versions
List of best-selling singles in the United Kingdom
List of best-selling singles in the United States
Citations
General references
External links
1975 singles
1975 songs
1976 singles
1991 singles
1992 singles
Brit Award for British Single
British hard rock songs
British progressive rock songs
British rock songs
Christmas number-one singles in the United Kingdom
Dutch Top 40 number-one singles
Elektra Records singles
EMI Records singles
Grammy Hall of Fame Award recipients
Hollywood Records singles
Irish Singles Chart number-one singles
Music based on the Faust legend
Never Shout Never songs
Number-one singles in Australia
Number-one singles in New Zealand
Number-one singles in Spain
Parlophone singles
Progressive pop songs
Queen (band) songs
RPM Top Singles number-one singles
Signature songs
Single Top 100 number-one singles
Song recordings produced by Roy Thomas Baker
Songs about crime
Songs about death
Songs composed in B-flat major
Songs written by Freddie Mercury
Symphonic rock songs
The Flaming Lips songs
The Muppets songs
UK Singles Chart number-one singles
Virgin EMI Records singles | true | [
"Lady Sings the Blues may refer to:\n\n \"Lady Sings the Blues\" (song), a 1956 song by Billie Holiday\n Lady Sings the Blues (Billie Holiday album), a 1956 album by Billie Holiday\n Lady Sings the Blues (Rebecca Ferguson album), a 2015 album by Rebecca Ferguson, consisting of cover versions of Holliday songs\n Lady Sings the Blues (book), a 1956 autobiography by Billie Holiday\n Lady Sings the Blues (film), a 1972 film about Billie Holiday\n Lady Sings the Blues (soundtrack), the soundtrack album to the 1972 film",
"\"Don't Tell Me You're Sorry\" is a song by British pop group S Club 8, released as the third and final single from their second album, Sundown (2003). It was released on 29 December 2003 and was the group's last release under the S Club name. The song peaked at number 11 on the UK Singles Chart, their first single to miss the top 10 in the country. The song was given a new mix for release, the single release having a 1970s club vibe where the album version included more of an R&B influence.\n\nComposition\nStacey McClean sings the first verse, a backing vocal in the second verse, leads every chorus, and sings the fourth verse along with Aaron. Rochelle Wiseman sings the second verse. Aaron Renfree leads the first and second bridges along with Calvin and Jay, and sings the fourth verse along with Stacey. Frankie Sandford sings the third verse. Daisy Evans sings backing vocals in the third verse along with Hannah. Hannah Richings sings backing vocals in the third verse along with Daisy. Jay Asforis leads the first part of the song's main bridge along with Calvin and Aaron, and sings the backing vocals of the third part of this bridge and in the final chorus. Calvin Goldspink leads the second part of the song's main bridge along with Aaron and Jay.\n\nMusic video\nThe video, released in 2004, was the group's last music video as a group. It takes place on a black stage with various effects added in post-production. The video features the group's members performing the song on the stage, as well as in \"club\" scenes in smaller groups.\n\nTrack listings\nUK CD1\n \"Don't Tell Me You're Sorry\" (single mix)\n \"Sloop Upside\"\n\nUK CD2\n \"Don't Tell Me You're Sorry\"\n \"Big Fun\"\n \"One Step Closer\" (Jewels & Stone extended party mix)\n \"Don't Tell Me You're Sorry\" (Europa XL vocal mix)\n \"Don't Tell Me You're Sorry\" (video)\n\nCharts\n\nReferences\n\n19 Recordings singles\n2003 singles\n2003 songs\nPolydor Records singles\nS Club 8 songs\nSong recordings produced by Korpi & Blackcell\nSongs written by Henrik Janson\nSongs written by Henrik Korpi"
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"Bohemian Rhapsody",
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"Mercury reached a turning point in his personal life in the year he wrote \"Bohemian Rhapsody\".",
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"Mercury refused to explain his composition other than saying it was about relationships; the band is still protective of the song's secret.",
"When were the lyrics written?",
"The March of the Black Queen by Sarah Sefati and Farhad Arkani, which included the whole biography of the band and complete lyrics with Persian translation (2000)).",
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| C_169eaa51c6c243bc9069eb7c6821930d_0 | When was the song released? | 5 | When was Bohemian Rhapsody released? | Bohemian Rhapsody | The New York Times commented that "the song's most distinct feature is the fatalistic lyrics". Mercury refused to explain his composition other than saying it was about relationships; the band is still protective of the song's secret. Brian May supports suggestions that the song contained veiled references to Mercury's personal traumas. He recalls "Freddie was a very complex person: flippant and funny on the surface, but he concealed insecurities and problems in squaring up his life with his childhood. He never explained the lyrics, but I think he put a lot of himself into that song." May, though, says the band had agreed that the core of a lyric was a private issue for the composer. In a BBC Three documentary about the making of "Bohemian Rhapsody", Roger Taylor maintains that the true meaning of the song is "fairly self-explanatory with just a bit of nonsense in the middle". When the band released a Greatest Hits cassette in Iran, a leaflet in Persian was included with translation and explanations (refers to a book published in Iran called The March of the Black Queen by Sarah Sefati and Farhad Arkani, which included the whole biography of the band and complete lyrics with Persian translation (2000)). In the explanation, Queen states that "Bohemian Rhapsody" is about a young man who has accidentally killed someone and, like Faust, sold his soul to the devil. On the night before his execution, he calls for God saying, "Bismillah" ("In the name of God" in Arabic), and with the help of angels, regains his soul from Shaitan (the devil in Islam). Despite this, critics, both journalistic and academic, have speculated over the meaning behind the song's lyrics. Some believe the lyrics describe a suicidal murderer haunted by demons or depict events just preceding an execution. The latter explanation points to Albert Camus's novel The Stranger, in which a young man confesses to an impulsive murder and has an epiphany before he is executed, as probable inspiration. Others believe the lyrics were only written to fit with the music, and have no meaning; Kenny Everett quoted Mercury as claiming the lyrics were simply "random rhyming nonsense". Still, others interpreted them as Mercury's way of dealing with personal issues. Music scholar Sheila Whiteley observes that Mercury reached a turning point in his personal life in the year he wrote "Bohemian Rhapsody". He had been living with Mary Austin for seven years but had just embarked on his first love affair with a man. She suggests that the song provides an insight into Mercury's emotional state at the time, "living with Mary ('Mamma', as in Mother Mary) and wanting to break away ('Mamma Mia let me go')". CANNOTANSWER | which included the whole biography of the band and complete lyrics with Persian translation (2000)). | "Bohemian Rhapsody" is a song by the British rock band Queen. It was written by Freddie Mercury for the band's 1975 album A Night at the Opera. The song is a six-minute suite, notable for its lack of a refraining chorus and consisting of several sections: an intro, a ballad segment, an operatic passage, a hard rock part and a reflective coda. "Bohemian Rhapsody" is one of the few songs to emerge from the 1970s progressive rock movement to achieve widespread commercial success and appeal to a mainstream audience.
"Bohemian Rhapsody" topped the UK Singles Chart for nine weeks and had sold more than a million copies by the end of January 1976. In 1991, after Mercury's death, it topped the charts for another five weeks, eventually becoming the UK's third best-selling single of all time. It is also the only song to reach the UK Christmas number one twice by the same artist. It also topped the charts in countries including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and the Netherlands, and sold over six million copies worldwide. In the United States, the song peaked at number nine in 1976, but reached a new peak of number two on the Billboard Hot 100 after being used in the film Wayne's World (1992). In 2018, the release of Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody brought the song renewed popularity and chart success worldwide. In March 2021 it was certified Diamond in the US for combined digital sales and streams equal to 10 million units.
Although critical reaction was initially mixed, "Bohemian Rhapsody" has since become Queen's most popular song and is considered one of the greatest rock songs of all time. The single was accompanied by a groundbreaking promotional video. Rolling Stone stated that its influence "cannot be overstated, practically inventing the music video seven years before MTV went on the air." The Guardian named its music video one of the 50 key events in rock music history, helping make videos a critical tool in music marketing.
In 2004, "Bohemian Rhapsody" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. It has appeared in numerous polls of the greatest songs in popular music, including a ranking at number 17 on Rolling Stones list of "the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. Mercury's vocal performance was chosen as the greatest in rock history by readers of Rolling Stone. In December 2018, it became the most streamed song from the 20th century, and it had been downloaded or streamed over 1.6 billion times.
History and recording
According to Mercury's friend Chris Smith (a keyboard player in Smile), Mercury first started developing "Bohemian Rhapsody" in the late 1960s; Mercury used to play parts of songs he was writing at the time on the piano, and one of his pieces, known simply as "The Cowboy Song", contained lyrics that ended up in the completed version produced years later, in 1975, specifically, "Mama ... just killed a man." Producer Roy Thomas Baker, who began working with Queen in 1972, related how Mercury once played the opening ballad section on the piano for him in Mercury's flat:
He played the beginning on the piano, then stopped and said, "And this is where the opera section comes in!" Then we went out to eat dinner.
Guitarist Brian May said the band thought that Mercury's blueprint for the song was "intriguing and original, and worthy of work". According to May, much of Queen's material was written in the studio, but this song "was all in Freddie's mind" before they started. In an interview during the band's Australian tour early in 1985, Mercury explained, "It was basically three songs that I wanted to put out, and I just put the three together."
Queen spent a month rehearsing at Ridge Farm Studio in Surrey in mid-1975, and drummer Roger Taylor recalled that "Bohemian Rhapsody" was one of the songs the band worked on while they were there. Recording began on 24 August 1975 at Rockfield Studio 1 near Monmouth, South Wales, after a three-week rehearsal at Penrhos Court, near Kington, Herefordshire. During the making of the track, four additional studios – Roundhouse, Sarm Studios, Scorpio Sound, and Wessex Sound Studios – were used. According to some band members, Mercury mentally prepared the song beforehand and directed the band throughout.
Mercury used a C. Bechstein concert grand piano, which he played in the promotional video and the UK tour. Due to the elaborate nature of the song, it was recorded in various sections. The piano was allegedly the same one Paul McCartney had used to record the Beatles' song "Hey Jude", as well as the same one Rick Wakeman used on David Bowie's 1971 album Hunky Dory.
Baker recalled in 1999
May, Mercury, and Taylor reportedly sang their vocal parts continually for 10 to 12 hours a day. The entire piece took three weeks to record, and in some sections featured 180 separate overdubs. Since the studios of the time only offered 24 track analogue tape, it was necessary for the three to overdub themselves many times and "bounce" these down to successive sub-mixes. In the end, eighth-generation tapes were used. The various sections of tape containing the desired sub-mixes had to be spliced (cut and assembled in the correct sequence). May recalled placing a tape in front of the light and being able to see through it, as the tape had been used so many times.
A similar story was told in 1977 by Taylor regarding the elaborate overdubs and sub-mixes for "The March of The Black Queen" for the album Queen II. At that time, the band was using 16 track equipment.
Producer Baker recalls that May's solo was done on only one track, rather than recording multiple tracks. May stated that he wanted to compose "a little tune that would be a counterpart to the main melody; I didn't just want to play the melody". The guitarist said that his better material stems from this way of working, in which he thought of the tune before playing it: "The fingers tend to be predictable unless being led by the brain." According to Baker,
... the end of the song was much heavier because it was one of the first mixes to be done with automation ... If you really listen to it, the ballad starts off clean, and as the opera section gets louder and louder, the vocals get more and more distorted. You can still hear this on the CD. They are clearly distorted.
Composition and analysis
"Bohemian Rhapsody" has been affiliated to the genres of progressive rock (sometimes called symphonic rock), hard rock, and progressive pop. The song is highly unusual for a popular single in featuring no chorus, combining disparate musical styles, and containing lyrics which eschew conventional love-based narratives, and instead make allusions to murder and nihilism. The Beach Boys' 1966 single "Good Vibrations", which also consisted of disparate music sections recorded separately, was a precursor to "Bohemian Rhapsody".
Music scholar Sheila Whiteley suggests that "the title draws strongly on contemporary rock ideology, the individualism of the bohemian artists' world, with rhapsody affirming the romantic ideals of art rock". Commenting on bohemianism, Judith Peraino said,
Mercury intended ... [this song] to be a 'mock opera', something outside the norm of rock songs, and it does follow a certain operatic logic: Choruses of multi-tracked voices alternate with aria-like solos, the emotions are excessive, the plot confusing.
"Bohemian Rhapsody" begins with an introduction, then goes into a piano ballad, before a guitar solo leads to an operatic interlude. A hard rock part follows this and it concludes with a coda. The song is in the keys of B major, E major, A major and F major, and is predominantly in meter. This musical format of writing a song as a suite with changes in style, tone, and tempo throughout was uncommon in most mainstream pop and rock music, but common in progressive rock, a genre which had reached its artistic and commercial zenith between 1970 and 1975 in the music of British bands such as Jethro Tull, Yes, Genesis, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Gentle Giant, Van der Graaf Generator, and Curved Air. The music of progressive rock was characterised by dramatic contrasts, frequent shifts in tempo and in rhythmic character from one section of a composition to the next. Bands from the genre blended rock with classical music, including its structural features, compositional practices, and instrumentation. Queen had embraced progressive rock as one of their many diverse influences.
"Bohemian Rhapsody" parodies many different elements of opera by using bombastic choruses, sarcastic recitative, and distorted Italian operatic phrases. An embryonic version of this style had already been used in Mercury's earlier compositions for the band "My Fairy King" (1973) and "The March of the Black Queen" (1974).
Intro (0:00–0:49)
The song begins with a close five-part harmony a cappella introduction in B major—as evidenced by the presence of a V–I cadence (F7–B) multi-track recordings of Mercury although the video has all four members lip-syncing this part. The lyrics question whether life is "real" or "just fantasy caught in a landslide" before concluding that there can be "no escape from reality".
After 20 seconds, the grand piano enters, the song modulates briefly to E major via another perfect cadence (B7–E) and Mercury's voice alternates with the other vocal parts. The narrator introduces himself as "just a poor boy" but declares that he "needs no sympathy" because he is "easy come, easy go" and then "little high, little low" (when heard in stereo, the words "little high" come from the left speaker and "little low" comes from the right, the other respective speaker plays the piano at the same time); chromatic side-slipping on "easy come, easy go" highlights the dream-like atmosphere. The end of this section is marked by the bass entrance and the cross-handed piano vamp in B.
Ballad (0:49–2:37)
The piano begins in B major along with the entrance of John Deacon's bass guitar, marking the onset of this section. After it plays twice, Mercury's vocals enter. Throughout the section, the vocals evolve from a softly sung harmony to an impassioned solo performance by Mercury. The narrator explains to his mother that he has "just killed a man", with "a gun against his head" and in doing so, has thrown his life away. This "confessional" section, Whiteley comments, is "affirmative of the nurturant and life-giving force of the feminine and the need for absolution". In the middle of the verse (1:19), Taylor's drums enter, and a descending chromatic run leads to a temporary modulation to E major (up one fourth). The narrator makes the second of several invocations to his "mama" in the new key, continuing the original theme. The narrator explains his regret over "mak[ing] you cry" and urging "mama" to "carry on as if nothing really matters". A brief, descending variation of the piano phrase connects to the second verse.
Then the piano intro plays, marking the start of the second verse. As the ballad proceeds into its second verse, the speaker confesses how ashamed he is by his act of murder (as May enters on guitar and mimics the upper range of the piano at 1:50). May imitates a bell tree during the line "sends shivers down my spine", by playing the strings of his guitar on the other side of the bridge. The narrator bids the world goodbye announcing he has "got to go" and prepares to "face the truth" admitting "I don't want to die / I sometimes wish I'd never been born at all". This is where the guitar solo enters.
Guitar solo (2:37–3:05)
Towards the end of the ballad section, the band builds in intensity, incorporating a guitar solo (in E major) played and composed by Brian May. The intensity continues to build, but once the bass line completes its descent establishing modulation to the new key (A major), the entire band cuts out abruptly at 3:03 except for quiet, staccato A major quaver (eighth-note) chords on the piano, marking the start of the "Opera" section.
Opera (3:05–4:07)
A rapid series of rhythmic and harmonic changes introduces a pseudo-operatic midsection, which contains the bulk of the elaborate vocal multi-tracking, depicting the narrator's descent into hell. While the underlying pulse of the song is maintained, the dynamics vary greatly from bar to bar, from only Mercury's voice accompanied by a piano to a multi-voice choir supported by drums, bass, piano, and timpani. The choir effect was created by having May, Mercury, and Taylor repeatedly sing their vocal parts, resulting in 180 separate overdubs. These overdubs were then combined into successive submixes. According to Roger Taylor, the voices of May, Mercury, and himself combined created a wide vocal range: "Brian could get down quite low, Freddie had a powerful voice through the middle, and I was good at the high stuff." The band wanted to create "a wall of sound, that starts down and goes all the way up". The band used the bell effect for lyrics "Magnifico" and "let me go". Also, on "let him go", Taylor singing the top section carries his note on further after the rest of the "choir" have stopped singing.
Lyrical references in this passage include Scaramouche, the fandango, Galileo Galilei, Figaro, and Beelzebub, with cries of "Bismillah! [Arabic: "In the name of God!"] we will not let you go!", as rival factions fight over his soul, some wishing to "let [him] go" and "spare him his life from this monstrosity", with others sending him "thunderbolts and lightning – very, very frightening [to him]". In Freddie Mercury: The definitive biography, Lesley-Ann Jones theorises that it is also a figurative representation of the four members: Mercury, May, Taylor, and Deacon respectively. The section concludes with a full choral treatment of the lyric "Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me!", on a block B major chord. Roger Taylor tops the final chord with a falsetto B in the fifth octave (B5).
Using the 24 track technology available at the time, the "opera" section took about three weeks to finish. Producer Roy Thomas Baker said, "Every time Freddie came up with another Galileo, I would add another piece of tape to the reel." Baker recalls that they kept wearing out the tape, which meant having to do transfers.
Hard rock (4:07–4:54)
The operatic section leads into a rock interlude with a guitar riff written by Mercury. At 4:15, a quadruple-tracked Mercury (in stereo, the four parts are panned two on the left and two on the right) sings angry lyrics addressed to an unspecified "you", accusing them of betrayal and abuse and insisting "can't do this to me, baby", before the final lines conclude that the singer "just gotta get right outta" an unspecified "here". Three ascending guitar runs follow. Mercury then plays a similar B run on the piano, as the song builds up to the finale with a ritardando.
Outro (4:54–5:55)
After Mercury plays ascending octaves of notes from the B mixolydian mode (composed of the notes from the E scale), the song then returns to the tempo and form of the introduction, initially in E major, before quickly modulating to C minor, only to soon go through an abrupt short series of modulations, bringing it back to C minor again in time for the final "nothing really matters" section. A guitar accompanies the chorus "ooh, ooh yeah, ooh yeah". A double-tracked twin guitar melody is played through an amplifier designed by John Deacon, affectionately nicknamed the "Deacy Amp". Mercury's line "Nothing really matters ..." appears again, "cradled by light piano arpeggios suggesting both resignation (minor tonalities) and a new sense of freedom in the wide vocal span". After the line "nothing really matters" is repeated multiple times, the song finally concludes in the key of E major, but then changes again to F major just before it ends. The final line, "Any way the wind blows", is followed by the quiet sound of a large tam-tam that finally expels the tension built up throughout the song.
Lyrics
The New York Times commented that "the song's most distinct feature is the fatalistic lyrics". Mercury refused to explain his composition other than to say it was about relationships; the band is still protective of the song's secret. Brian May supports suggestions that the song contained veiled references to Mercury's personal traumas. He recalls "Freddie was a very complex person: flippant and funny on the surface, but he concealed insecurities and problems in squaring up his life with his childhood. He never explained the lyrics, but I think he put a lot of himself into that song." May, though, says the band had agreed that the core of a lyric was a private issue for the composer. In a BBC Three documentary about the making of "Bohemian Rhapsody", Roger Taylor maintains that the true meaning of the song is "fairly self-explanatory with just a bit of nonsense in the middle".
Despite this, critics, both journalistic and academic, have speculated over the meaning behind the song's lyrics. Some believe the lyrics describe a suicidal murderer haunted by demons or depict events just preceding an execution. The latter explanation points to Albert Camus's novel The Stranger, in which a young man confesses to an impulsive murder and has an epiphany before he is executed, as probable inspiration. When the band released a Greatest Hits cassette in Iran, a leaflet in Persian was included with translation and explanations. In the explanation, Queen states that "Bohemian Rhapsody" is about a young man who has accidentally killed someone and, like Faust, sold his soul to the devil. On the night before his execution, he calls for God saying, "Bismillah" ("In the name of God" in Arabic), and with the help of angels, regains his soul from Shaitan (the devil in Arabic).
Other critics interpreted the lyrics as Mercury's way of dealing with personal issues. Music scholar Sheila Whiteley observes that Mercury reached a turning point in his personal life in the year he wrote "Bohemian Rhapsody". He had been living with Mary Austin for seven years but had just embarked on his first love affair with a man. She suggests that the song provides an insight into Mercury's emotional state at the time, "living with Mary ('Mamma', as in Mother Mary) and wanting to break away ('Mamma mia let me go')". Others suggest it as a veiled reference to coming out, and dealing with the repercussions of the sodomy laws of the time.
Still others believe the lyrics were only written to fit with the music, and had no intended meaning; the D.J., television entertainer, and comedian Kenny Everett, who played an influential role in popularising the single on his radio show on Capital Radio, quoted Mercury as claiming the lyrics were simply "random rhyming nonsense".
Release
When the band wanted to release the single in 1975, various executives suggested to them, that at 5 minutes and 55 seconds it was too long, and would never be a hit. The song was played to other musicians who commented the band had no hope of it ever being played on radio. According to producer Roy Thomas Baker, he and the band bypassed this corporate assessment by playing the song for Capital Radio D.J. Kenny Everett:
"we had a reel-to-reel copy but we told him he could only have it if he promised not to play it. 'I won't play it,' he said, winking ..."
The plan worked — Everett teased his listeners by playing only parts of the song. Audience demand intensified when Everett played the full song on his show 14 times in 2 days. Hordes of fans attempted to buy the single the following Monday, only to be told by record stores that it had not yet been released. The same weekend, Paul Drew, who ran the RKO General stations in the U.S, heard the track on Everett's show in London. Drew managed to get a copy of the tape and started to play it in the U.S, which forced the hand of Queen's US label, Elektra. In an interview with Sound on Sound, Baker reflects that "it was a strange situation where radio on both sides of the Atlantic was breaking a record that the record companies said would never get airplay!"
Eventually the unedited single was released, with "I'm in Love with My Car" as the B-side. Following Everett's escapade in October 1975, Eric Hall, a record plugger, gave a copy to David "Diddy" Hamilton to play on his weekday Radio One show. Hall stated "Monster, Monster! This could be a hit!"
The song became the 1975 UK Christmas number one, holding the top position for nine weeks. "Bohemian Rhapsody" was the first song ever to get to number one in the UK twice with the same version, and is also the only single to have been Christmas number one twice with the same version. The second was upon its re-release (as a double A-side single with "These Are the Days of Our Lives") in 1991, following Mercury's death, staying at number 1 for 5 weeks. The re-released version sold 673,000 copies in 1991 in the UK.
In the U.S, the single was also a success, although initially to a lesser extent than in the UK. The single, released in December 1975, reached number 9 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America for sales of one million copies.
In a retrospective article, Anthony DeCurtis of Rolling Stone explained why the song performed less strongly in the US charts by saying that it is "the quintessential example of the kind of thing that doesn't exactly go over well in America". Its chart run of 24 weeks, however, placed it at number 18 on Billboards year-end chart, higher than some number 1s of the year. With the Canadian record-buying public, the single fared better, reaching number one in the RPM national singles chart for the week ending 1 May 1976.
"Bohemian Rhapsody" was re-released as a double A-side cassette single with "The Show Must Go On" in January 1992, following the death of Freddie Mercury, with proceeds going to the Magic Johnson Foundation for AIDS research. The song re-entered the Billboard Hot 100 chart after 16 years, reaching number 2, and spending 17 weeks on the chart. After the release of the Queen biopic named after the song, it re-entered the charts for a third time at number 33, marking 26 years since it last charted.
In March 2021 it was certified Diamond (10× platinum) in the US for combined digital sales and streams equal to 10 million units. It had sold 4.4 million digital copies in the US .
Promotional video
Though some artists had made video clips to accompany songs (including Queen themselves; for example, their earlier singles "Keep Yourself Alive", "Liar", "Seven Seas of Rhye" and "Killer Queen" already had "pop promos", as they were known at the time), it was only after the success of "Bohemian Rhapsody" that it became a regular practice for record companies to produce promotional videos for artists' single releases. The Guardian stated it "ensured videos would henceforth be a mandatory tool in the marketing of music". These videos could then be shown on television shows around the world, such as the BBC's Top of the Pops, without the need for the artist to appear in person. A promo video also allowed the artist to have their music broadcast and accompanied by their own choice of visuals, rather than dancers such as Pan's People. According to May, the video was produced so that the band could avoid miming on Top of the Pops since they would have looked off miming to such a complex song. He also said that the band knew they would be set to appear at Dundee's Caird Hall on tour, a date which clashed with the programme, thus a promo would solve the issue. The video has been hailed as launching the MTV age.
The band used Trillion, a subsidiary of Trident Studios, their former management company and recording studio. They hired one of their trucks and got it to Elstree Studios, where the band was rehearsing for their tour. The video was directed by Bruce Gowers, who had directed a video of the band's 1974 performance at the Rainbow Theatre in London, and was recorded by cameraman Barry Dodd and assistant director/floor manager Jim McCutcheon. The video was recorded in just four hours on 10 November 1975, at a cost of £4,500. Gowers reported that the band was involved in the discussion of the video and the result, and "was a co-operative to that extent, but there was only one leader."
The video opens with a shot of the four band members standing in diamond formation with their heads tilted back in near darkness as they sing the a cappella part. The lights fade up, and the shots cross-fade into close-ups of Mercury. The composition of the shot is the same as Mick Rock's cover photograph for their second album Queen II. The photo, inspired by a photograph of actress Marlene Dietrich, was the band's favourite image of themselves. The video then fades into them playing their instruments. In the opera section of the video, the scene reverts to the Queen II standing positions, after which they perform once again on stage during the hard rock segment. In the closing seconds of the video Roger Taylor is depicted stripped to the waist, striking the tam tam in the manner of the trademark of the Rank Organisation's Gongman, familiar in the UK as the opening of all Rank film productions.
All of the special effects were achieved during the recording, rather than editing. The visual effect of Mercury's face cascading away (during the echoed lines "Magnifico" and "Let me go") was accomplished by pointing the camera at a monitor, giving visual feedback, a glare analogous to audio feedback. The honeycomb illusion was created using a shaped lens. The video was edited within five hours because it was due to be broadcast the same week in which it was taped. The video was sent to the BBC as soon as it was completed and aired for the first time on Top of the Pops in November 1975.
Critical reception
Although the song has become one of the most revered in popular music history, the initial critical reaction was mixed. The UK music papers reacted with bemusement, recognising that the song was original and technically accomplished, but they mostly remained indifferent. Pete Erskine of NME observed that, "It'll be interesting to see whether it'll be played in its entirety on the radio. It's performed extremely well, but more in terms of production than anything else... Someone somewhere has decided that the boys' next release must sound 'epic'. And it does. They sound extremely self-important."
Allan Jones of Melody Maker was unimpressed, describing the song as "a superficially impressive pastiche of incongruous musical styles" and that Queen "contrived to approximate the demented fury of the Balham Amateur Operatic Society performing The Pirates of Penzance... 'Bohemian Rhapsody' is full of drama, passion and romance and sounds rather like one of those mini-opera affairs that Pete Townsend [sic] used to tack on to the end of Who albums", before concluding, "The significance of the composition eludes me totally, though I must admit to finding it horrifically fascinating. It's likely to be a hit of enormous proportions despite its length." Ray Fox-Cumming of Record Mirror was also left unmoved, saying, "It has no immediate selling point whatsoever: among its many parts. there's scarcely a shred of a tune and certainly no one line to latch onto. There's no denying that it's devilishly clever, encompassing everything from bits of operatic harmonies to snatches that sound like Sparks and David Cassidy, but, in the end the whole adds up to less than the sum of its parts." He did, however, say that it was "unthinkable" that it wouldn't be a hit. The most positive review came from Sounds, which called it "impossibly disjointed and complex, but a dazzlingly clever epic from the fevered mind of Freddie Mercury". Cash Box called it "a softly sung ode to the prospect of moving on from staid ways with "good singing" and "good production."
Legacy
Musical impact
In 1976, when asked for his opinion on "Bohemian Rhapsody", the Beach Boys' leader Brian Wilson praised the song as "the most competitive thing that's come along in ages" and "a fulfillment and an answer to a teenage prayer—of artistic music". Producer Steve Levine said the track broke "all sonic production barriers" in a fashion similar to the Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations" (1966), Phil Spector's "Be My Baby" (1963), and 10cc's "I'm Not in Love" (1975). Greg Lake, whose song "I Believe in Father Christmas" was kept from number one in the UK by "Bohemian Rhapsody" when it was released in 1975, acknowledged that he was "beaten by one of the greatest records ever made", describing it as "a once-in-a-lifetime recording".
Addressing the song's enduring popularity, author and music lecturer Jochen Eisentraut wrote in 2012: "A year before punk made it unfashionable, progressive rock had an astounding success with the theoretically over-length (nearly 6-minute) single 'Bohemian Rhapsody' which bore many of the hallmarks of the 'prog' genre". He said it was "unique at this point to hear a hit single in this style", it was "more accessible than other music of the genre" and was "able to communicate beyond the usual confines of the style". Author and progressive rock historian Stephen Lambe called it a "remarkable" single and said it "provides a neat but coincidental bridge between prog in its prime and the move to more aggressive songwriting", suggesting the song "feels like a grotesque (although probably unintentional) parody of progressive rock". The New Rolling Stone Album Guide described it as "either a prog-rock benchmark or the most convoluted novelty song ever recorded". Writing for the BBC in 2015, the Chicago Tribunes music critic Greg Kot called it a "prog-rock pocket operetta" and said the song's "reign as a work of wigged-out genius rather than a dated gimmick testifies to its go-for-broke attitude—one that has resonated across generations".
In 2009, The Guardians music critic, Tom Service, examined the song's relationship with the traditions of classical music, describing its popularity as "one of the strangest musical phenomena out there":
A comparison was also made between the song and Led Zeppelin's 1971 epic "Stairway to Heaven" by music writers Pete Prown and HP Newquist. They observed both songs were "a slow, introspective beginning and gradual climb to a raging metal jam and back again", with the notable distinction being "while Zeppelin meshed folk influences with heavy metal, Queen opted for the light grandeur of the operetta as part of its hard rock". They said "for sheer cleverness alone, not to mention May's riveting electric work, 'Bohemian Rhapsody' rightfully became one of the top singles of 1975 and established Queen in the elite of seventies rock bands".
In 2015, The Economist described it as "one of the most innovative pieces of the progressive rock era". It wrote "though Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones and the Beatles' Paul McCartney had experimented with symphonic elements, and Roger Waters of Pink Floyd and Pete Townshend of the Who had created narrative albums with distinct 'movements', none had had the audacity to import a miniature opera into rock music."
Wayne's World
In 1992, the song enjoyed renewed popularity in the United States after being featured in a scene in the film Wayne's World, in which the titular character and his friends headbang in a car to the rock part near the end of the song. The film's director, Penelope Spheeris, was hesitant to use the song, as it did not entirely fit with the lead characters, who were fans of less flamboyant hard rock and heavy metal. Mike Myers insisted that the song fit the scene. According to music scholar Theodore Gracyk, by 1992, when the film was released, even "classic rock" stations had stopped playing the almost six-minute song. Gracyk suggests that beginning the tape in the middle of the song after "the lyrics which provide the song's narrative ... forces the film's audience to respond to its presence in the scene without the 'commentary' of the lyrics". Helped by the song, the soundtrack album of the film was a major hit.
In connection with this, a new video was released, interspersing excerpts from the film with footage from the original Queen video, along with some live footage of the band. Myers was horrified that the record company had mixed clips from Wayne's World with Queen's original video, fearing that this would upset the band. He said, "they've just whizzed on a Picasso." He asked the record company to tell Queen that the video was not his idea and that he apologised to them. The band, though, sent a reply simply saying, "Thank you for using our song." This astonished Myers, who responded, "Thank you for even letting me touch the hem of your garments!"
The Wayne's World video version of "Bohemian Rhapsody" won Queen its only MTV Video Music Award for "Best Video from a Film". When remaining members Brian May and Roger Taylor took the stage to accept the award, Brian May was overcome with emotion and said that "Freddie would be tickled." In the final scene of the video, a pose of the band from the video from the original "Bohemian Rhapsody" clip morphs into an identically posed 1985 photo, first featured in the "One Vision" video.
In the 2018 Queen biopic feature film Bohemian Rhapsody, Myers makes a cameo as a fictional record executive who pans the song and refuses to release it as a single, proclaiming that it is too long for radio and that it is not a song that "teenagers can crank up the volume in their car and bang their heads to", a reference to the iconic scene in Wayne's World.
Achievements and accolades
The song has won numerous awards and has been covered and parodied by many artists. At the 19th Annual Grammy Awards in February 1977, "Bohemian Rhapsody" received two Grammy Award nominations for Best Pop Vocal Performance by a Duo, Group or Chorus and Best Arrangement for Voices. In October 1977, only two years after its release, the British Phonographic Industry named "Bohemian Rhapsody" as the best British single of the period 1952–77. It is a regular entry in greatest-songs polls, and it was named by the Guinness Book of Records in 2002 as the top British single of all time. The song is also listed in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll.
In 2004, the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. , "Bohemian Rhapsody" is the second most-played song on British radio, in clubs and on jukeboxes collectively, after Procol Harum's "A Whiter Shade of Pale". On 30 September 2007 for BBC Radio 1's 40th birthday, it was revealed on The Radio 1 Chart Show that "Bohemian Rhapsody" had been the most played song since Radio 1's launch.
In December 2018, "Bohemian Rhapsody" officially became the most-streamed song from the 20th century, surpassing Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and Guns N' Roses' "Sweet Child o' Mine". "Bohemian Rhapsody" also became the most-streamed classic rock song of all time. The number of downloads of the song and original video exceeded 1.6 billion downloads across global on-demand streaming services. The video surpassed one billion views on YouTube in July 2019, making it the oldest music video to reach one billion on the platform, and the first pre-1990s song to reach that figure.
Polls
In a 2001 poll of more than 50,000 readers of The Observer newspaper and viewers of British TV's Channel 4 for the 100 best number-one singles of all time, the song came second to John Lennon's "Imagine". In a 2002 poll of more than 31,000 people conducted for Guinness World Records' British Hit Singles, "Bohemian Rhapsody" was voted Britain's favourite single, beating Lennon's "Imagine" to the top spot.
In 2002, it came in 10th in a BBC World Service poll to find the world's favourite song. It has been in the top five of the Dutch annual "Top 100 Aller Tijden" ("All-Time Top 100 [Singles]") since 1977, reaching number one on eight occasions, more than any other artist. In 1999, the annual "Top 2000" poll commenced to find the best songs ever made, and "Bohemian Rhapsody" has been ranked number one in all but five years (2005, 2010, 2014, 2015 and 2020 when it was number two). In a 2012 readers poll conducted by Rolling Stone magazine, "Bohemian Rhapsody" was voted the best vocal performance in rock history. In 2010, the song ranked at 166 on Rolling Stones "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" list, and was re-ranked at number 17 in 2021.
In 2012, the song topped an ITV poll in the UK to find "The Nation's Favourite Number One" over 60 years of music, ahead of Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" (number two), Adele's "Someone like You" (number three), Oasis' "Don't Look Back in Anger" (number four) and The Beatles' "Hey Jude" (number five). The song was also ranked number five in RadioMafia's list of "Top 500 Songs".
Cover versions
Over two dozen artists have recorded or performed cover versions of "Bohemian Rhapsody", including charted single releases by:
Bad News – a 1986 spoof version produced by Brian May which reached UK number 44
The Braids – an R&B version recorded for the soundtrack to the 1996 film High School High and which peaked at UK number 21, US number 42, and Canada number 13
Panic! at the Disco – a version recorded for the soundtrack of the 2016 film Suicide Squad and which peaked at UK number 80, US number 64 and Canada number 47
A video cover featuring The Muppets also went viral and was subsequently released as a single in late 2009, peaking at number 32 in the UK.
"Weird Al" Yankovic's 1993 album Alapalooza includes a version of the song entitled "Bohemian Polka", which is a rearrangement of the entire song as a polka.
40th anniversary
To mark the 40th anniversary of "Bohemian Rhapsody", the song was released on a limited edition 12" vinyl with the original B-side "I'm In Love With My Car" on 27 November 2015 for Record Store Day 2015. Queen also released A Night At The Odeon, Live At Hammersmith 75, on CD, DVD-Video and Blu-ray. This includes the first live "professionally" recorded performance of "Bohemian Rhapsody". However, the very first recording and live performance of "Bohemian Rhapsody" was the performance on 14 November 1975 in Liverpool.
Live performances
The a cappella opening was too complex to perform live, so Mercury tried various ways of introducing the song. When "Mustapha" became a live favourite, Mercury would often sub in that song's a cappella opening, which was easier to reproduce live as it was only one voice—this combination features in their 1979 live album Live Killers. During their 1982 Hot Space Tour, and occasionally at other times, Mercury would do a piano improvisation (generally the introduction to "Death on Two Legs") that ended with the first notes of the song. Often, the preceding song would end, and Mercury would sit at the piano, say a quick word, and start playing the ballad section. At Live Aid where "Bohemian Rhapsody" was their opening song, Mercury commenced with the ballad section.
Initially following the song's release, the operatic middle section proved a problem for the band. Because of extensive multi-tracking, it could not be performed on stage. The band did not have enough of a break between the Sheer Heart Attack and A Night at the Opera tours to find a way to make it work live, so they split the song into three sections that were played throughout the night. The opening and closing ballads were played as part of a medley, with "Killer Queen" and "March of the Black Queen" taking the place of the operatic and hard rock sections. In 1976 concerts where the same medley was played, the operatic section from the album would be played from tape as the introduction to the setlist. During this playback, Mercury would appear briefly to sing live for the line, "I see a little sillhouetto of a man". As the song segued into the hard rock section, the band would emerge on the smoke-filled stage—the playback would end at this point, and the hard rock section would be performed live (without the final ballad section, which appeared later in the set).
Starting with the A Day at the Races Tour in 1977, the band adopted their lasting way of playing the song live. The opening ballad would be played on stage, and after May's guitar solo, the lights would go down, the band would leave the stage, and the operatic section would be played from tape, while coloured stage lights provided a light show based around the voices of the opera section. Most playings of the opera section from the tape would often be accompanied by a portion of the song's music video containing the footage used for the operatic portion of the song. Other playings would be played over montages of footage filmed from the band members' other experiences throughout their daily lives. A blast of pyrotechnics after Taylor's high note on the final "for me" would announce the band's return for the hard rock section and closing ballad. Queen played the song in this form all through the Magic Tour of 1986. This style was also used for the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert, with Elton John singing the opening ballad and then after the taped operatic section, Axl Rose singing the hard rock section. John and Rose sang the closing ballad part together in a duet.
"Bohemian Rhapsody" was performed by Queen + Paul Rodgers throughout their tours, accompanied by a video of Mercury. Footage from the Live at Wembley '86 was used for the 2005–06 tour, and the 1981 Montreal performance used for the Rock the Cosmos Tour. As with the Queen tours, the band went backstage for the operatic section, which was accompanied by a video tribute to Freddie Mercury. When the hard rock section began, the lights came back up to the full band on stage, including Rodgers, who took over lead vocals. Rodgers duetted with the recording of Mercury for the "outro" section, allowing the audience to sing the final "Nothing really matters to me", while the taped Mercury took a bow for the crowd. Rodgers would then repeat the line, and the final line ("Any way the wind blows") was delivered with one last shot of Mercury smiling at the audience. Commenting upon this staging, Brian May says that they "had to rise to the challenge of getting Freddie in there in a way which gave him his rightful place, but without demeaning Paul in any way. It also kept us live and 'present', although conscious and proud of our past, as we logically should be."
Since 2012, May and Taylor have toured with former American Idol contestant Adam Lambert under the name Queen + Adam Lambert (following two one-off performances together in 2009 and 2011), with "Bohemian Rhapsody" regularly included at the end of their set.
Charts
Weekly charts
Year-end charts
Decade-end charts
All-time charts
Sales and certifications
Queen comments on the song
Personnel
Source:
Freddie Mercury – lead and backing vocals, piano, operatic vocals (middle register)
Brian May – electric guitar, operatic vocals (low register)
Roger Taylor – drums, timpani, gong, operatic vocals (high register)
John Deacon – bass guitar
See also
List of Bohemian Rhapsody cover versions
List of best-selling singles in the United Kingdom
List of best-selling singles in the United States
Citations
General references
External links
1975 singles
1975 songs
1976 singles
1991 singles
1992 singles
Brit Award for British Single
British hard rock songs
British progressive rock songs
British rock songs
Christmas number-one singles in the United Kingdom
Dutch Top 40 number-one singles
Elektra Records singles
EMI Records singles
Grammy Hall of Fame Award recipients
Hollywood Records singles
Irish Singles Chart number-one singles
Music based on the Faust legend
Never Shout Never songs
Number-one singles in Australia
Number-one singles in New Zealand
Number-one singles in Spain
Parlophone singles
Progressive pop songs
Queen (band) songs
RPM Top Singles number-one singles
Signature songs
Single Top 100 number-one singles
Song recordings produced by Roy Thomas Baker
Songs about crime
Songs about death
Songs composed in B-flat major
Songs written by Freddie Mercury
Symphonic rock songs
The Flaming Lips songs
The Muppets songs
UK Singles Chart number-one singles
Virgin EMI Records singles | false | [
"\"When It Rains, It Really Pours\" is a song originally written and recorded by Billy \"The Kid\" Emerson. His version, titled \"When It Rains It Pours\", was released by Sun Records in 1954. The song was later recorded by Elvis Presley in 1957, but not released until 1965 on the album Elvis for Everyone.\n\nEmerson's version\nThe song was recorded on October 27, 1954 at Sun Recording Studio in Memphis, Tennessee. Sam Phillips was the producer. It was released on January 8, 1955 as Sun 214, as the B-side to the song \"Move Baby Move\" which did not chart.\n\nPersonnel at the season were Emerson, piano: Elven Parr, guitar: Robert Prindell, drums: Charles Smith, alto sax: Bennie Moore, tenor sax: and Luther Taylor, trumpet.\n\nPresley's recordings\nPresley had initially attempted to record the song while at Sun Records in November 1955, with Elvis and Scotty Moore on guitars, Bill Black on bass and Johnny Bernero on drums, but it was never completed as his contract with Sun was sold to RCA Records around the same time. The tapes of all Presley's Sun recordings were handed to RCA as part of the deal, with most of them being included on albums released shortly afterwards. Presley's 1955 recording of \"When It Rains, It Really Pours\", however, was not released. It was lost for several years until 1982 when it was found and finally released officially on the 1983 compilation album Elvis: A Legendary Performer Volume 4.\n\nPresley was recorded performing the song during the Million Dollar Quartet session on December 4, 1956.\n\nOn February 24, 1957 Presley again recorded the song, this time for RCA. This version also went unreleased until it appeared on the 1965 album Elvis for Everyone. The musicians on this session were Moore and Presley on guitars, Black on bass, Fontana on drums, Dudley Brooks on piano and the Jordanaires singing backup.\n\nIn 1968, during rehearsals for the television special Elvis, Presley was recorded singing it as a potential song for the show. Although the song was not chosen for the special, the rehearsal was released on The Complete '68 Comeback Special CD released in 2008.\n\nReferences\n\nElvis Presley songs\n1954 songs\nSongs written by Billy \"The Kid\" Emerson",
"\"When the Shit Goes Down\" (\"When the Ship Goes Down\" on edited versions) is a song by American hip hop group Cypress Hill. The song was released as the second single from the group's second studio album, Black Sunday. The single was released exclusively in Australia and Europe.\n\nTrack listing\nEuropean 12\"\n\nEuropean promo single\n\nEuropean maxi single\n\nAustralian maxi single\n\nCharts\n\nIn popular culture\n The song was used in the 2001 film Bully.\n An edited version of the song was used in the 2007 film Freedom Writers.\n The song was used in the pilot episode of Hello Ladies.\n The song was featured in the 2013 film This Is the End.\n The song was used in a second-season episode of The Affair.\n The song was featured in the 2018 film Mid90s.\n The song was used in the episode \"Ezekiel Patrol\" of the 2019 TV series Doom Patrol.\nThe song was used in the 2019 film Guns Akimbo.\n\nReferences\n\n1993 songs\n1993 singles\nCypress Hill songs\nRuffhouse Records singles\nColumbia Records singles\nHardcore hip hop songs\nSongs written by DJ Muggs\nSongs written by B-Real\nSong recordings produced by DJ Muggs"
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| C_169eaa51c6c243bc9069eb7c6821930d_0 | Who produced the song? | 6 | Who produced the song Bohemian Rhapsody? | Bohemian Rhapsody | The New York Times commented that "the song's most distinct feature is the fatalistic lyrics". Mercury refused to explain his composition other than saying it was about relationships; the band is still protective of the song's secret. Brian May supports suggestions that the song contained veiled references to Mercury's personal traumas. He recalls "Freddie was a very complex person: flippant and funny on the surface, but he concealed insecurities and problems in squaring up his life with his childhood. He never explained the lyrics, but I think he put a lot of himself into that song." May, though, says the band had agreed that the core of a lyric was a private issue for the composer. In a BBC Three documentary about the making of "Bohemian Rhapsody", Roger Taylor maintains that the true meaning of the song is "fairly self-explanatory with just a bit of nonsense in the middle". When the band released a Greatest Hits cassette in Iran, a leaflet in Persian was included with translation and explanations (refers to a book published in Iran called The March of the Black Queen by Sarah Sefati and Farhad Arkani, which included the whole biography of the band and complete lyrics with Persian translation (2000)). In the explanation, Queen states that "Bohemian Rhapsody" is about a young man who has accidentally killed someone and, like Faust, sold his soul to the devil. On the night before his execution, he calls for God saying, "Bismillah" ("In the name of God" in Arabic), and with the help of angels, regains his soul from Shaitan (the devil in Islam). Despite this, critics, both journalistic and academic, have speculated over the meaning behind the song's lyrics. Some believe the lyrics describe a suicidal murderer haunted by demons or depict events just preceding an execution. The latter explanation points to Albert Camus's novel The Stranger, in which a young man confesses to an impulsive murder and has an epiphany before he is executed, as probable inspiration. Others believe the lyrics were only written to fit with the music, and have no meaning; Kenny Everett quoted Mercury as claiming the lyrics were simply "random rhyming nonsense". Still, others interpreted them as Mercury's way of dealing with personal issues. Music scholar Sheila Whiteley observes that Mercury reached a turning point in his personal life in the year he wrote "Bohemian Rhapsody". He had been living with Mary Austin for seven years but had just embarked on his first love affair with a man. She suggests that the song provides an insight into Mercury's emotional state at the time, "living with Mary ('Mamma', as in Mother Mary) and wanting to break away ('Mamma Mia let me go')". CANNOTANSWER | documentary about the making of "Bohemian Rhapsody", Roger Taylor maintains that the true meaning of the song is "fairly self-explanatory with just a bit of nonsense in the middle". | "Bohemian Rhapsody" is a song by the British rock band Queen. It was written by Freddie Mercury for the band's 1975 album A Night at the Opera. The song is a six-minute suite, notable for its lack of a refraining chorus and consisting of several sections: an intro, a ballad segment, an operatic passage, a hard rock part and a reflective coda. "Bohemian Rhapsody" is one of the few songs to emerge from the 1970s progressive rock movement to achieve widespread commercial success and appeal to a mainstream audience.
"Bohemian Rhapsody" topped the UK Singles Chart for nine weeks and had sold more than a million copies by the end of January 1976. In 1991, after Mercury's death, it topped the charts for another five weeks, eventually becoming the UK's third best-selling single of all time. It is also the only song to reach the UK Christmas number one twice by the same artist. It also topped the charts in countries including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and the Netherlands, and sold over six million copies worldwide. In the United States, the song peaked at number nine in 1976, but reached a new peak of number two on the Billboard Hot 100 after being used in the film Wayne's World (1992). In 2018, the release of Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody brought the song renewed popularity and chart success worldwide. In March 2021 it was certified Diamond in the US for combined digital sales and streams equal to 10 million units.
Although critical reaction was initially mixed, "Bohemian Rhapsody" has since become Queen's most popular song and is considered one of the greatest rock songs of all time. The single was accompanied by a groundbreaking promotional video. Rolling Stone stated that its influence "cannot be overstated, practically inventing the music video seven years before MTV went on the air." The Guardian named its music video one of the 50 key events in rock music history, helping make videos a critical tool in music marketing.
In 2004, "Bohemian Rhapsody" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. It has appeared in numerous polls of the greatest songs in popular music, including a ranking at number 17 on Rolling Stones list of "the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. Mercury's vocal performance was chosen as the greatest in rock history by readers of Rolling Stone. In December 2018, it became the most streamed song from the 20th century, and it had been downloaded or streamed over 1.6 billion times.
History and recording
According to Mercury's friend Chris Smith (a keyboard player in Smile), Mercury first started developing "Bohemian Rhapsody" in the late 1960s; Mercury used to play parts of songs he was writing at the time on the piano, and one of his pieces, known simply as "The Cowboy Song", contained lyrics that ended up in the completed version produced years later, in 1975, specifically, "Mama ... just killed a man." Producer Roy Thomas Baker, who began working with Queen in 1972, related how Mercury once played the opening ballad section on the piano for him in Mercury's flat:
He played the beginning on the piano, then stopped and said, "And this is where the opera section comes in!" Then we went out to eat dinner.
Guitarist Brian May said the band thought that Mercury's blueprint for the song was "intriguing and original, and worthy of work". According to May, much of Queen's material was written in the studio, but this song "was all in Freddie's mind" before they started. In an interview during the band's Australian tour early in 1985, Mercury explained, "It was basically three songs that I wanted to put out, and I just put the three together."
Queen spent a month rehearsing at Ridge Farm Studio in Surrey in mid-1975, and drummer Roger Taylor recalled that "Bohemian Rhapsody" was one of the songs the band worked on while they were there. Recording began on 24 August 1975 at Rockfield Studio 1 near Monmouth, South Wales, after a three-week rehearsal at Penrhos Court, near Kington, Herefordshire. During the making of the track, four additional studios – Roundhouse, Sarm Studios, Scorpio Sound, and Wessex Sound Studios – were used. According to some band members, Mercury mentally prepared the song beforehand and directed the band throughout.
Mercury used a C. Bechstein concert grand piano, which he played in the promotional video and the UK tour. Due to the elaborate nature of the song, it was recorded in various sections. The piano was allegedly the same one Paul McCartney had used to record the Beatles' song "Hey Jude", as well as the same one Rick Wakeman used on David Bowie's 1971 album Hunky Dory.
Baker recalled in 1999
May, Mercury, and Taylor reportedly sang their vocal parts continually for 10 to 12 hours a day. The entire piece took three weeks to record, and in some sections featured 180 separate overdubs. Since the studios of the time only offered 24 track analogue tape, it was necessary for the three to overdub themselves many times and "bounce" these down to successive sub-mixes. In the end, eighth-generation tapes were used. The various sections of tape containing the desired sub-mixes had to be spliced (cut and assembled in the correct sequence). May recalled placing a tape in front of the light and being able to see through it, as the tape had been used so many times.
A similar story was told in 1977 by Taylor regarding the elaborate overdubs and sub-mixes for "The March of The Black Queen" for the album Queen II. At that time, the band was using 16 track equipment.
Producer Baker recalls that May's solo was done on only one track, rather than recording multiple tracks. May stated that he wanted to compose "a little tune that would be a counterpart to the main melody; I didn't just want to play the melody". The guitarist said that his better material stems from this way of working, in which he thought of the tune before playing it: "The fingers tend to be predictable unless being led by the brain." According to Baker,
... the end of the song was much heavier because it was one of the first mixes to be done with automation ... If you really listen to it, the ballad starts off clean, and as the opera section gets louder and louder, the vocals get more and more distorted. You can still hear this on the CD. They are clearly distorted.
Composition and analysis
"Bohemian Rhapsody" has been affiliated to the genres of progressive rock (sometimes called symphonic rock), hard rock, and progressive pop. The song is highly unusual for a popular single in featuring no chorus, combining disparate musical styles, and containing lyrics which eschew conventional love-based narratives, and instead make allusions to murder and nihilism. The Beach Boys' 1966 single "Good Vibrations", which also consisted of disparate music sections recorded separately, was a precursor to "Bohemian Rhapsody".
Music scholar Sheila Whiteley suggests that "the title draws strongly on contemporary rock ideology, the individualism of the bohemian artists' world, with rhapsody affirming the romantic ideals of art rock". Commenting on bohemianism, Judith Peraino said,
Mercury intended ... [this song] to be a 'mock opera', something outside the norm of rock songs, and it does follow a certain operatic logic: Choruses of multi-tracked voices alternate with aria-like solos, the emotions are excessive, the plot confusing.
"Bohemian Rhapsody" begins with an introduction, then goes into a piano ballad, before a guitar solo leads to an operatic interlude. A hard rock part follows this and it concludes with a coda. The song is in the keys of B major, E major, A major and F major, and is predominantly in meter. This musical format of writing a song as a suite with changes in style, tone, and tempo throughout was uncommon in most mainstream pop and rock music, but common in progressive rock, a genre which had reached its artistic and commercial zenith between 1970 and 1975 in the music of British bands such as Jethro Tull, Yes, Genesis, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Gentle Giant, Van der Graaf Generator, and Curved Air. The music of progressive rock was characterised by dramatic contrasts, frequent shifts in tempo and in rhythmic character from one section of a composition to the next. Bands from the genre blended rock with classical music, including its structural features, compositional practices, and instrumentation. Queen had embraced progressive rock as one of their many diverse influences.
"Bohemian Rhapsody" parodies many different elements of opera by using bombastic choruses, sarcastic recitative, and distorted Italian operatic phrases. An embryonic version of this style had already been used in Mercury's earlier compositions for the band "My Fairy King" (1973) and "The March of the Black Queen" (1974).
Intro (0:00–0:49)
The song begins with a close five-part harmony a cappella introduction in B major—as evidenced by the presence of a V–I cadence (F7–B) multi-track recordings of Mercury although the video has all four members lip-syncing this part. The lyrics question whether life is "real" or "just fantasy caught in a landslide" before concluding that there can be "no escape from reality".
After 20 seconds, the grand piano enters, the song modulates briefly to E major via another perfect cadence (B7–E) and Mercury's voice alternates with the other vocal parts. The narrator introduces himself as "just a poor boy" but declares that he "needs no sympathy" because he is "easy come, easy go" and then "little high, little low" (when heard in stereo, the words "little high" come from the left speaker and "little low" comes from the right, the other respective speaker plays the piano at the same time); chromatic side-slipping on "easy come, easy go" highlights the dream-like atmosphere. The end of this section is marked by the bass entrance and the cross-handed piano vamp in B.
Ballad (0:49–2:37)
The piano begins in B major along with the entrance of John Deacon's bass guitar, marking the onset of this section. After it plays twice, Mercury's vocals enter. Throughout the section, the vocals evolve from a softly sung harmony to an impassioned solo performance by Mercury. The narrator explains to his mother that he has "just killed a man", with "a gun against his head" and in doing so, has thrown his life away. This "confessional" section, Whiteley comments, is "affirmative of the nurturant and life-giving force of the feminine and the need for absolution". In the middle of the verse (1:19), Taylor's drums enter, and a descending chromatic run leads to a temporary modulation to E major (up one fourth). The narrator makes the second of several invocations to his "mama" in the new key, continuing the original theme. The narrator explains his regret over "mak[ing] you cry" and urging "mama" to "carry on as if nothing really matters". A brief, descending variation of the piano phrase connects to the second verse.
Then the piano intro plays, marking the start of the second verse. As the ballad proceeds into its second verse, the speaker confesses how ashamed he is by his act of murder (as May enters on guitar and mimics the upper range of the piano at 1:50). May imitates a bell tree during the line "sends shivers down my spine", by playing the strings of his guitar on the other side of the bridge. The narrator bids the world goodbye announcing he has "got to go" and prepares to "face the truth" admitting "I don't want to die / I sometimes wish I'd never been born at all". This is where the guitar solo enters.
Guitar solo (2:37–3:05)
Towards the end of the ballad section, the band builds in intensity, incorporating a guitar solo (in E major) played and composed by Brian May. The intensity continues to build, but once the bass line completes its descent establishing modulation to the new key (A major), the entire band cuts out abruptly at 3:03 except for quiet, staccato A major quaver (eighth-note) chords on the piano, marking the start of the "Opera" section.
Opera (3:05–4:07)
A rapid series of rhythmic and harmonic changes introduces a pseudo-operatic midsection, which contains the bulk of the elaborate vocal multi-tracking, depicting the narrator's descent into hell. While the underlying pulse of the song is maintained, the dynamics vary greatly from bar to bar, from only Mercury's voice accompanied by a piano to a multi-voice choir supported by drums, bass, piano, and timpani. The choir effect was created by having May, Mercury, and Taylor repeatedly sing their vocal parts, resulting in 180 separate overdubs. These overdubs were then combined into successive submixes. According to Roger Taylor, the voices of May, Mercury, and himself combined created a wide vocal range: "Brian could get down quite low, Freddie had a powerful voice through the middle, and I was good at the high stuff." The band wanted to create "a wall of sound, that starts down and goes all the way up". The band used the bell effect for lyrics "Magnifico" and "let me go". Also, on "let him go", Taylor singing the top section carries his note on further after the rest of the "choir" have stopped singing.
Lyrical references in this passage include Scaramouche, the fandango, Galileo Galilei, Figaro, and Beelzebub, with cries of "Bismillah! [Arabic: "In the name of God!"] we will not let you go!", as rival factions fight over his soul, some wishing to "let [him] go" and "spare him his life from this monstrosity", with others sending him "thunderbolts and lightning – very, very frightening [to him]". In Freddie Mercury: The definitive biography, Lesley-Ann Jones theorises that it is also a figurative representation of the four members: Mercury, May, Taylor, and Deacon respectively. The section concludes with a full choral treatment of the lyric "Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me!", on a block B major chord. Roger Taylor tops the final chord with a falsetto B in the fifth octave (B5).
Using the 24 track technology available at the time, the "opera" section took about three weeks to finish. Producer Roy Thomas Baker said, "Every time Freddie came up with another Galileo, I would add another piece of tape to the reel." Baker recalls that they kept wearing out the tape, which meant having to do transfers.
Hard rock (4:07–4:54)
The operatic section leads into a rock interlude with a guitar riff written by Mercury. At 4:15, a quadruple-tracked Mercury (in stereo, the four parts are panned two on the left and two on the right) sings angry lyrics addressed to an unspecified "you", accusing them of betrayal and abuse and insisting "can't do this to me, baby", before the final lines conclude that the singer "just gotta get right outta" an unspecified "here". Three ascending guitar runs follow. Mercury then plays a similar B run on the piano, as the song builds up to the finale with a ritardando.
Outro (4:54–5:55)
After Mercury plays ascending octaves of notes from the B mixolydian mode (composed of the notes from the E scale), the song then returns to the tempo and form of the introduction, initially in E major, before quickly modulating to C minor, only to soon go through an abrupt short series of modulations, bringing it back to C minor again in time for the final "nothing really matters" section. A guitar accompanies the chorus "ooh, ooh yeah, ooh yeah". A double-tracked twin guitar melody is played through an amplifier designed by John Deacon, affectionately nicknamed the "Deacy Amp". Mercury's line "Nothing really matters ..." appears again, "cradled by light piano arpeggios suggesting both resignation (minor tonalities) and a new sense of freedom in the wide vocal span". After the line "nothing really matters" is repeated multiple times, the song finally concludes in the key of E major, but then changes again to F major just before it ends. The final line, "Any way the wind blows", is followed by the quiet sound of a large tam-tam that finally expels the tension built up throughout the song.
Lyrics
The New York Times commented that "the song's most distinct feature is the fatalistic lyrics". Mercury refused to explain his composition other than to say it was about relationships; the band is still protective of the song's secret. Brian May supports suggestions that the song contained veiled references to Mercury's personal traumas. He recalls "Freddie was a very complex person: flippant and funny on the surface, but he concealed insecurities and problems in squaring up his life with his childhood. He never explained the lyrics, but I think he put a lot of himself into that song." May, though, says the band had agreed that the core of a lyric was a private issue for the composer. In a BBC Three documentary about the making of "Bohemian Rhapsody", Roger Taylor maintains that the true meaning of the song is "fairly self-explanatory with just a bit of nonsense in the middle".
Despite this, critics, both journalistic and academic, have speculated over the meaning behind the song's lyrics. Some believe the lyrics describe a suicidal murderer haunted by demons or depict events just preceding an execution. The latter explanation points to Albert Camus's novel The Stranger, in which a young man confesses to an impulsive murder and has an epiphany before he is executed, as probable inspiration. When the band released a Greatest Hits cassette in Iran, a leaflet in Persian was included with translation and explanations. In the explanation, Queen states that "Bohemian Rhapsody" is about a young man who has accidentally killed someone and, like Faust, sold his soul to the devil. On the night before his execution, he calls for God saying, "Bismillah" ("In the name of God" in Arabic), and with the help of angels, regains his soul from Shaitan (the devil in Arabic).
Other critics interpreted the lyrics as Mercury's way of dealing with personal issues. Music scholar Sheila Whiteley observes that Mercury reached a turning point in his personal life in the year he wrote "Bohemian Rhapsody". He had been living with Mary Austin for seven years but had just embarked on his first love affair with a man. She suggests that the song provides an insight into Mercury's emotional state at the time, "living with Mary ('Mamma', as in Mother Mary) and wanting to break away ('Mamma mia let me go')". Others suggest it as a veiled reference to coming out, and dealing with the repercussions of the sodomy laws of the time.
Still others believe the lyrics were only written to fit with the music, and had no intended meaning; the D.J., television entertainer, and comedian Kenny Everett, who played an influential role in popularising the single on his radio show on Capital Radio, quoted Mercury as claiming the lyrics were simply "random rhyming nonsense".
Release
When the band wanted to release the single in 1975, various executives suggested to them, that at 5 minutes and 55 seconds it was too long, and would never be a hit. The song was played to other musicians who commented the band had no hope of it ever being played on radio. According to producer Roy Thomas Baker, he and the band bypassed this corporate assessment by playing the song for Capital Radio D.J. Kenny Everett:
"we had a reel-to-reel copy but we told him he could only have it if he promised not to play it. 'I won't play it,' he said, winking ..."
The plan worked — Everett teased his listeners by playing only parts of the song. Audience demand intensified when Everett played the full song on his show 14 times in 2 days. Hordes of fans attempted to buy the single the following Monday, only to be told by record stores that it had not yet been released. The same weekend, Paul Drew, who ran the RKO General stations in the U.S, heard the track on Everett's show in London. Drew managed to get a copy of the tape and started to play it in the U.S, which forced the hand of Queen's US label, Elektra. In an interview with Sound on Sound, Baker reflects that "it was a strange situation where radio on both sides of the Atlantic was breaking a record that the record companies said would never get airplay!"
Eventually the unedited single was released, with "I'm in Love with My Car" as the B-side. Following Everett's escapade in October 1975, Eric Hall, a record plugger, gave a copy to David "Diddy" Hamilton to play on his weekday Radio One show. Hall stated "Monster, Monster! This could be a hit!"
The song became the 1975 UK Christmas number one, holding the top position for nine weeks. "Bohemian Rhapsody" was the first song ever to get to number one in the UK twice with the same version, and is also the only single to have been Christmas number one twice with the same version. The second was upon its re-release (as a double A-side single with "These Are the Days of Our Lives") in 1991, following Mercury's death, staying at number 1 for 5 weeks. The re-released version sold 673,000 copies in 1991 in the UK.
In the U.S, the single was also a success, although initially to a lesser extent than in the UK. The single, released in December 1975, reached number 9 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America for sales of one million copies.
In a retrospective article, Anthony DeCurtis of Rolling Stone explained why the song performed less strongly in the US charts by saying that it is "the quintessential example of the kind of thing that doesn't exactly go over well in America". Its chart run of 24 weeks, however, placed it at number 18 on Billboards year-end chart, higher than some number 1s of the year. With the Canadian record-buying public, the single fared better, reaching number one in the RPM national singles chart for the week ending 1 May 1976.
"Bohemian Rhapsody" was re-released as a double A-side cassette single with "The Show Must Go On" in January 1992, following the death of Freddie Mercury, with proceeds going to the Magic Johnson Foundation for AIDS research. The song re-entered the Billboard Hot 100 chart after 16 years, reaching number 2, and spending 17 weeks on the chart. After the release of the Queen biopic named after the song, it re-entered the charts for a third time at number 33, marking 26 years since it last charted.
In March 2021 it was certified Diamond (10× platinum) in the US for combined digital sales and streams equal to 10 million units. It had sold 4.4 million digital copies in the US .
Promotional video
Though some artists had made video clips to accompany songs (including Queen themselves; for example, their earlier singles "Keep Yourself Alive", "Liar", "Seven Seas of Rhye" and "Killer Queen" already had "pop promos", as they were known at the time), it was only after the success of "Bohemian Rhapsody" that it became a regular practice for record companies to produce promotional videos for artists' single releases. The Guardian stated it "ensured videos would henceforth be a mandatory tool in the marketing of music". These videos could then be shown on television shows around the world, such as the BBC's Top of the Pops, without the need for the artist to appear in person. A promo video also allowed the artist to have their music broadcast and accompanied by their own choice of visuals, rather than dancers such as Pan's People. According to May, the video was produced so that the band could avoid miming on Top of the Pops since they would have looked off miming to such a complex song. He also said that the band knew they would be set to appear at Dundee's Caird Hall on tour, a date which clashed with the programme, thus a promo would solve the issue. The video has been hailed as launching the MTV age.
The band used Trillion, a subsidiary of Trident Studios, their former management company and recording studio. They hired one of their trucks and got it to Elstree Studios, where the band was rehearsing for their tour. The video was directed by Bruce Gowers, who had directed a video of the band's 1974 performance at the Rainbow Theatre in London, and was recorded by cameraman Barry Dodd and assistant director/floor manager Jim McCutcheon. The video was recorded in just four hours on 10 November 1975, at a cost of £4,500. Gowers reported that the band was involved in the discussion of the video and the result, and "was a co-operative to that extent, but there was only one leader."
The video opens with a shot of the four band members standing in diamond formation with their heads tilted back in near darkness as they sing the a cappella part. The lights fade up, and the shots cross-fade into close-ups of Mercury. The composition of the shot is the same as Mick Rock's cover photograph for their second album Queen II. The photo, inspired by a photograph of actress Marlene Dietrich, was the band's favourite image of themselves. The video then fades into them playing their instruments. In the opera section of the video, the scene reverts to the Queen II standing positions, after which they perform once again on stage during the hard rock segment. In the closing seconds of the video Roger Taylor is depicted stripped to the waist, striking the tam tam in the manner of the trademark of the Rank Organisation's Gongman, familiar in the UK as the opening of all Rank film productions.
All of the special effects were achieved during the recording, rather than editing. The visual effect of Mercury's face cascading away (during the echoed lines "Magnifico" and "Let me go") was accomplished by pointing the camera at a monitor, giving visual feedback, a glare analogous to audio feedback. The honeycomb illusion was created using a shaped lens. The video was edited within five hours because it was due to be broadcast the same week in which it was taped. The video was sent to the BBC as soon as it was completed and aired for the first time on Top of the Pops in November 1975.
Critical reception
Although the song has become one of the most revered in popular music history, the initial critical reaction was mixed. The UK music papers reacted with bemusement, recognising that the song was original and technically accomplished, but they mostly remained indifferent. Pete Erskine of NME observed that, "It'll be interesting to see whether it'll be played in its entirety on the radio. It's performed extremely well, but more in terms of production than anything else... Someone somewhere has decided that the boys' next release must sound 'epic'. And it does. They sound extremely self-important."
Allan Jones of Melody Maker was unimpressed, describing the song as "a superficially impressive pastiche of incongruous musical styles" and that Queen "contrived to approximate the demented fury of the Balham Amateur Operatic Society performing The Pirates of Penzance... 'Bohemian Rhapsody' is full of drama, passion and romance and sounds rather like one of those mini-opera affairs that Pete Townsend [sic] used to tack on to the end of Who albums", before concluding, "The significance of the composition eludes me totally, though I must admit to finding it horrifically fascinating. It's likely to be a hit of enormous proportions despite its length." Ray Fox-Cumming of Record Mirror was also left unmoved, saying, "It has no immediate selling point whatsoever: among its many parts. there's scarcely a shred of a tune and certainly no one line to latch onto. There's no denying that it's devilishly clever, encompassing everything from bits of operatic harmonies to snatches that sound like Sparks and David Cassidy, but, in the end the whole adds up to less than the sum of its parts." He did, however, say that it was "unthinkable" that it wouldn't be a hit. The most positive review came from Sounds, which called it "impossibly disjointed and complex, but a dazzlingly clever epic from the fevered mind of Freddie Mercury". Cash Box called it "a softly sung ode to the prospect of moving on from staid ways with "good singing" and "good production."
Legacy
Musical impact
In 1976, when asked for his opinion on "Bohemian Rhapsody", the Beach Boys' leader Brian Wilson praised the song as "the most competitive thing that's come along in ages" and "a fulfillment and an answer to a teenage prayer—of artistic music". Producer Steve Levine said the track broke "all sonic production barriers" in a fashion similar to the Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations" (1966), Phil Spector's "Be My Baby" (1963), and 10cc's "I'm Not in Love" (1975). Greg Lake, whose song "I Believe in Father Christmas" was kept from number one in the UK by "Bohemian Rhapsody" when it was released in 1975, acknowledged that he was "beaten by one of the greatest records ever made", describing it as "a once-in-a-lifetime recording".
Addressing the song's enduring popularity, author and music lecturer Jochen Eisentraut wrote in 2012: "A year before punk made it unfashionable, progressive rock had an astounding success with the theoretically over-length (nearly 6-minute) single 'Bohemian Rhapsody' which bore many of the hallmarks of the 'prog' genre". He said it was "unique at this point to hear a hit single in this style", it was "more accessible than other music of the genre" and was "able to communicate beyond the usual confines of the style". Author and progressive rock historian Stephen Lambe called it a "remarkable" single and said it "provides a neat but coincidental bridge between prog in its prime and the move to more aggressive songwriting", suggesting the song "feels like a grotesque (although probably unintentional) parody of progressive rock". The New Rolling Stone Album Guide described it as "either a prog-rock benchmark or the most convoluted novelty song ever recorded". Writing for the BBC in 2015, the Chicago Tribunes music critic Greg Kot called it a "prog-rock pocket operetta" and said the song's "reign as a work of wigged-out genius rather than a dated gimmick testifies to its go-for-broke attitude—one that has resonated across generations".
In 2009, The Guardians music critic, Tom Service, examined the song's relationship with the traditions of classical music, describing its popularity as "one of the strangest musical phenomena out there":
A comparison was also made between the song and Led Zeppelin's 1971 epic "Stairway to Heaven" by music writers Pete Prown and HP Newquist. They observed both songs were "a slow, introspective beginning and gradual climb to a raging metal jam and back again", with the notable distinction being "while Zeppelin meshed folk influences with heavy metal, Queen opted for the light grandeur of the operetta as part of its hard rock". They said "for sheer cleverness alone, not to mention May's riveting electric work, 'Bohemian Rhapsody' rightfully became one of the top singles of 1975 and established Queen in the elite of seventies rock bands".
In 2015, The Economist described it as "one of the most innovative pieces of the progressive rock era". It wrote "though Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones and the Beatles' Paul McCartney had experimented with symphonic elements, and Roger Waters of Pink Floyd and Pete Townshend of the Who had created narrative albums with distinct 'movements', none had had the audacity to import a miniature opera into rock music."
Wayne's World
In 1992, the song enjoyed renewed popularity in the United States after being featured in a scene in the film Wayne's World, in which the titular character and his friends headbang in a car to the rock part near the end of the song. The film's director, Penelope Spheeris, was hesitant to use the song, as it did not entirely fit with the lead characters, who were fans of less flamboyant hard rock and heavy metal. Mike Myers insisted that the song fit the scene. According to music scholar Theodore Gracyk, by 1992, when the film was released, even "classic rock" stations had stopped playing the almost six-minute song. Gracyk suggests that beginning the tape in the middle of the song after "the lyrics which provide the song's narrative ... forces the film's audience to respond to its presence in the scene without the 'commentary' of the lyrics". Helped by the song, the soundtrack album of the film was a major hit.
In connection with this, a new video was released, interspersing excerpts from the film with footage from the original Queen video, along with some live footage of the band. Myers was horrified that the record company had mixed clips from Wayne's World with Queen's original video, fearing that this would upset the band. He said, "they've just whizzed on a Picasso." He asked the record company to tell Queen that the video was not his idea and that he apologised to them. The band, though, sent a reply simply saying, "Thank you for using our song." This astonished Myers, who responded, "Thank you for even letting me touch the hem of your garments!"
The Wayne's World video version of "Bohemian Rhapsody" won Queen its only MTV Video Music Award for "Best Video from a Film". When remaining members Brian May and Roger Taylor took the stage to accept the award, Brian May was overcome with emotion and said that "Freddie would be tickled." In the final scene of the video, a pose of the band from the video from the original "Bohemian Rhapsody" clip morphs into an identically posed 1985 photo, first featured in the "One Vision" video.
In the 2018 Queen biopic feature film Bohemian Rhapsody, Myers makes a cameo as a fictional record executive who pans the song and refuses to release it as a single, proclaiming that it is too long for radio and that it is not a song that "teenagers can crank up the volume in their car and bang their heads to", a reference to the iconic scene in Wayne's World.
Achievements and accolades
The song has won numerous awards and has been covered and parodied by many artists. At the 19th Annual Grammy Awards in February 1977, "Bohemian Rhapsody" received two Grammy Award nominations for Best Pop Vocal Performance by a Duo, Group or Chorus and Best Arrangement for Voices. In October 1977, only two years after its release, the British Phonographic Industry named "Bohemian Rhapsody" as the best British single of the period 1952–77. It is a regular entry in greatest-songs polls, and it was named by the Guinness Book of Records in 2002 as the top British single of all time. The song is also listed in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll.
In 2004, the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. , "Bohemian Rhapsody" is the second most-played song on British radio, in clubs and on jukeboxes collectively, after Procol Harum's "A Whiter Shade of Pale". On 30 September 2007 for BBC Radio 1's 40th birthday, it was revealed on The Radio 1 Chart Show that "Bohemian Rhapsody" had been the most played song since Radio 1's launch.
In December 2018, "Bohemian Rhapsody" officially became the most-streamed song from the 20th century, surpassing Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and Guns N' Roses' "Sweet Child o' Mine". "Bohemian Rhapsody" also became the most-streamed classic rock song of all time. The number of downloads of the song and original video exceeded 1.6 billion downloads across global on-demand streaming services. The video surpassed one billion views on YouTube in July 2019, making it the oldest music video to reach one billion on the platform, and the first pre-1990s song to reach that figure.
Polls
In a 2001 poll of more than 50,000 readers of The Observer newspaper and viewers of British TV's Channel 4 for the 100 best number-one singles of all time, the song came second to John Lennon's "Imagine". In a 2002 poll of more than 31,000 people conducted for Guinness World Records' British Hit Singles, "Bohemian Rhapsody" was voted Britain's favourite single, beating Lennon's "Imagine" to the top spot.
In 2002, it came in 10th in a BBC World Service poll to find the world's favourite song. It has been in the top five of the Dutch annual "Top 100 Aller Tijden" ("All-Time Top 100 [Singles]") since 1977, reaching number one on eight occasions, more than any other artist. In 1999, the annual "Top 2000" poll commenced to find the best songs ever made, and "Bohemian Rhapsody" has been ranked number one in all but five years (2005, 2010, 2014, 2015 and 2020 when it was number two). In a 2012 readers poll conducted by Rolling Stone magazine, "Bohemian Rhapsody" was voted the best vocal performance in rock history. In 2010, the song ranked at 166 on Rolling Stones "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" list, and was re-ranked at number 17 in 2021.
In 2012, the song topped an ITV poll in the UK to find "The Nation's Favourite Number One" over 60 years of music, ahead of Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" (number two), Adele's "Someone like You" (number three), Oasis' "Don't Look Back in Anger" (number four) and The Beatles' "Hey Jude" (number five). The song was also ranked number five in RadioMafia's list of "Top 500 Songs".
Cover versions
Over two dozen artists have recorded or performed cover versions of "Bohemian Rhapsody", including charted single releases by:
Bad News – a 1986 spoof version produced by Brian May which reached UK number 44
The Braids – an R&B version recorded for the soundtrack to the 1996 film High School High and which peaked at UK number 21, US number 42, and Canada number 13
Panic! at the Disco – a version recorded for the soundtrack of the 2016 film Suicide Squad and which peaked at UK number 80, US number 64 and Canada number 47
A video cover featuring The Muppets also went viral and was subsequently released as a single in late 2009, peaking at number 32 in the UK.
"Weird Al" Yankovic's 1993 album Alapalooza includes a version of the song entitled "Bohemian Polka", which is a rearrangement of the entire song as a polka.
40th anniversary
To mark the 40th anniversary of "Bohemian Rhapsody", the song was released on a limited edition 12" vinyl with the original B-side "I'm In Love With My Car" on 27 November 2015 for Record Store Day 2015. Queen also released A Night At The Odeon, Live At Hammersmith 75, on CD, DVD-Video and Blu-ray. This includes the first live "professionally" recorded performance of "Bohemian Rhapsody". However, the very first recording and live performance of "Bohemian Rhapsody" was the performance on 14 November 1975 in Liverpool.
Live performances
The a cappella opening was too complex to perform live, so Mercury tried various ways of introducing the song. When "Mustapha" became a live favourite, Mercury would often sub in that song's a cappella opening, which was easier to reproduce live as it was only one voice—this combination features in their 1979 live album Live Killers. During their 1982 Hot Space Tour, and occasionally at other times, Mercury would do a piano improvisation (generally the introduction to "Death on Two Legs") that ended with the first notes of the song. Often, the preceding song would end, and Mercury would sit at the piano, say a quick word, and start playing the ballad section. At Live Aid where "Bohemian Rhapsody" was their opening song, Mercury commenced with the ballad section.
Initially following the song's release, the operatic middle section proved a problem for the band. Because of extensive multi-tracking, it could not be performed on stage. The band did not have enough of a break between the Sheer Heart Attack and A Night at the Opera tours to find a way to make it work live, so they split the song into three sections that were played throughout the night. The opening and closing ballads were played as part of a medley, with "Killer Queen" and "March of the Black Queen" taking the place of the operatic and hard rock sections. In 1976 concerts where the same medley was played, the operatic section from the album would be played from tape as the introduction to the setlist. During this playback, Mercury would appear briefly to sing live for the line, "I see a little sillhouetto of a man". As the song segued into the hard rock section, the band would emerge on the smoke-filled stage—the playback would end at this point, and the hard rock section would be performed live (without the final ballad section, which appeared later in the set).
Starting with the A Day at the Races Tour in 1977, the band adopted their lasting way of playing the song live. The opening ballad would be played on stage, and after May's guitar solo, the lights would go down, the band would leave the stage, and the operatic section would be played from tape, while coloured stage lights provided a light show based around the voices of the opera section. Most playings of the opera section from the tape would often be accompanied by a portion of the song's music video containing the footage used for the operatic portion of the song. Other playings would be played over montages of footage filmed from the band members' other experiences throughout their daily lives. A blast of pyrotechnics after Taylor's high note on the final "for me" would announce the band's return for the hard rock section and closing ballad. Queen played the song in this form all through the Magic Tour of 1986. This style was also used for the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert, with Elton John singing the opening ballad and then after the taped operatic section, Axl Rose singing the hard rock section. John and Rose sang the closing ballad part together in a duet.
"Bohemian Rhapsody" was performed by Queen + Paul Rodgers throughout their tours, accompanied by a video of Mercury. Footage from the Live at Wembley '86 was used for the 2005–06 tour, and the 1981 Montreal performance used for the Rock the Cosmos Tour. As with the Queen tours, the band went backstage for the operatic section, which was accompanied by a video tribute to Freddie Mercury. When the hard rock section began, the lights came back up to the full band on stage, including Rodgers, who took over lead vocals. Rodgers duetted with the recording of Mercury for the "outro" section, allowing the audience to sing the final "Nothing really matters to me", while the taped Mercury took a bow for the crowd. Rodgers would then repeat the line, and the final line ("Any way the wind blows") was delivered with one last shot of Mercury smiling at the audience. Commenting upon this staging, Brian May says that they "had to rise to the challenge of getting Freddie in there in a way which gave him his rightful place, but without demeaning Paul in any way. It also kept us live and 'present', although conscious and proud of our past, as we logically should be."
Since 2012, May and Taylor have toured with former American Idol contestant Adam Lambert under the name Queen + Adam Lambert (following two one-off performances together in 2009 and 2011), with "Bohemian Rhapsody" regularly included at the end of their set.
Charts
Weekly charts
Year-end charts
Decade-end charts
All-time charts
Sales and certifications
Queen comments on the song
Personnel
Source:
Freddie Mercury – lead and backing vocals, piano, operatic vocals (middle register)
Brian May – electric guitar, operatic vocals (low register)
Roger Taylor – drums, timpani, gong, operatic vocals (high register)
John Deacon – bass guitar
See also
List of Bohemian Rhapsody cover versions
List of best-selling singles in the United Kingdom
List of best-selling singles in the United States
Citations
General references
External links
1975 singles
1975 songs
1976 singles
1991 singles
1992 singles
Brit Award for British Single
British hard rock songs
British progressive rock songs
British rock songs
Christmas number-one singles in the United Kingdom
Dutch Top 40 number-one singles
Elektra Records singles
EMI Records singles
Grammy Hall of Fame Award recipients
Hollywood Records singles
Irish Singles Chart number-one singles
Music based on the Faust legend
Never Shout Never songs
Number-one singles in Australia
Number-one singles in New Zealand
Number-one singles in Spain
Parlophone singles
Progressive pop songs
Queen (band) songs
RPM Top Singles number-one singles
Signature songs
Single Top 100 number-one singles
Song recordings produced by Roy Thomas Baker
Songs about crime
Songs about death
Songs composed in B-flat major
Songs written by Freddie Mercury
Symphonic rock songs
The Flaming Lips songs
The Muppets songs
UK Singles Chart number-one singles
Virgin EMI Records singles | true | [
"\"Get Up\" is the fourth and final single released by R.E.M. from the band's sixth album Green (1988). It was included in the limited edition Singleactiongreen box set released in November 1989. The song was released as a single only in the US but failed to chart on the Billboard Hot 100.\n\nThe song was written by Michael Stipe about Mike Mills. Mills always seemed to sleep late during their recording sessions for Green. This was Stipe's call for Mills to get up and work. However, Mills did not find this out until a concert in the late 1990s, when Stipe introduced the song as being about him.\n\nThe video for the song was created by a young filmmaker named Eric Darnell, who had recently graduated from the CalArts program in experimental animation and who went on to co-direct the mainstream computer animated features Antz and Madagascar.\n\nIn the film Tourfilm, which features footage from R.E.M.'s tour in 1989, Stipe introduces this song as his favorite.\n\nDuring the bridge, several music boxes are played at once. This was the idea of Bill Berry, who had originally envisioned this in a dream.\n\nTrack listing\n \"Get Up\" (Bill Berry, Peter Buck, Mike Mills, Michael Stipe) – 2:35\n \"Funtime\" (David Bowie, Iggy Pop) – 2:14\n\nReferences\n\n1989 singles\nR.E.M. songs\nSongs written by Bill Berry\nSongs written by Peter Buck\nSongs written by Mike Mills\nSongs written by Michael Stipe\nWarner Records singles\n1988 songs\nSong recordings produced by Michael Stipe\nSong recordings produced by Scott Litt\nSong recordings produced by Mike Mills\nSong recordings produced by Peter Buck\nSong recordings produced by Bill Berry\nBubblegum pop songs",
"\"Dancin' Fool\" is a song written by Burton Cummings and Domenic Troiano and performed by The Guess Who. The song was featured on their 1974 album, Flavours. The song was produced by Jack Richardson.\n\nChart performance\nIt reached #14 in Canada, #28 on the Billboard Hot 100, and #85 in Australia in 1975. The song was also released in the United Kingdom as a single, but it did not chart.\n\nReferences\n\n1974 songs\n1974 singles\nSongs written by Burton Cummings\nThe Guess Who songs\nSong recordings produced by Jack Richardson (record producer)\nRCA Victor singles"
]
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"Bohemian Rhapsody",
"Lyrics",
"Who wrote the lyrics?",
"Mercury reached a turning point in his personal life in the year he wrote \"Bohemian Rhapsody\".",
"What was the song about?",
"Mercury refused to explain his composition other than saying it was about relationships; the band is still protective of the song's secret.",
"When were the lyrics written?",
"The March of the Black Queen by Sarah Sefati and Farhad Arkani, which included the whole biography of the band and complete lyrics with Persian translation (2000)).",
"Who sings the song?",
"the band",
"When was the song released?",
"which included the whole biography of the band and complete lyrics with Persian translation (2000)).",
"Who produced the song?",
"documentary about the making of \"Bohemian Rhapsody\", Roger Taylor maintains that the true meaning of the song is \"fairly self-explanatory with just a bit of nonsense in the middle\"."
]
| C_169eaa51c6c243bc9069eb7c6821930d_0 | What was the reason the song was written? | 7 | What was the reason that Mercury wrote Bohemian Rhapsody? | Bohemian Rhapsody | The New York Times commented that "the song's most distinct feature is the fatalistic lyrics". Mercury refused to explain his composition other than saying it was about relationships; the band is still protective of the song's secret. Brian May supports suggestions that the song contained veiled references to Mercury's personal traumas. He recalls "Freddie was a very complex person: flippant and funny on the surface, but he concealed insecurities and problems in squaring up his life with his childhood. He never explained the lyrics, but I think he put a lot of himself into that song." May, though, says the band had agreed that the core of a lyric was a private issue for the composer. In a BBC Three documentary about the making of "Bohemian Rhapsody", Roger Taylor maintains that the true meaning of the song is "fairly self-explanatory with just a bit of nonsense in the middle". When the band released a Greatest Hits cassette in Iran, a leaflet in Persian was included with translation and explanations (refers to a book published in Iran called The March of the Black Queen by Sarah Sefati and Farhad Arkani, which included the whole biography of the band and complete lyrics with Persian translation (2000)). In the explanation, Queen states that "Bohemian Rhapsody" is about a young man who has accidentally killed someone and, like Faust, sold his soul to the devil. On the night before his execution, he calls for God saying, "Bismillah" ("In the name of God" in Arabic), and with the help of angels, regains his soul from Shaitan (the devil in Islam). Despite this, critics, both journalistic and academic, have speculated over the meaning behind the song's lyrics. Some believe the lyrics describe a suicidal murderer haunted by demons or depict events just preceding an execution. The latter explanation points to Albert Camus's novel The Stranger, in which a young man confesses to an impulsive murder and has an epiphany before he is executed, as probable inspiration. Others believe the lyrics were only written to fit with the music, and have no meaning; Kenny Everett quoted Mercury as claiming the lyrics were simply "random rhyming nonsense". Still, others interpreted them as Mercury's way of dealing with personal issues. Music scholar Sheila Whiteley observes that Mercury reached a turning point in his personal life in the year he wrote "Bohemian Rhapsody". He had been living with Mary Austin for seven years but had just embarked on his first love affair with a man. She suggests that the song provides an insight into Mercury's emotional state at the time, "living with Mary ('Mamma', as in Mother Mary) and wanting to break away ('Mamma Mia let me go')". CANNOTANSWER | Mercury reached a turning point in his personal life in the year he wrote "Bohemian Rhapsody". | "Bohemian Rhapsody" is a song by the British rock band Queen. It was written by Freddie Mercury for the band's 1975 album A Night at the Opera. The song is a six-minute suite, notable for its lack of a refraining chorus and consisting of several sections: an intro, a ballad segment, an operatic passage, a hard rock part and a reflective coda. "Bohemian Rhapsody" is one of the few songs to emerge from the 1970s progressive rock movement to achieve widespread commercial success and appeal to a mainstream audience.
"Bohemian Rhapsody" topped the UK Singles Chart for nine weeks and had sold more than a million copies by the end of January 1976. In 1991, after Mercury's death, it topped the charts for another five weeks, eventually becoming the UK's third best-selling single of all time. It is also the only song to reach the UK Christmas number one twice by the same artist. It also topped the charts in countries including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and the Netherlands, and sold over six million copies worldwide. In the United States, the song peaked at number nine in 1976, but reached a new peak of number two on the Billboard Hot 100 after being used in the film Wayne's World (1992). In 2018, the release of Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody brought the song renewed popularity and chart success worldwide. In March 2021 it was certified Diamond in the US for combined digital sales and streams equal to 10 million units.
Although critical reaction was initially mixed, "Bohemian Rhapsody" has since become Queen's most popular song and is considered one of the greatest rock songs of all time. The single was accompanied by a groundbreaking promotional video. Rolling Stone stated that its influence "cannot be overstated, practically inventing the music video seven years before MTV went on the air." The Guardian named its music video one of the 50 key events in rock music history, helping make videos a critical tool in music marketing.
In 2004, "Bohemian Rhapsody" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. It has appeared in numerous polls of the greatest songs in popular music, including a ranking at number 17 on Rolling Stones list of "the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. Mercury's vocal performance was chosen as the greatest in rock history by readers of Rolling Stone. In December 2018, it became the most streamed song from the 20th century, and it had been downloaded or streamed over 1.6 billion times.
History and recording
According to Mercury's friend Chris Smith (a keyboard player in Smile), Mercury first started developing "Bohemian Rhapsody" in the late 1960s; Mercury used to play parts of songs he was writing at the time on the piano, and one of his pieces, known simply as "The Cowboy Song", contained lyrics that ended up in the completed version produced years later, in 1975, specifically, "Mama ... just killed a man." Producer Roy Thomas Baker, who began working with Queen in 1972, related how Mercury once played the opening ballad section on the piano for him in Mercury's flat:
He played the beginning on the piano, then stopped and said, "And this is where the opera section comes in!" Then we went out to eat dinner.
Guitarist Brian May said the band thought that Mercury's blueprint for the song was "intriguing and original, and worthy of work". According to May, much of Queen's material was written in the studio, but this song "was all in Freddie's mind" before they started. In an interview during the band's Australian tour early in 1985, Mercury explained, "It was basically three songs that I wanted to put out, and I just put the three together."
Queen spent a month rehearsing at Ridge Farm Studio in Surrey in mid-1975, and drummer Roger Taylor recalled that "Bohemian Rhapsody" was one of the songs the band worked on while they were there. Recording began on 24 August 1975 at Rockfield Studio 1 near Monmouth, South Wales, after a three-week rehearsal at Penrhos Court, near Kington, Herefordshire. During the making of the track, four additional studios – Roundhouse, Sarm Studios, Scorpio Sound, and Wessex Sound Studios – were used. According to some band members, Mercury mentally prepared the song beforehand and directed the band throughout.
Mercury used a C. Bechstein concert grand piano, which he played in the promotional video and the UK tour. Due to the elaborate nature of the song, it was recorded in various sections. The piano was allegedly the same one Paul McCartney had used to record the Beatles' song "Hey Jude", as well as the same one Rick Wakeman used on David Bowie's 1971 album Hunky Dory.
Baker recalled in 1999
May, Mercury, and Taylor reportedly sang their vocal parts continually for 10 to 12 hours a day. The entire piece took three weeks to record, and in some sections featured 180 separate overdubs. Since the studios of the time only offered 24 track analogue tape, it was necessary for the three to overdub themselves many times and "bounce" these down to successive sub-mixes. In the end, eighth-generation tapes were used. The various sections of tape containing the desired sub-mixes had to be spliced (cut and assembled in the correct sequence). May recalled placing a tape in front of the light and being able to see through it, as the tape had been used so many times.
A similar story was told in 1977 by Taylor regarding the elaborate overdubs and sub-mixes for "The March of The Black Queen" for the album Queen II. At that time, the band was using 16 track equipment.
Producer Baker recalls that May's solo was done on only one track, rather than recording multiple tracks. May stated that he wanted to compose "a little tune that would be a counterpart to the main melody; I didn't just want to play the melody". The guitarist said that his better material stems from this way of working, in which he thought of the tune before playing it: "The fingers tend to be predictable unless being led by the brain." According to Baker,
... the end of the song was much heavier because it was one of the first mixes to be done with automation ... If you really listen to it, the ballad starts off clean, and as the opera section gets louder and louder, the vocals get more and more distorted. You can still hear this on the CD. They are clearly distorted.
Composition and analysis
"Bohemian Rhapsody" has been affiliated to the genres of progressive rock (sometimes called symphonic rock), hard rock, and progressive pop. The song is highly unusual for a popular single in featuring no chorus, combining disparate musical styles, and containing lyrics which eschew conventional love-based narratives, and instead make allusions to murder and nihilism. The Beach Boys' 1966 single "Good Vibrations", which also consisted of disparate music sections recorded separately, was a precursor to "Bohemian Rhapsody".
Music scholar Sheila Whiteley suggests that "the title draws strongly on contemporary rock ideology, the individualism of the bohemian artists' world, with rhapsody affirming the romantic ideals of art rock". Commenting on bohemianism, Judith Peraino said,
Mercury intended ... [this song] to be a 'mock opera', something outside the norm of rock songs, and it does follow a certain operatic logic: Choruses of multi-tracked voices alternate with aria-like solos, the emotions are excessive, the plot confusing.
"Bohemian Rhapsody" begins with an introduction, then goes into a piano ballad, before a guitar solo leads to an operatic interlude. A hard rock part follows this and it concludes with a coda. The song is in the keys of B major, E major, A major and F major, and is predominantly in meter. This musical format of writing a song as a suite with changes in style, tone, and tempo throughout was uncommon in most mainstream pop and rock music, but common in progressive rock, a genre which had reached its artistic and commercial zenith between 1970 and 1975 in the music of British bands such as Jethro Tull, Yes, Genesis, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Gentle Giant, Van der Graaf Generator, and Curved Air. The music of progressive rock was characterised by dramatic contrasts, frequent shifts in tempo and in rhythmic character from one section of a composition to the next. Bands from the genre blended rock with classical music, including its structural features, compositional practices, and instrumentation. Queen had embraced progressive rock as one of their many diverse influences.
"Bohemian Rhapsody" parodies many different elements of opera by using bombastic choruses, sarcastic recitative, and distorted Italian operatic phrases. An embryonic version of this style had already been used in Mercury's earlier compositions for the band "My Fairy King" (1973) and "The March of the Black Queen" (1974).
Intro (0:00–0:49)
The song begins with a close five-part harmony a cappella introduction in B major—as evidenced by the presence of a V–I cadence (F7–B) multi-track recordings of Mercury although the video has all four members lip-syncing this part. The lyrics question whether life is "real" or "just fantasy caught in a landslide" before concluding that there can be "no escape from reality".
After 20 seconds, the grand piano enters, the song modulates briefly to E major via another perfect cadence (B7–E) and Mercury's voice alternates with the other vocal parts. The narrator introduces himself as "just a poor boy" but declares that he "needs no sympathy" because he is "easy come, easy go" and then "little high, little low" (when heard in stereo, the words "little high" come from the left speaker and "little low" comes from the right, the other respective speaker plays the piano at the same time); chromatic side-slipping on "easy come, easy go" highlights the dream-like atmosphere. The end of this section is marked by the bass entrance and the cross-handed piano vamp in B.
Ballad (0:49–2:37)
The piano begins in B major along with the entrance of John Deacon's bass guitar, marking the onset of this section. After it plays twice, Mercury's vocals enter. Throughout the section, the vocals evolve from a softly sung harmony to an impassioned solo performance by Mercury. The narrator explains to his mother that he has "just killed a man", with "a gun against his head" and in doing so, has thrown his life away. This "confessional" section, Whiteley comments, is "affirmative of the nurturant and life-giving force of the feminine and the need for absolution". In the middle of the verse (1:19), Taylor's drums enter, and a descending chromatic run leads to a temporary modulation to E major (up one fourth). The narrator makes the second of several invocations to his "mama" in the new key, continuing the original theme. The narrator explains his regret over "mak[ing] you cry" and urging "mama" to "carry on as if nothing really matters". A brief, descending variation of the piano phrase connects to the second verse.
Then the piano intro plays, marking the start of the second verse. As the ballad proceeds into its second verse, the speaker confesses how ashamed he is by his act of murder (as May enters on guitar and mimics the upper range of the piano at 1:50). May imitates a bell tree during the line "sends shivers down my spine", by playing the strings of his guitar on the other side of the bridge. The narrator bids the world goodbye announcing he has "got to go" and prepares to "face the truth" admitting "I don't want to die / I sometimes wish I'd never been born at all". This is where the guitar solo enters.
Guitar solo (2:37–3:05)
Towards the end of the ballad section, the band builds in intensity, incorporating a guitar solo (in E major) played and composed by Brian May. The intensity continues to build, but once the bass line completes its descent establishing modulation to the new key (A major), the entire band cuts out abruptly at 3:03 except for quiet, staccato A major quaver (eighth-note) chords on the piano, marking the start of the "Opera" section.
Opera (3:05–4:07)
A rapid series of rhythmic and harmonic changes introduces a pseudo-operatic midsection, which contains the bulk of the elaborate vocal multi-tracking, depicting the narrator's descent into hell. While the underlying pulse of the song is maintained, the dynamics vary greatly from bar to bar, from only Mercury's voice accompanied by a piano to a multi-voice choir supported by drums, bass, piano, and timpani. The choir effect was created by having May, Mercury, and Taylor repeatedly sing their vocal parts, resulting in 180 separate overdubs. These overdubs were then combined into successive submixes. According to Roger Taylor, the voices of May, Mercury, and himself combined created a wide vocal range: "Brian could get down quite low, Freddie had a powerful voice through the middle, and I was good at the high stuff." The band wanted to create "a wall of sound, that starts down and goes all the way up". The band used the bell effect for lyrics "Magnifico" and "let me go". Also, on "let him go", Taylor singing the top section carries his note on further after the rest of the "choir" have stopped singing.
Lyrical references in this passage include Scaramouche, the fandango, Galileo Galilei, Figaro, and Beelzebub, with cries of "Bismillah! [Arabic: "In the name of God!"] we will not let you go!", as rival factions fight over his soul, some wishing to "let [him] go" and "spare him his life from this monstrosity", with others sending him "thunderbolts and lightning – very, very frightening [to him]". In Freddie Mercury: The definitive biography, Lesley-Ann Jones theorises that it is also a figurative representation of the four members: Mercury, May, Taylor, and Deacon respectively. The section concludes with a full choral treatment of the lyric "Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me!", on a block B major chord. Roger Taylor tops the final chord with a falsetto B in the fifth octave (B5).
Using the 24 track technology available at the time, the "opera" section took about three weeks to finish. Producer Roy Thomas Baker said, "Every time Freddie came up with another Galileo, I would add another piece of tape to the reel." Baker recalls that they kept wearing out the tape, which meant having to do transfers.
Hard rock (4:07–4:54)
The operatic section leads into a rock interlude with a guitar riff written by Mercury. At 4:15, a quadruple-tracked Mercury (in stereo, the four parts are panned two on the left and two on the right) sings angry lyrics addressed to an unspecified "you", accusing them of betrayal and abuse and insisting "can't do this to me, baby", before the final lines conclude that the singer "just gotta get right outta" an unspecified "here". Three ascending guitar runs follow. Mercury then plays a similar B run on the piano, as the song builds up to the finale with a ritardando.
Outro (4:54–5:55)
After Mercury plays ascending octaves of notes from the B mixolydian mode (composed of the notes from the E scale), the song then returns to the tempo and form of the introduction, initially in E major, before quickly modulating to C minor, only to soon go through an abrupt short series of modulations, bringing it back to C minor again in time for the final "nothing really matters" section. A guitar accompanies the chorus "ooh, ooh yeah, ooh yeah". A double-tracked twin guitar melody is played through an amplifier designed by John Deacon, affectionately nicknamed the "Deacy Amp". Mercury's line "Nothing really matters ..." appears again, "cradled by light piano arpeggios suggesting both resignation (minor tonalities) and a new sense of freedom in the wide vocal span". After the line "nothing really matters" is repeated multiple times, the song finally concludes in the key of E major, but then changes again to F major just before it ends. The final line, "Any way the wind blows", is followed by the quiet sound of a large tam-tam that finally expels the tension built up throughout the song.
Lyrics
The New York Times commented that "the song's most distinct feature is the fatalistic lyrics". Mercury refused to explain his composition other than to say it was about relationships; the band is still protective of the song's secret. Brian May supports suggestions that the song contained veiled references to Mercury's personal traumas. He recalls "Freddie was a very complex person: flippant and funny on the surface, but he concealed insecurities and problems in squaring up his life with his childhood. He never explained the lyrics, but I think he put a lot of himself into that song." May, though, says the band had agreed that the core of a lyric was a private issue for the composer. In a BBC Three documentary about the making of "Bohemian Rhapsody", Roger Taylor maintains that the true meaning of the song is "fairly self-explanatory with just a bit of nonsense in the middle".
Despite this, critics, both journalistic and academic, have speculated over the meaning behind the song's lyrics. Some believe the lyrics describe a suicidal murderer haunted by demons or depict events just preceding an execution. The latter explanation points to Albert Camus's novel The Stranger, in which a young man confesses to an impulsive murder and has an epiphany before he is executed, as probable inspiration. When the band released a Greatest Hits cassette in Iran, a leaflet in Persian was included with translation and explanations. In the explanation, Queen states that "Bohemian Rhapsody" is about a young man who has accidentally killed someone and, like Faust, sold his soul to the devil. On the night before his execution, he calls for God saying, "Bismillah" ("In the name of God" in Arabic), and with the help of angels, regains his soul from Shaitan (the devil in Arabic).
Other critics interpreted the lyrics as Mercury's way of dealing with personal issues. Music scholar Sheila Whiteley observes that Mercury reached a turning point in his personal life in the year he wrote "Bohemian Rhapsody". He had been living with Mary Austin for seven years but had just embarked on his first love affair with a man. She suggests that the song provides an insight into Mercury's emotional state at the time, "living with Mary ('Mamma', as in Mother Mary) and wanting to break away ('Mamma mia let me go')". Others suggest it as a veiled reference to coming out, and dealing with the repercussions of the sodomy laws of the time.
Still others believe the lyrics were only written to fit with the music, and had no intended meaning; the D.J., television entertainer, and comedian Kenny Everett, who played an influential role in popularising the single on his radio show on Capital Radio, quoted Mercury as claiming the lyrics were simply "random rhyming nonsense".
Release
When the band wanted to release the single in 1975, various executives suggested to them, that at 5 minutes and 55 seconds it was too long, and would never be a hit. The song was played to other musicians who commented the band had no hope of it ever being played on radio. According to producer Roy Thomas Baker, he and the band bypassed this corporate assessment by playing the song for Capital Radio D.J. Kenny Everett:
"we had a reel-to-reel copy but we told him he could only have it if he promised not to play it. 'I won't play it,' he said, winking ..."
The plan worked — Everett teased his listeners by playing only parts of the song. Audience demand intensified when Everett played the full song on his show 14 times in 2 days. Hordes of fans attempted to buy the single the following Monday, only to be told by record stores that it had not yet been released. The same weekend, Paul Drew, who ran the RKO General stations in the U.S, heard the track on Everett's show in London. Drew managed to get a copy of the tape and started to play it in the U.S, which forced the hand of Queen's US label, Elektra. In an interview with Sound on Sound, Baker reflects that "it was a strange situation where radio on both sides of the Atlantic was breaking a record that the record companies said would never get airplay!"
Eventually the unedited single was released, with "I'm in Love with My Car" as the B-side. Following Everett's escapade in October 1975, Eric Hall, a record plugger, gave a copy to David "Diddy" Hamilton to play on his weekday Radio One show. Hall stated "Monster, Monster! This could be a hit!"
The song became the 1975 UK Christmas number one, holding the top position for nine weeks. "Bohemian Rhapsody" was the first song ever to get to number one in the UK twice with the same version, and is also the only single to have been Christmas number one twice with the same version. The second was upon its re-release (as a double A-side single with "These Are the Days of Our Lives") in 1991, following Mercury's death, staying at number 1 for 5 weeks. The re-released version sold 673,000 copies in 1991 in the UK.
In the U.S, the single was also a success, although initially to a lesser extent than in the UK. The single, released in December 1975, reached number 9 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America for sales of one million copies.
In a retrospective article, Anthony DeCurtis of Rolling Stone explained why the song performed less strongly in the US charts by saying that it is "the quintessential example of the kind of thing that doesn't exactly go over well in America". Its chart run of 24 weeks, however, placed it at number 18 on Billboards year-end chart, higher than some number 1s of the year. With the Canadian record-buying public, the single fared better, reaching number one in the RPM national singles chart for the week ending 1 May 1976.
"Bohemian Rhapsody" was re-released as a double A-side cassette single with "The Show Must Go On" in January 1992, following the death of Freddie Mercury, with proceeds going to the Magic Johnson Foundation for AIDS research. The song re-entered the Billboard Hot 100 chart after 16 years, reaching number 2, and spending 17 weeks on the chart. After the release of the Queen biopic named after the song, it re-entered the charts for a third time at number 33, marking 26 years since it last charted.
In March 2021 it was certified Diamond (10× platinum) in the US for combined digital sales and streams equal to 10 million units. It had sold 4.4 million digital copies in the US .
Promotional video
Though some artists had made video clips to accompany songs (including Queen themselves; for example, their earlier singles "Keep Yourself Alive", "Liar", "Seven Seas of Rhye" and "Killer Queen" already had "pop promos", as they were known at the time), it was only after the success of "Bohemian Rhapsody" that it became a regular practice for record companies to produce promotional videos for artists' single releases. The Guardian stated it "ensured videos would henceforth be a mandatory tool in the marketing of music". These videos could then be shown on television shows around the world, such as the BBC's Top of the Pops, without the need for the artist to appear in person. A promo video also allowed the artist to have their music broadcast and accompanied by their own choice of visuals, rather than dancers such as Pan's People. According to May, the video was produced so that the band could avoid miming on Top of the Pops since they would have looked off miming to such a complex song. He also said that the band knew they would be set to appear at Dundee's Caird Hall on tour, a date which clashed with the programme, thus a promo would solve the issue. The video has been hailed as launching the MTV age.
The band used Trillion, a subsidiary of Trident Studios, their former management company and recording studio. They hired one of their trucks and got it to Elstree Studios, where the band was rehearsing for their tour. The video was directed by Bruce Gowers, who had directed a video of the band's 1974 performance at the Rainbow Theatre in London, and was recorded by cameraman Barry Dodd and assistant director/floor manager Jim McCutcheon. The video was recorded in just four hours on 10 November 1975, at a cost of £4,500. Gowers reported that the band was involved in the discussion of the video and the result, and "was a co-operative to that extent, but there was only one leader."
The video opens with a shot of the four band members standing in diamond formation with their heads tilted back in near darkness as they sing the a cappella part. The lights fade up, and the shots cross-fade into close-ups of Mercury. The composition of the shot is the same as Mick Rock's cover photograph for their second album Queen II. The photo, inspired by a photograph of actress Marlene Dietrich, was the band's favourite image of themselves. The video then fades into them playing their instruments. In the opera section of the video, the scene reverts to the Queen II standing positions, after which they perform once again on stage during the hard rock segment. In the closing seconds of the video Roger Taylor is depicted stripped to the waist, striking the tam tam in the manner of the trademark of the Rank Organisation's Gongman, familiar in the UK as the opening of all Rank film productions.
All of the special effects were achieved during the recording, rather than editing. The visual effect of Mercury's face cascading away (during the echoed lines "Magnifico" and "Let me go") was accomplished by pointing the camera at a monitor, giving visual feedback, a glare analogous to audio feedback. The honeycomb illusion was created using a shaped lens. The video was edited within five hours because it was due to be broadcast the same week in which it was taped. The video was sent to the BBC as soon as it was completed and aired for the first time on Top of the Pops in November 1975.
Critical reception
Although the song has become one of the most revered in popular music history, the initial critical reaction was mixed. The UK music papers reacted with bemusement, recognising that the song was original and technically accomplished, but they mostly remained indifferent. Pete Erskine of NME observed that, "It'll be interesting to see whether it'll be played in its entirety on the radio. It's performed extremely well, but more in terms of production than anything else... Someone somewhere has decided that the boys' next release must sound 'epic'. And it does. They sound extremely self-important."
Allan Jones of Melody Maker was unimpressed, describing the song as "a superficially impressive pastiche of incongruous musical styles" and that Queen "contrived to approximate the demented fury of the Balham Amateur Operatic Society performing The Pirates of Penzance... 'Bohemian Rhapsody' is full of drama, passion and romance and sounds rather like one of those mini-opera affairs that Pete Townsend [sic] used to tack on to the end of Who albums", before concluding, "The significance of the composition eludes me totally, though I must admit to finding it horrifically fascinating. It's likely to be a hit of enormous proportions despite its length." Ray Fox-Cumming of Record Mirror was also left unmoved, saying, "It has no immediate selling point whatsoever: among its many parts. there's scarcely a shred of a tune and certainly no one line to latch onto. There's no denying that it's devilishly clever, encompassing everything from bits of operatic harmonies to snatches that sound like Sparks and David Cassidy, but, in the end the whole adds up to less than the sum of its parts." He did, however, say that it was "unthinkable" that it wouldn't be a hit. The most positive review came from Sounds, which called it "impossibly disjointed and complex, but a dazzlingly clever epic from the fevered mind of Freddie Mercury". Cash Box called it "a softly sung ode to the prospect of moving on from staid ways with "good singing" and "good production."
Legacy
Musical impact
In 1976, when asked for his opinion on "Bohemian Rhapsody", the Beach Boys' leader Brian Wilson praised the song as "the most competitive thing that's come along in ages" and "a fulfillment and an answer to a teenage prayer—of artistic music". Producer Steve Levine said the track broke "all sonic production barriers" in a fashion similar to the Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations" (1966), Phil Spector's "Be My Baby" (1963), and 10cc's "I'm Not in Love" (1975). Greg Lake, whose song "I Believe in Father Christmas" was kept from number one in the UK by "Bohemian Rhapsody" when it was released in 1975, acknowledged that he was "beaten by one of the greatest records ever made", describing it as "a once-in-a-lifetime recording".
Addressing the song's enduring popularity, author and music lecturer Jochen Eisentraut wrote in 2012: "A year before punk made it unfashionable, progressive rock had an astounding success with the theoretically over-length (nearly 6-minute) single 'Bohemian Rhapsody' which bore many of the hallmarks of the 'prog' genre". He said it was "unique at this point to hear a hit single in this style", it was "more accessible than other music of the genre" and was "able to communicate beyond the usual confines of the style". Author and progressive rock historian Stephen Lambe called it a "remarkable" single and said it "provides a neat but coincidental bridge between prog in its prime and the move to more aggressive songwriting", suggesting the song "feels like a grotesque (although probably unintentional) parody of progressive rock". The New Rolling Stone Album Guide described it as "either a prog-rock benchmark or the most convoluted novelty song ever recorded". Writing for the BBC in 2015, the Chicago Tribunes music critic Greg Kot called it a "prog-rock pocket operetta" and said the song's "reign as a work of wigged-out genius rather than a dated gimmick testifies to its go-for-broke attitude—one that has resonated across generations".
In 2009, The Guardians music critic, Tom Service, examined the song's relationship with the traditions of classical music, describing its popularity as "one of the strangest musical phenomena out there":
A comparison was also made between the song and Led Zeppelin's 1971 epic "Stairway to Heaven" by music writers Pete Prown and HP Newquist. They observed both songs were "a slow, introspective beginning and gradual climb to a raging metal jam and back again", with the notable distinction being "while Zeppelin meshed folk influences with heavy metal, Queen opted for the light grandeur of the operetta as part of its hard rock". They said "for sheer cleverness alone, not to mention May's riveting electric work, 'Bohemian Rhapsody' rightfully became one of the top singles of 1975 and established Queen in the elite of seventies rock bands".
In 2015, The Economist described it as "one of the most innovative pieces of the progressive rock era". It wrote "though Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones and the Beatles' Paul McCartney had experimented with symphonic elements, and Roger Waters of Pink Floyd and Pete Townshend of the Who had created narrative albums with distinct 'movements', none had had the audacity to import a miniature opera into rock music."
Wayne's World
In 1992, the song enjoyed renewed popularity in the United States after being featured in a scene in the film Wayne's World, in which the titular character and his friends headbang in a car to the rock part near the end of the song. The film's director, Penelope Spheeris, was hesitant to use the song, as it did not entirely fit with the lead characters, who were fans of less flamboyant hard rock and heavy metal. Mike Myers insisted that the song fit the scene. According to music scholar Theodore Gracyk, by 1992, when the film was released, even "classic rock" stations had stopped playing the almost six-minute song. Gracyk suggests that beginning the tape in the middle of the song after "the lyrics which provide the song's narrative ... forces the film's audience to respond to its presence in the scene without the 'commentary' of the lyrics". Helped by the song, the soundtrack album of the film was a major hit.
In connection with this, a new video was released, interspersing excerpts from the film with footage from the original Queen video, along with some live footage of the band. Myers was horrified that the record company had mixed clips from Wayne's World with Queen's original video, fearing that this would upset the band. He said, "they've just whizzed on a Picasso." He asked the record company to tell Queen that the video was not his idea and that he apologised to them. The band, though, sent a reply simply saying, "Thank you for using our song." This astonished Myers, who responded, "Thank you for even letting me touch the hem of your garments!"
The Wayne's World video version of "Bohemian Rhapsody" won Queen its only MTV Video Music Award for "Best Video from a Film". When remaining members Brian May and Roger Taylor took the stage to accept the award, Brian May was overcome with emotion and said that "Freddie would be tickled." In the final scene of the video, a pose of the band from the video from the original "Bohemian Rhapsody" clip morphs into an identically posed 1985 photo, first featured in the "One Vision" video.
In the 2018 Queen biopic feature film Bohemian Rhapsody, Myers makes a cameo as a fictional record executive who pans the song and refuses to release it as a single, proclaiming that it is too long for radio and that it is not a song that "teenagers can crank up the volume in their car and bang their heads to", a reference to the iconic scene in Wayne's World.
Achievements and accolades
The song has won numerous awards and has been covered and parodied by many artists. At the 19th Annual Grammy Awards in February 1977, "Bohemian Rhapsody" received two Grammy Award nominations for Best Pop Vocal Performance by a Duo, Group or Chorus and Best Arrangement for Voices. In October 1977, only two years after its release, the British Phonographic Industry named "Bohemian Rhapsody" as the best British single of the period 1952–77. It is a regular entry in greatest-songs polls, and it was named by the Guinness Book of Records in 2002 as the top British single of all time. The song is also listed in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll.
In 2004, the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. , "Bohemian Rhapsody" is the second most-played song on British radio, in clubs and on jukeboxes collectively, after Procol Harum's "A Whiter Shade of Pale". On 30 September 2007 for BBC Radio 1's 40th birthday, it was revealed on The Radio 1 Chart Show that "Bohemian Rhapsody" had been the most played song since Radio 1's launch.
In December 2018, "Bohemian Rhapsody" officially became the most-streamed song from the 20th century, surpassing Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and Guns N' Roses' "Sweet Child o' Mine". "Bohemian Rhapsody" also became the most-streamed classic rock song of all time. The number of downloads of the song and original video exceeded 1.6 billion downloads across global on-demand streaming services. The video surpassed one billion views on YouTube in July 2019, making it the oldest music video to reach one billion on the platform, and the first pre-1990s song to reach that figure.
Polls
In a 2001 poll of more than 50,000 readers of The Observer newspaper and viewers of British TV's Channel 4 for the 100 best number-one singles of all time, the song came second to John Lennon's "Imagine". In a 2002 poll of more than 31,000 people conducted for Guinness World Records' British Hit Singles, "Bohemian Rhapsody" was voted Britain's favourite single, beating Lennon's "Imagine" to the top spot.
In 2002, it came in 10th in a BBC World Service poll to find the world's favourite song. It has been in the top five of the Dutch annual "Top 100 Aller Tijden" ("All-Time Top 100 [Singles]") since 1977, reaching number one on eight occasions, more than any other artist. In 1999, the annual "Top 2000" poll commenced to find the best songs ever made, and "Bohemian Rhapsody" has been ranked number one in all but five years (2005, 2010, 2014, 2015 and 2020 when it was number two). In a 2012 readers poll conducted by Rolling Stone magazine, "Bohemian Rhapsody" was voted the best vocal performance in rock history. In 2010, the song ranked at 166 on Rolling Stones "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" list, and was re-ranked at number 17 in 2021.
In 2012, the song topped an ITV poll in the UK to find "The Nation's Favourite Number One" over 60 years of music, ahead of Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" (number two), Adele's "Someone like You" (number three), Oasis' "Don't Look Back in Anger" (number four) and The Beatles' "Hey Jude" (number five). The song was also ranked number five in RadioMafia's list of "Top 500 Songs".
Cover versions
Over two dozen artists have recorded or performed cover versions of "Bohemian Rhapsody", including charted single releases by:
Bad News – a 1986 spoof version produced by Brian May which reached UK number 44
The Braids – an R&B version recorded for the soundtrack to the 1996 film High School High and which peaked at UK number 21, US number 42, and Canada number 13
Panic! at the Disco – a version recorded for the soundtrack of the 2016 film Suicide Squad and which peaked at UK number 80, US number 64 and Canada number 47
A video cover featuring The Muppets also went viral and was subsequently released as a single in late 2009, peaking at number 32 in the UK.
"Weird Al" Yankovic's 1993 album Alapalooza includes a version of the song entitled "Bohemian Polka", which is a rearrangement of the entire song as a polka.
40th anniversary
To mark the 40th anniversary of "Bohemian Rhapsody", the song was released on a limited edition 12" vinyl with the original B-side "I'm In Love With My Car" on 27 November 2015 for Record Store Day 2015. Queen also released A Night At The Odeon, Live At Hammersmith 75, on CD, DVD-Video and Blu-ray. This includes the first live "professionally" recorded performance of "Bohemian Rhapsody". However, the very first recording and live performance of "Bohemian Rhapsody" was the performance on 14 November 1975 in Liverpool.
Live performances
The a cappella opening was too complex to perform live, so Mercury tried various ways of introducing the song. When "Mustapha" became a live favourite, Mercury would often sub in that song's a cappella opening, which was easier to reproduce live as it was only one voice—this combination features in their 1979 live album Live Killers. During their 1982 Hot Space Tour, and occasionally at other times, Mercury would do a piano improvisation (generally the introduction to "Death on Two Legs") that ended with the first notes of the song. Often, the preceding song would end, and Mercury would sit at the piano, say a quick word, and start playing the ballad section. At Live Aid where "Bohemian Rhapsody" was their opening song, Mercury commenced with the ballad section.
Initially following the song's release, the operatic middle section proved a problem for the band. Because of extensive multi-tracking, it could not be performed on stage. The band did not have enough of a break between the Sheer Heart Attack and A Night at the Opera tours to find a way to make it work live, so they split the song into three sections that were played throughout the night. The opening and closing ballads were played as part of a medley, with "Killer Queen" and "March of the Black Queen" taking the place of the operatic and hard rock sections. In 1976 concerts where the same medley was played, the operatic section from the album would be played from tape as the introduction to the setlist. During this playback, Mercury would appear briefly to sing live for the line, "I see a little sillhouetto of a man". As the song segued into the hard rock section, the band would emerge on the smoke-filled stage—the playback would end at this point, and the hard rock section would be performed live (without the final ballad section, which appeared later in the set).
Starting with the A Day at the Races Tour in 1977, the band adopted their lasting way of playing the song live. The opening ballad would be played on stage, and after May's guitar solo, the lights would go down, the band would leave the stage, and the operatic section would be played from tape, while coloured stage lights provided a light show based around the voices of the opera section. Most playings of the opera section from the tape would often be accompanied by a portion of the song's music video containing the footage used for the operatic portion of the song. Other playings would be played over montages of footage filmed from the band members' other experiences throughout their daily lives. A blast of pyrotechnics after Taylor's high note on the final "for me" would announce the band's return for the hard rock section and closing ballad. Queen played the song in this form all through the Magic Tour of 1986. This style was also used for the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert, with Elton John singing the opening ballad and then after the taped operatic section, Axl Rose singing the hard rock section. John and Rose sang the closing ballad part together in a duet.
"Bohemian Rhapsody" was performed by Queen + Paul Rodgers throughout their tours, accompanied by a video of Mercury. Footage from the Live at Wembley '86 was used for the 2005–06 tour, and the 1981 Montreal performance used for the Rock the Cosmos Tour. As with the Queen tours, the band went backstage for the operatic section, which was accompanied by a video tribute to Freddie Mercury. When the hard rock section began, the lights came back up to the full band on stage, including Rodgers, who took over lead vocals. Rodgers duetted with the recording of Mercury for the "outro" section, allowing the audience to sing the final "Nothing really matters to me", while the taped Mercury took a bow for the crowd. Rodgers would then repeat the line, and the final line ("Any way the wind blows") was delivered with one last shot of Mercury smiling at the audience. Commenting upon this staging, Brian May says that they "had to rise to the challenge of getting Freddie in there in a way which gave him his rightful place, but without demeaning Paul in any way. It also kept us live and 'present', although conscious and proud of our past, as we logically should be."
Since 2012, May and Taylor have toured with former American Idol contestant Adam Lambert under the name Queen + Adam Lambert (following two one-off performances together in 2009 and 2011), with "Bohemian Rhapsody" regularly included at the end of their set.
Charts
Weekly charts
Year-end charts
Decade-end charts
All-time charts
Sales and certifications
Queen comments on the song
Personnel
Source:
Freddie Mercury – lead and backing vocals, piano, operatic vocals (middle register)
Brian May – electric guitar, operatic vocals (low register)
Roger Taylor – drums, timpani, gong, operatic vocals (high register)
John Deacon – bass guitar
See also
List of Bohemian Rhapsody cover versions
List of best-selling singles in the United Kingdom
List of best-selling singles in the United States
Citations
General references
External links
1975 singles
1975 songs
1976 singles
1991 singles
1992 singles
Brit Award for British Single
British hard rock songs
British progressive rock songs
British rock songs
Christmas number-one singles in the United Kingdom
Dutch Top 40 number-one singles
Elektra Records singles
EMI Records singles
Grammy Hall of Fame Award recipients
Hollywood Records singles
Irish Singles Chart number-one singles
Music based on the Faust legend
Never Shout Never songs
Number-one singles in Australia
Number-one singles in New Zealand
Number-one singles in Spain
Parlophone singles
Progressive pop songs
Queen (band) songs
RPM Top Singles number-one singles
Signature songs
Single Top 100 number-one singles
Song recordings produced by Roy Thomas Baker
Songs about crime
Songs about death
Songs composed in B-flat major
Songs written by Freddie Mercury
Symphonic rock songs
The Flaming Lips songs
The Muppets songs
UK Singles Chart number-one singles
Virgin EMI Records singles | true | [
"\"We Laugh Indoors\" is a song by American rock band Death Cab for Cutie, the third single from their third album, The Photo Album, released on 29 October 2002.\n\nThe single was released on both 7\" vinyl and CD. The vinyl release featured \"We Laugh Indoors\", and a live acoustic version of \"Debate Exposes Doubt\". The CD release included \"We Laugh Indoors\", an alternate mix of the song \"For What Reason\" from Death Cab for Cutie's previous album, We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes, and a live version of \"I Was a Kaleidoscope\".\n\nThe song reached number 122 on the UK Singles Chart.\n\nTrack listing\n\nVinyl release\n\"We Laugh Indoors (New Mix)\" - 4:58\n\"Debate Exposes Doubt\" (Acoustic SBN Session Track. Recorded In London 28/01/02)\n\nCD release\n\"We Laugh Indoors\" (New mix) – 4:58\n\"For What Reason\" (Alternate mix) – 3:43\n\"I Was a Kaleidoscope\" (Live) – 2:54\n\nCharts\n\nReferences\n\nSongs about laughter\n2002 singles\nDeath Cab for Cutie songs\n2001 songs\nSongs written by Ben Gibbard\nSongs written by Chris Walla\nSongs written by Nick Harmer\nFierce Panda Records singles",
"\"Give Me a Reason\" is a song by Irish pop rock group the Corrs. It was released in February 2001 as the third single taken from their third studio album In Blue (2000). The song was written and produced by the Corrs. \"Give Me a Reason\" is a dance-pop song, and received favourable reviews from music critics. The song was a moderate success in Belgium and New Zealand (reaching the top 10 and top 20, respectively), while reaching the top 40 in the United Kingdom.\n\nBackground and release\n\"Give Me a Reason\" was released as the third single from In Blue (2000) in February 2001. The CD single included two versions of \"Give Me a Reason\" (the album version and the Cutfather & Joe Remix, which was used for the music video), a \"Live Instrumental\" version of \"Paddy McCarthy\" and a \"Live\" version of \"Queen of Hollywood\". \"Give Me a Reason\" was written and produced by the Corrs (Andrea, Caroline, Sharon and Jim). The dance-pop song has Andrea on the centre speaker with the backing vocals on the other speakers. The song was included on their compilation album, \"Best of The Corrs\" (2001).\n\nMusic video\nThe official music video for the song features the members in a large building, doing different things. It also has a horse running past Andrea in a hallway. It is a much glossier video than most of their previous videos. It was banned in some countries due to the scene where Jim throws a chair out of a window, breaking it.\n\nReception\n\nCritical response\nThe song received favourable reviews from music critics. For Lydia Vanderloo of Barnes & Nobles, \"Songs such as the defiant 'Give Me a Reason' use the subtle, graceful strains of these lovely instruments without throwing their finely calibrated pop songs out of whack.\" Kevin Oliver of PopMatters commented, \" On the upbeat dance numbers like, 'Give Me a Reason', this bolsters the band's previously thin-sounding pop.\"\n\nCommercial performance\nIn the United Kingdom, \"Give Me a Reason\" reached number 27 on the UK Singles Chart, becoming the Corrs' ninth top-40 single there. In New Zealand, it debuted at number 40 on the RIANZ Singles Chart on the week of 1 April 2001 and peaked at number 13 on 27 May 2001.\n\nTrack listings\n\nUK and European CD single\n \"Give Me a Reason\" (Cutfather & Joe remix) – 3:10\n \"Give Me a Reason\" (album version) – 3:30\n \"Rebel Heart\" (remix) – 4:35\n\nEuropean maxi-CD single\n \"Give Me a Reason\" (Cutfather & Joe remix) – 3:10\n \"Give Me a Reason\" (album version) – 3:30\n \"Paddy McCarthy\" (live instrumental) – 4:16\n \"Queen of Hollywood\" (live) – 5:05\n\nAustralian CD single\n \"Give Me a Reason\" (Cutfather & Joe remix) – 3:10\n \"Give Me a Reason\" (album version) – 3:30\n \"Paddy McCarthy\" (live instrumental) – 4:16\n \"Irresistible\" (album version) – 3:40\n\nCharts\n\nRelease history\n\nReferences\n\n143 Records singles\n2001 singles\n2000 songs\nAtlantic Records singles\nThe Corrs songs\nLava Records singles\nSongs written by Andrea Corr\nSongs written by Caroline Corr\nSongs written by Jim Corr\nSongs written by Sharon Corr"
]
|
[
"Bohemian Rhapsody",
"Lyrics",
"Who wrote the lyrics?",
"Mercury reached a turning point in his personal life in the year he wrote \"Bohemian Rhapsody\".",
"What was the song about?",
"Mercury refused to explain his composition other than saying it was about relationships; the band is still protective of the song's secret.",
"When were the lyrics written?",
"The March of the Black Queen by Sarah Sefati and Farhad Arkani, which included the whole biography of the band and complete lyrics with Persian translation (2000)).",
"Who sings the song?",
"the band",
"When was the song released?",
"which included the whole biography of the band and complete lyrics with Persian translation (2000)).",
"Who produced the song?",
"documentary about the making of \"Bohemian Rhapsody\", Roger Taylor maintains that the true meaning of the song is \"fairly self-explanatory with just a bit of nonsense in the middle\".",
"What was the reason the song was written?",
"Mercury reached a turning point in his personal life in the year he wrote \"Bohemian Rhapsody\"."
]
| C_169eaa51c6c243bc9069eb7c6821930d_0 | What happened in his personal life? | 8 | What happened in personal life of Mercury that led him to write Bohemian Rhapsody ? | Bohemian Rhapsody | The New York Times commented that "the song's most distinct feature is the fatalistic lyrics". Mercury refused to explain his composition other than saying it was about relationships; the band is still protective of the song's secret. Brian May supports suggestions that the song contained veiled references to Mercury's personal traumas. He recalls "Freddie was a very complex person: flippant and funny on the surface, but he concealed insecurities and problems in squaring up his life with his childhood. He never explained the lyrics, but I think he put a lot of himself into that song." May, though, says the band had agreed that the core of a lyric was a private issue for the composer. In a BBC Three documentary about the making of "Bohemian Rhapsody", Roger Taylor maintains that the true meaning of the song is "fairly self-explanatory with just a bit of nonsense in the middle". When the band released a Greatest Hits cassette in Iran, a leaflet in Persian was included with translation and explanations (refers to a book published in Iran called The March of the Black Queen by Sarah Sefati and Farhad Arkani, which included the whole biography of the band and complete lyrics with Persian translation (2000)). In the explanation, Queen states that "Bohemian Rhapsody" is about a young man who has accidentally killed someone and, like Faust, sold his soul to the devil. On the night before his execution, he calls for God saying, "Bismillah" ("In the name of God" in Arabic), and with the help of angels, regains his soul from Shaitan (the devil in Islam). Despite this, critics, both journalistic and academic, have speculated over the meaning behind the song's lyrics. Some believe the lyrics describe a suicidal murderer haunted by demons or depict events just preceding an execution. The latter explanation points to Albert Camus's novel The Stranger, in which a young man confesses to an impulsive murder and has an epiphany before he is executed, as probable inspiration. Others believe the lyrics were only written to fit with the music, and have no meaning; Kenny Everett quoted Mercury as claiming the lyrics were simply "random rhyming nonsense". Still, others interpreted them as Mercury's way of dealing with personal issues. Music scholar Sheila Whiteley observes that Mercury reached a turning point in his personal life in the year he wrote "Bohemian Rhapsody". He had been living with Mary Austin for seven years but had just embarked on his first love affair with a man. She suggests that the song provides an insight into Mercury's emotional state at the time, "living with Mary ('Mamma', as in Mother Mary) and wanting to break away ('Mamma Mia let me go')". CANNOTANSWER | He had been living with Mary Austin for seven years but had just embarked on his first love affair with a man. | "Bohemian Rhapsody" is a song by the British rock band Queen. It was written by Freddie Mercury for the band's 1975 album A Night at the Opera. The song is a six-minute suite, notable for its lack of a refraining chorus and consisting of several sections: an intro, a ballad segment, an operatic passage, a hard rock part and a reflective coda. "Bohemian Rhapsody" is one of the few songs to emerge from the 1970s progressive rock movement to achieve widespread commercial success and appeal to a mainstream audience.
"Bohemian Rhapsody" topped the UK Singles Chart for nine weeks and had sold more than a million copies by the end of January 1976. In 1991, after Mercury's death, it topped the charts for another five weeks, eventually becoming the UK's third best-selling single of all time. It is also the only song to reach the UK Christmas number one twice by the same artist. It also topped the charts in countries including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and the Netherlands, and sold over six million copies worldwide. In the United States, the song peaked at number nine in 1976, but reached a new peak of number two on the Billboard Hot 100 after being used in the film Wayne's World (1992). In 2018, the release of Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody brought the song renewed popularity and chart success worldwide. In March 2021 it was certified Diamond in the US for combined digital sales and streams equal to 10 million units.
Although critical reaction was initially mixed, "Bohemian Rhapsody" has since become Queen's most popular song and is considered one of the greatest rock songs of all time. The single was accompanied by a groundbreaking promotional video. Rolling Stone stated that its influence "cannot be overstated, practically inventing the music video seven years before MTV went on the air." The Guardian named its music video one of the 50 key events in rock music history, helping make videos a critical tool in music marketing.
In 2004, "Bohemian Rhapsody" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. It has appeared in numerous polls of the greatest songs in popular music, including a ranking at number 17 on Rolling Stones list of "the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. Mercury's vocal performance was chosen as the greatest in rock history by readers of Rolling Stone. In December 2018, it became the most streamed song from the 20th century, and it had been downloaded or streamed over 1.6 billion times.
History and recording
According to Mercury's friend Chris Smith (a keyboard player in Smile), Mercury first started developing "Bohemian Rhapsody" in the late 1960s; Mercury used to play parts of songs he was writing at the time on the piano, and one of his pieces, known simply as "The Cowboy Song", contained lyrics that ended up in the completed version produced years later, in 1975, specifically, "Mama ... just killed a man." Producer Roy Thomas Baker, who began working with Queen in 1972, related how Mercury once played the opening ballad section on the piano for him in Mercury's flat:
He played the beginning on the piano, then stopped and said, "And this is where the opera section comes in!" Then we went out to eat dinner.
Guitarist Brian May said the band thought that Mercury's blueprint for the song was "intriguing and original, and worthy of work". According to May, much of Queen's material was written in the studio, but this song "was all in Freddie's mind" before they started. In an interview during the band's Australian tour early in 1985, Mercury explained, "It was basically three songs that I wanted to put out, and I just put the three together."
Queen spent a month rehearsing at Ridge Farm Studio in Surrey in mid-1975, and drummer Roger Taylor recalled that "Bohemian Rhapsody" was one of the songs the band worked on while they were there. Recording began on 24 August 1975 at Rockfield Studio 1 near Monmouth, South Wales, after a three-week rehearsal at Penrhos Court, near Kington, Herefordshire. During the making of the track, four additional studios – Roundhouse, Sarm Studios, Scorpio Sound, and Wessex Sound Studios – were used. According to some band members, Mercury mentally prepared the song beforehand and directed the band throughout.
Mercury used a C. Bechstein concert grand piano, which he played in the promotional video and the UK tour. Due to the elaborate nature of the song, it was recorded in various sections. The piano was allegedly the same one Paul McCartney had used to record the Beatles' song "Hey Jude", as well as the same one Rick Wakeman used on David Bowie's 1971 album Hunky Dory.
Baker recalled in 1999
May, Mercury, and Taylor reportedly sang their vocal parts continually for 10 to 12 hours a day. The entire piece took three weeks to record, and in some sections featured 180 separate overdubs. Since the studios of the time only offered 24 track analogue tape, it was necessary for the three to overdub themselves many times and "bounce" these down to successive sub-mixes. In the end, eighth-generation tapes were used. The various sections of tape containing the desired sub-mixes had to be spliced (cut and assembled in the correct sequence). May recalled placing a tape in front of the light and being able to see through it, as the tape had been used so many times.
A similar story was told in 1977 by Taylor regarding the elaborate overdubs and sub-mixes for "The March of The Black Queen" for the album Queen II. At that time, the band was using 16 track equipment.
Producer Baker recalls that May's solo was done on only one track, rather than recording multiple tracks. May stated that he wanted to compose "a little tune that would be a counterpart to the main melody; I didn't just want to play the melody". The guitarist said that his better material stems from this way of working, in which he thought of the tune before playing it: "The fingers tend to be predictable unless being led by the brain." According to Baker,
... the end of the song was much heavier because it was one of the first mixes to be done with automation ... If you really listen to it, the ballad starts off clean, and as the opera section gets louder and louder, the vocals get more and more distorted. You can still hear this on the CD. They are clearly distorted.
Composition and analysis
"Bohemian Rhapsody" has been affiliated to the genres of progressive rock (sometimes called symphonic rock), hard rock, and progressive pop. The song is highly unusual for a popular single in featuring no chorus, combining disparate musical styles, and containing lyrics which eschew conventional love-based narratives, and instead make allusions to murder and nihilism. The Beach Boys' 1966 single "Good Vibrations", which also consisted of disparate music sections recorded separately, was a precursor to "Bohemian Rhapsody".
Music scholar Sheila Whiteley suggests that "the title draws strongly on contemporary rock ideology, the individualism of the bohemian artists' world, with rhapsody affirming the romantic ideals of art rock". Commenting on bohemianism, Judith Peraino said,
Mercury intended ... [this song] to be a 'mock opera', something outside the norm of rock songs, and it does follow a certain operatic logic: Choruses of multi-tracked voices alternate with aria-like solos, the emotions are excessive, the plot confusing.
"Bohemian Rhapsody" begins with an introduction, then goes into a piano ballad, before a guitar solo leads to an operatic interlude. A hard rock part follows this and it concludes with a coda. The song is in the keys of B major, E major, A major and F major, and is predominantly in meter. This musical format of writing a song as a suite with changes in style, tone, and tempo throughout was uncommon in most mainstream pop and rock music, but common in progressive rock, a genre which had reached its artistic and commercial zenith between 1970 and 1975 in the music of British bands such as Jethro Tull, Yes, Genesis, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Gentle Giant, Van der Graaf Generator, and Curved Air. The music of progressive rock was characterised by dramatic contrasts, frequent shifts in tempo and in rhythmic character from one section of a composition to the next. Bands from the genre blended rock with classical music, including its structural features, compositional practices, and instrumentation. Queen had embraced progressive rock as one of their many diverse influences.
"Bohemian Rhapsody" parodies many different elements of opera by using bombastic choruses, sarcastic recitative, and distorted Italian operatic phrases. An embryonic version of this style had already been used in Mercury's earlier compositions for the band "My Fairy King" (1973) and "The March of the Black Queen" (1974).
Intro (0:00–0:49)
The song begins with a close five-part harmony a cappella introduction in B major—as evidenced by the presence of a V–I cadence (F7–B) multi-track recordings of Mercury although the video has all four members lip-syncing this part. The lyrics question whether life is "real" or "just fantasy caught in a landslide" before concluding that there can be "no escape from reality".
After 20 seconds, the grand piano enters, the song modulates briefly to E major via another perfect cadence (B7–E) and Mercury's voice alternates with the other vocal parts. The narrator introduces himself as "just a poor boy" but declares that he "needs no sympathy" because he is "easy come, easy go" and then "little high, little low" (when heard in stereo, the words "little high" come from the left speaker and "little low" comes from the right, the other respective speaker plays the piano at the same time); chromatic side-slipping on "easy come, easy go" highlights the dream-like atmosphere. The end of this section is marked by the bass entrance and the cross-handed piano vamp in B.
Ballad (0:49–2:37)
The piano begins in B major along with the entrance of John Deacon's bass guitar, marking the onset of this section. After it plays twice, Mercury's vocals enter. Throughout the section, the vocals evolve from a softly sung harmony to an impassioned solo performance by Mercury. The narrator explains to his mother that he has "just killed a man", with "a gun against his head" and in doing so, has thrown his life away. This "confessional" section, Whiteley comments, is "affirmative of the nurturant and life-giving force of the feminine and the need for absolution". In the middle of the verse (1:19), Taylor's drums enter, and a descending chromatic run leads to a temporary modulation to E major (up one fourth). The narrator makes the second of several invocations to his "mama" in the new key, continuing the original theme. The narrator explains his regret over "mak[ing] you cry" and urging "mama" to "carry on as if nothing really matters". A brief, descending variation of the piano phrase connects to the second verse.
Then the piano intro plays, marking the start of the second verse. As the ballad proceeds into its second verse, the speaker confesses how ashamed he is by his act of murder (as May enters on guitar and mimics the upper range of the piano at 1:50). May imitates a bell tree during the line "sends shivers down my spine", by playing the strings of his guitar on the other side of the bridge. The narrator bids the world goodbye announcing he has "got to go" and prepares to "face the truth" admitting "I don't want to die / I sometimes wish I'd never been born at all". This is where the guitar solo enters.
Guitar solo (2:37–3:05)
Towards the end of the ballad section, the band builds in intensity, incorporating a guitar solo (in E major) played and composed by Brian May. The intensity continues to build, but once the bass line completes its descent establishing modulation to the new key (A major), the entire band cuts out abruptly at 3:03 except for quiet, staccato A major quaver (eighth-note) chords on the piano, marking the start of the "Opera" section.
Opera (3:05–4:07)
A rapid series of rhythmic and harmonic changes introduces a pseudo-operatic midsection, which contains the bulk of the elaborate vocal multi-tracking, depicting the narrator's descent into hell. While the underlying pulse of the song is maintained, the dynamics vary greatly from bar to bar, from only Mercury's voice accompanied by a piano to a multi-voice choir supported by drums, bass, piano, and timpani. The choir effect was created by having May, Mercury, and Taylor repeatedly sing their vocal parts, resulting in 180 separate overdubs. These overdubs were then combined into successive submixes. According to Roger Taylor, the voices of May, Mercury, and himself combined created a wide vocal range: "Brian could get down quite low, Freddie had a powerful voice through the middle, and I was good at the high stuff." The band wanted to create "a wall of sound, that starts down and goes all the way up". The band used the bell effect for lyrics "Magnifico" and "let me go". Also, on "let him go", Taylor singing the top section carries his note on further after the rest of the "choir" have stopped singing.
Lyrical references in this passage include Scaramouche, the fandango, Galileo Galilei, Figaro, and Beelzebub, with cries of "Bismillah! [Arabic: "In the name of God!"] we will not let you go!", as rival factions fight over his soul, some wishing to "let [him] go" and "spare him his life from this monstrosity", with others sending him "thunderbolts and lightning – very, very frightening [to him]". In Freddie Mercury: The definitive biography, Lesley-Ann Jones theorises that it is also a figurative representation of the four members: Mercury, May, Taylor, and Deacon respectively. The section concludes with a full choral treatment of the lyric "Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me!", on a block B major chord. Roger Taylor tops the final chord with a falsetto B in the fifth octave (B5).
Using the 24 track technology available at the time, the "opera" section took about three weeks to finish. Producer Roy Thomas Baker said, "Every time Freddie came up with another Galileo, I would add another piece of tape to the reel." Baker recalls that they kept wearing out the tape, which meant having to do transfers.
Hard rock (4:07–4:54)
The operatic section leads into a rock interlude with a guitar riff written by Mercury. At 4:15, a quadruple-tracked Mercury (in stereo, the four parts are panned two on the left and two on the right) sings angry lyrics addressed to an unspecified "you", accusing them of betrayal and abuse and insisting "can't do this to me, baby", before the final lines conclude that the singer "just gotta get right outta" an unspecified "here". Three ascending guitar runs follow. Mercury then plays a similar B run on the piano, as the song builds up to the finale with a ritardando.
Outro (4:54–5:55)
After Mercury plays ascending octaves of notes from the B mixolydian mode (composed of the notes from the E scale), the song then returns to the tempo and form of the introduction, initially in E major, before quickly modulating to C minor, only to soon go through an abrupt short series of modulations, bringing it back to C minor again in time for the final "nothing really matters" section. A guitar accompanies the chorus "ooh, ooh yeah, ooh yeah". A double-tracked twin guitar melody is played through an amplifier designed by John Deacon, affectionately nicknamed the "Deacy Amp". Mercury's line "Nothing really matters ..." appears again, "cradled by light piano arpeggios suggesting both resignation (minor tonalities) and a new sense of freedom in the wide vocal span". After the line "nothing really matters" is repeated multiple times, the song finally concludes in the key of E major, but then changes again to F major just before it ends. The final line, "Any way the wind blows", is followed by the quiet sound of a large tam-tam that finally expels the tension built up throughout the song.
Lyrics
The New York Times commented that "the song's most distinct feature is the fatalistic lyrics". Mercury refused to explain his composition other than to say it was about relationships; the band is still protective of the song's secret. Brian May supports suggestions that the song contained veiled references to Mercury's personal traumas. He recalls "Freddie was a very complex person: flippant and funny on the surface, but he concealed insecurities and problems in squaring up his life with his childhood. He never explained the lyrics, but I think he put a lot of himself into that song." May, though, says the band had agreed that the core of a lyric was a private issue for the composer. In a BBC Three documentary about the making of "Bohemian Rhapsody", Roger Taylor maintains that the true meaning of the song is "fairly self-explanatory with just a bit of nonsense in the middle".
Despite this, critics, both journalistic and academic, have speculated over the meaning behind the song's lyrics. Some believe the lyrics describe a suicidal murderer haunted by demons or depict events just preceding an execution. The latter explanation points to Albert Camus's novel The Stranger, in which a young man confesses to an impulsive murder and has an epiphany before he is executed, as probable inspiration. When the band released a Greatest Hits cassette in Iran, a leaflet in Persian was included with translation and explanations. In the explanation, Queen states that "Bohemian Rhapsody" is about a young man who has accidentally killed someone and, like Faust, sold his soul to the devil. On the night before his execution, he calls for God saying, "Bismillah" ("In the name of God" in Arabic), and with the help of angels, regains his soul from Shaitan (the devil in Arabic).
Other critics interpreted the lyrics as Mercury's way of dealing with personal issues. Music scholar Sheila Whiteley observes that Mercury reached a turning point in his personal life in the year he wrote "Bohemian Rhapsody". He had been living with Mary Austin for seven years but had just embarked on his first love affair with a man. She suggests that the song provides an insight into Mercury's emotional state at the time, "living with Mary ('Mamma', as in Mother Mary) and wanting to break away ('Mamma mia let me go')". Others suggest it as a veiled reference to coming out, and dealing with the repercussions of the sodomy laws of the time.
Still others believe the lyrics were only written to fit with the music, and had no intended meaning; the D.J., television entertainer, and comedian Kenny Everett, who played an influential role in popularising the single on his radio show on Capital Radio, quoted Mercury as claiming the lyrics were simply "random rhyming nonsense".
Release
When the band wanted to release the single in 1975, various executives suggested to them, that at 5 minutes and 55 seconds it was too long, and would never be a hit. The song was played to other musicians who commented the band had no hope of it ever being played on radio. According to producer Roy Thomas Baker, he and the band bypassed this corporate assessment by playing the song for Capital Radio D.J. Kenny Everett:
"we had a reel-to-reel copy but we told him he could only have it if he promised not to play it. 'I won't play it,' he said, winking ..."
The plan worked — Everett teased his listeners by playing only parts of the song. Audience demand intensified when Everett played the full song on his show 14 times in 2 days. Hordes of fans attempted to buy the single the following Monday, only to be told by record stores that it had not yet been released. The same weekend, Paul Drew, who ran the RKO General stations in the U.S, heard the track on Everett's show in London. Drew managed to get a copy of the tape and started to play it in the U.S, which forced the hand of Queen's US label, Elektra. In an interview with Sound on Sound, Baker reflects that "it was a strange situation where radio on both sides of the Atlantic was breaking a record that the record companies said would never get airplay!"
Eventually the unedited single was released, with "I'm in Love with My Car" as the B-side. Following Everett's escapade in October 1975, Eric Hall, a record plugger, gave a copy to David "Diddy" Hamilton to play on his weekday Radio One show. Hall stated "Monster, Monster! This could be a hit!"
The song became the 1975 UK Christmas number one, holding the top position for nine weeks. "Bohemian Rhapsody" was the first song ever to get to number one in the UK twice with the same version, and is also the only single to have been Christmas number one twice with the same version. The second was upon its re-release (as a double A-side single with "These Are the Days of Our Lives") in 1991, following Mercury's death, staying at number 1 for 5 weeks. The re-released version sold 673,000 copies in 1991 in the UK.
In the U.S, the single was also a success, although initially to a lesser extent than in the UK. The single, released in December 1975, reached number 9 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America for sales of one million copies.
In a retrospective article, Anthony DeCurtis of Rolling Stone explained why the song performed less strongly in the US charts by saying that it is "the quintessential example of the kind of thing that doesn't exactly go over well in America". Its chart run of 24 weeks, however, placed it at number 18 on Billboards year-end chart, higher than some number 1s of the year. With the Canadian record-buying public, the single fared better, reaching number one in the RPM national singles chart for the week ending 1 May 1976.
"Bohemian Rhapsody" was re-released as a double A-side cassette single with "The Show Must Go On" in January 1992, following the death of Freddie Mercury, with proceeds going to the Magic Johnson Foundation for AIDS research. The song re-entered the Billboard Hot 100 chart after 16 years, reaching number 2, and spending 17 weeks on the chart. After the release of the Queen biopic named after the song, it re-entered the charts for a third time at number 33, marking 26 years since it last charted.
In March 2021 it was certified Diamond (10× platinum) in the US for combined digital sales and streams equal to 10 million units. It had sold 4.4 million digital copies in the US .
Promotional video
Though some artists had made video clips to accompany songs (including Queen themselves; for example, their earlier singles "Keep Yourself Alive", "Liar", "Seven Seas of Rhye" and "Killer Queen" already had "pop promos", as they were known at the time), it was only after the success of "Bohemian Rhapsody" that it became a regular practice for record companies to produce promotional videos for artists' single releases. The Guardian stated it "ensured videos would henceforth be a mandatory tool in the marketing of music". These videos could then be shown on television shows around the world, such as the BBC's Top of the Pops, without the need for the artist to appear in person. A promo video also allowed the artist to have their music broadcast and accompanied by their own choice of visuals, rather than dancers such as Pan's People. According to May, the video was produced so that the band could avoid miming on Top of the Pops since they would have looked off miming to such a complex song. He also said that the band knew they would be set to appear at Dundee's Caird Hall on tour, a date which clashed with the programme, thus a promo would solve the issue. The video has been hailed as launching the MTV age.
The band used Trillion, a subsidiary of Trident Studios, their former management company and recording studio. They hired one of their trucks and got it to Elstree Studios, where the band was rehearsing for their tour. The video was directed by Bruce Gowers, who had directed a video of the band's 1974 performance at the Rainbow Theatre in London, and was recorded by cameraman Barry Dodd and assistant director/floor manager Jim McCutcheon. The video was recorded in just four hours on 10 November 1975, at a cost of £4,500. Gowers reported that the band was involved in the discussion of the video and the result, and "was a co-operative to that extent, but there was only one leader."
The video opens with a shot of the four band members standing in diamond formation with their heads tilted back in near darkness as they sing the a cappella part. The lights fade up, and the shots cross-fade into close-ups of Mercury. The composition of the shot is the same as Mick Rock's cover photograph for their second album Queen II. The photo, inspired by a photograph of actress Marlene Dietrich, was the band's favourite image of themselves. The video then fades into them playing their instruments. In the opera section of the video, the scene reverts to the Queen II standing positions, after which they perform once again on stage during the hard rock segment. In the closing seconds of the video Roger Taylor is depicted stripped to the waist, striking the tam tam in the manner of the trademark of the Rank Organisation's Gongman, familiar in the UK as the opening of all Rank film productions.
All of the special effects were achieved during the recording, rather than editing. The visual effect of Mercury's face cascading away (during the echoed lines "Magnifico" and "Let me go") was accomplished by pointing the camera at a monitor, giving visual feedback, a glare analogous to audio feedback. The honeycomb illusion was created using a shaped lens. The video was edited within five hours because it was due to be broadcast the same week in which it was taped. The video was sent to the BBC as soon as it was completed and aired for the first time on Top of the Pops in November 1975.
Critical reception
Although the song has become one of the most revered in popular music history, the initial critical reaction was mixed. The UK music papers reacted with bemusement, recognising that the song was original and technically accomplished, but they mostly remained indifferent. Pete Erskine of NME observed that, "It'll be interesting to see whether it'll be played in its entirety on the radio. It's performed extremely well, but more in terms of production than anything else... Someone somewhere has decided that the boys' next release must sound 'epic'. And it does. They sound extremely self-important."
Allan Jones of Melody Maker was unimpressed, describing the song as "a superficially impressive pastiche of incongruous musical styles" and that Queen "contrived to approximate the demented fury of the Balham Amateur Operatic Society performing The Pirates of Penzance... 'Bohemian Rhapsody' is full of drama, passion and romance and sounds rather like one of those mini-opera affairs that Pete Townsend [sic] used to tack on to the end of Who albums", before concluding, "The significance of the composition eludes me totally, though I must admit to finding it horrifically fascinating. It's likely to be a hit of enormous proportions despite its length." Ray Fox-Cumming of Record Mirror was also left unmoved, saying, "It has no immediate selling point whatsoever: among its many parts. there's scarcely a shred of a tune and certainly no one line to latch onto. There's no denying that it's devilishly clever, encompassing everything from bits of operatic harmonies to snatches that sound like Sparks and David Cassidy, but, in the end the whole adds up to less than the sum of its parts." He did, however, say that it was "unthinkable" that it wouldn't be a hit. The most positive review came from Sounds, which called it "impossibly disjointed and complex, but a dazzlingly clever epic from the fevered mind of Freddie Mercury". Cash Box called it "a softly sung ode to the prospect of moving on from staid ways with "good singing" and "good production."
Legacy
Musical impact
In 1976, when asked for his opinion on "Bohemian Rhapsody", the Beach Boys' leader Brian Wilson praised the song as "the most competitive thing that's come along in ages" and "a fulfillment and an answer to a teenage prayer—of artistic music". Producer Steve Levine said the track broke "all sonic production barriers" in a fashion similar to the Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations" (1966), Phil Spector's "Be My Baby" (1963), and 10cc's "I'm Not in Love" (1975). Greg Lake, whose song "I Believe in Father Christmas" was kept from number one in the UK by "Bohemian Rhapsody" when it was released in 1975, acknowledged that he was "beaten by one of the greatest records ever made", describing it as "a once-in-a-lifetime recording".
Addressing the song's enduring popularity, author and music lecturer Jochen Eisentraut wrote in 2012: "A year before punk made it unfashionable, progressive rock had an astounding success with the theoretically over-length (nearly 6-minute) single 'Bohemian Rhapsody' which bore many of the hallmarks of the 'prog' genre". He said it was "unique at this point to hear a hit single in this style", it was "more accessible than other music of the genre" and was "able to communicate beyond the usual confines of the style". Author and progressive rock historian Stephen Lambe called it a "remarkable" single and said it "provides a neat but coincidental bridge between prog in its prime and the move to more aggressive songwriting", suggesting the song "feels like a grotesque (although probably unintentional) parody of progressive rock". The New Rolling Stone Album Guide described it as "either a prog-rock benchmark or the most convoluted novelty song ever recorded". Writing for the BBC in 2015, the Chicago Tribunes music critic Greg Kot called it a "prog-rock pocket operetta" and said the song's "reign as a work of wigged-out genius rather than a dated gimmick testifies to its go-for-broke attitude—one that has resonated across generations".
In 2009, The Guardians music critic, Tom Service, examined the song's relationship with the traditions of classical music, describing its popularity as "one of the strangest musical phenomena out there":
A comparison was also made between the song and Led Zeppelin's 1971 epic "Stairway to Heaven" by music writers Pete Prown and HP Newquist. They observed both songs were "a slow, introspective beginning and gradual climb to a raging metal jam and back again", with the notable distinction being "while Zeppelin meshed folk influences with heavy metal, Queen opted for the light grandeur of the operetta as part of its hard rock". They said "for sheer cleverness alone, not to mention May's riveting electric work, 'Bohemian Rhapsody' rightfully became one of the top singles of 1975 and established Queen in the elite of seventies rock bands".
In 2015, The Economist described it as "one of the most innovative pieces of the progressive rock era". It wrote "though Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones and the Beatles' Paul McCartney had experimented with symphonic elements, and Roger Waters of Pink Floyd and Pete Townshend of the Who had created narrative albums with distinct 'movements', none had had the audacity to import a miniature opera into rock music."
Wayne's World
In 1992, the song enjoyed renewed popularity in the United States after being featured in a scene in the film Wayne's World, in which the titular character and his friends headbang in a car to the rock part near the end of the song. The film's director, Penelope Spheeris, was hesitant to use the song, as it did not entirely fit with the lead characters, who were fans of less flamboyant hard rock and heavy metal. Mike Myers insisted that the song fit the scene. According to music scholar Theodore Gracyk, by 1992, when the film was released, even "classic rock" stations had stopped playing the almost six-minute song. Gracyk suggests that beginning the tape in the middle of the song after "the lyrics which provide the song's narrative ... forces the film's audience to respond to its presence in the scene without the 'commentary' of the lyrics". Helped by the song, the soundtrack album of the film was a major hit.
In connection with this, a new video was released, interspersing excerpts from the film with footage from the original Queen video, along with some live footage of the band. Myers was horrified that the record company had mixed clips from Wayne's World with Queen's original video, fearing that this would upset the band. He said, "they've just whizzed on a Picasso." He asked the record company to tell Queen that the video was not his idea and that he apologised to them. The band, though, sent a reply simply saying, "Thank you for using our song." This astonished Myers, who responded, "Thank you for even letting me touch the hem of your garments!"
The Wayne's World video version of "Bohemian Rhapsody" won Queen its only MTV Video Music Award for "Best Video from a Film". When remaining members Brian May and Roger Taylor took the stage to accept the award, Brian May was overcome with emotion and said that "Freddie would be tickled." In the final scene of the video, a pose of the band from the video from the original "Bohemian Rhapsody" clip morphs into an identically posed 1985 photo, first featured in the "One Vision" video.
In the 2018 Queen biopic feature film Bohemian Rhapsody, Myers makes a cameo as a fictional record executive who pans the song and refuses to release it as a single, proclaiming that it is too long for radio and that it is not a song that "teenagers can crank up the volume in their car and bang their heads to", a reference to the iconic scene in Wayne's World.
Achievements and accolades
The song has won numerous awards and has been covered and parodied by many artists. At the 19th Annual Grammy Awards in February 1977, "Bohemian Rhapsody" received two Grammy Award nominations for Best Pop Vocal Performance by a Duo, Group or Chorus and Best Arrangement for Voices. In October 1977, only two years after its release, the British Phonographic Industry named "Bohemian Rhapsody" as the best British single of the period 1952–77. It is a regular entry in greatest-songs polls, and it was named by the Guinness Book of Records in 2002 as the top British single of all time. The song is also listed in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll.
In 2004, the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. , "Bohemian Rhapsody" is the second most-played song on British radio, in clubs and on jukeboxes collectively, after Procol Harum's "A Whiter Shade of Pale". On 30 September 2007 for BBC Radio 1's 40th birthday, it was revealed on The Radio 1 Chart Show that "Bohemian Rhapsody" had been the most played song since Radio 1's launch.
In December 2018, "Bohemian Rhapsody" officially became the most-streamed song from the 20th century, surpassing Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and Guns N' Roses' "Sweet Child o' Mine". "Bohemian Rhapsody" also became the most-streamed classic rock song of all time. The number of downloads of the song and original video exceeded 1.6 billion downloads across global on-demand streaming services. The video surpassed one billion views on YouTube in July 2019, making it the oldest music video to reach one billion on the platform, and the first pre-1990s song to reach that figure.
Polls
In a 2001 poll of more than 50,000 readers of The Observer newspaper and viewers of British TV's Channel 4 for the 100 best number-one singles of all time, the song came second to John Lennon's "Imagine". In a 2002 poll of more than 31,000 people conducted for Guinness World Records' British Hit Singles, "Bohemian Rhapsody" was voted Britain's favourite single, beating Lennon's "Imagine" to the top spot.
In 2002, it came in 10th in a BBC World Service poll to find the world's favourite song. It has been in the top five of the Dutch annual "Top 100 Aller Tijden" ("All-Time Top 100 [Singles]") since 1977, reaching number one on eight occasions, more than any other artist. In 1999, the annual "Top 2000" poll commenced to find the best songs ever made, and "Bohemian Rhapsody" has been ranked number one in all but five years (2005, 2010, 2014, 2015 and 2020 when it was number two). In a 2012 readers poll conducted by Rolling Stone magazine, "Bohemian Rhapsody" was voted the best vocal performance in rock history. In 2010, the song ranked at 166 on Rolling Stones "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" list, and was re-ranked at number 17 in 2021.
In 2012, the song topped an ITV poll in the UK to find "The Nation's Favourite Number One" over 60 years of music, ahead of Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" (number two), Adele's "Someone like You" (number three), Oasis' "Don't Look Back in Anger" (number four) and The Beatles' "Hey Jude" (number five). The song was also ranked number five in RadioMafia's list of "Top 500 Songs".
Cover versions
Over two dozen artists have recorded or performed cover versions of "Bohemian Rhapsody", including charted single releases by:
Bad News – a 1986 spoof version produced by Brian May which reached UK number 44
The Braids – an R&B version recorded for the soundtrack to the 1996 film High School High and which peaked at UK number 21, US number 42, and Canada number 13
Panic! at the Disco – a version recorded for the soundtrack of the 2016 film Suicide Squad and which peaked at UK number 80, US number 64 and Canada number 47
A video cover featuring The Muppets also went viral and was subsequently released as a single in late 2009, peaking at number 32 in the UK.
"Weird Al" Yankovic's 1993 album Alapalooza includes a version of the song entitled "Bohemian Polka", which is a rearrangement of the entire song as a polka.
40th anniversary
To mark the 40th anniversary of "Bohemian Rhapsody", the song was released on a limited edition 12" vinyl with the original B-side "I'm In Love With My Car" on 27 November 2015 for Record Store Day 2015. Queen also released A Night At The Odeon, Live At Hammersmith 75, on CD, DVD-Video and Blu-ray. This includes the first live "professionally" recorded performance of "Bohemian Rhapsody". However, the very first recording and live performance of "Bohemian Rhapsody" was the performance on 14 November 1975 in Liverpool.
Live performances
The a cappella opening was too complex to perform live, so Mercury tried various ways of introducing the song. When "Mustapha" became a live favourite, Mercury would often sub in that song's a cappella opening, which was easier to reproduce live as it was only one voice—this combination features in their 1979 live album Live Killers. During their 1982 Hot Space Tour, and occasionally at other times, Mercury would do a piano improvisation (generally the introduction to "Death on Two Legs") that ended with the first notes of the song. Often, the preceding song would end, and Mercury would sit at the piano, say a quick word, and start playing the ballad section. At Live Aid where "Bohemian Rhapsody" was their opening song, Mercury commenced with the ballad section.
Initially following the song's release, the operatic middle section proved a problem for the band. Because of extensive multi-tracking, it could not be performed on stage. The band did not have enough of a break between the Sheer Heart Attack and A Night at the Opera tours to find a way to make it work live, so they split the song into three sections that were played throughout the night. The opening and closing ballads were played as part of a medley, with "Killer Queen" and "March of the Black Queen" taking the place of the operatic and hard rock sections. In 1976 concerts where the same medley was played, the operatic section from the album would be played from tape as the introduction to the setlist. During this playback, Mercury would appear briefly to sing live for the line, "I see a little sillhouetto of a man". As the song segued into the hard rock section, the band would emerge on the smoke-filled stage—the playback would end at this point, and the hard rock section would be performed live (without the final ballad section, which appeared later in the set).
Starting with the A Day at the Races Tour in 1977, the band adopted their lasting way of playing the song live. The opening ballad would be played on stage, and after May's guitar solo, the lights would go down, the band would leave the stage, and the operatic section would be played from tape, while coloured stage lights provided a light show based around the voices of the opera section. Most playings of the opera section from the tape would often be accompanied by a portion of the song's music video containing the footage used for the operatic portion of the song. Other playings would be played over montages of footage filmed from the band members' other experiences throughout their daily lives. A blast of pyrotechnics after Taylor's high note on the final "for me" would announce the band's return for the hard rock section and closing ballad. Queen played the song in this form all through the Magic Tour of 1986. This style was also used for the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert, with Elton John singing the opening ballad and then after the taped operatic section, Axl Rose singing the hard rock section. John and Rose sang the closing ballad part together in a duet.
"Bohemian Rhapsody" was performed by Queen + Paul Rodgers throughout their tours, accompanied by a video of Mercury. Footage from the Live at Wembley '86 was used for the 2005–06 tour, and the 1981 Montreal performance used for the Rock the Cosmos Tour. As with the Queen tours, the band went backstage for the operatic section, which was accompanied by a video tribute to Freddie Mercury. When the hard rock section began, the lights came back up to the full band on stage, including Rodgers, who took over lead vocals. Rodgers duetted with the recording of Mercury for the "outro" section, allowing the audience to sing the final "Nothing really matters to me", while the taped Mercury took a bow for the crowd. Rodgers would then repeat the line, and the final line ("Any way the wind blows") was delivered with one last shot of Mercury smiling at the audience. Commenting upon this staging, Brian May says that they "had to rise to the challenge of getting Freddie in there in a way which gave him his rightful place, but without demeaning Paul in any way. It also kept us live and 'present', although conscious and proud of our past, as we logically should be."
Since 2012, May and Taylor have toured with former American Idol contestant Adam Lambert under the name Queen + Adam Lambert (following two one-off performances together in 2009 and 2011), with "Bohemian Rhapsody" regularly included at the end of their set.
Charts
Weekly charts
Year-end charts
Decade-end charts
All-time charts
Sales and certifications
Queen comments on the song
Personnel
Source:
Freddie Mercury – lead and backing vocals, piano, operatic vocals (middle register)
Brian May – electric guitar, operatic vocals (low register)
Roger Taylor – drums, timpani, gong, operatic vocals (high register)
John Deacon – bass guitar
See also
List of Bohemian Rhapsody cover versions
List of best-selling singles in the United Kingdom
List of best-selling singles in the United States
Citations
General references
External links
1975 singles
1975 songs
1976 singles
1991 singles
1992 singles
Brit Award for British Single
British hard rock songs
British progressive rock songs
British rock songs
Christmas number-one singles in the United Kingdom
Dutch Top 40 number-one singles
Elektra Records singles
EMI Records singles
Grammy Hall of Fame Award recipients
Hollywood Records singles
Irish Singles Chart number-one singles
Music based on the Faust legend
Never Shout Never songs
Number-one singles in Australia
Number-one singles in New Zealand
Number-one singles in Spain
Parlophone singles
Progressive pop songs
Queen (band) songs
RPM Top Singles number-one singles
Signature songs
Single Top 100 number-one singles
Song recordings produced by Roy Thomas Baker
Songs about crime
Songs about death
Songs composed in B-flat major
Songs written by Freddie Mercury
Symphonic rock songs
The Flaming Lips songs
The Muppets songs
UK Singles Chart number-one singles
Virgin EMI Records singles | true | [
"Don Juan Manuel's Tales of Count Lucanor, in Spanish Libro de los ejemplos del conde Lucanor y de Patronio (Book of the Examples of Count Lucanor and of Patronio), also commonly known as El Conde Lucanor, Libro de Patronio, or Libro de los ejemplos (original Old Castilian: Libro de los enxiemplos del Conde Lucanor et de Patronio), is one of the earliest works of prose in Castilian Spanish. It was first written in 1335.\n\nThe book is divided into four parts. The first and most well-known part is a series of 51 short stories (some no more than a page or two) drawn from various sources, such as Aesop and other classical writers, and Arabic folktales.\n\nTales of Count Lucanor was first printed in 1575 when it was published at Seville under the auspices of Argote de Molina. It was again printed at Madrid in 1642, after which it lay forgotten for nearly two centuries.\n\nPurpose and structure\n\nA didactic, moralistic purpose, which would color so much of the Spanish literature to follow (see Novela picaresca), is the mark of this book. Count Lucanor engages in conversation with his advisor Patronio, putting to him a problem (\"Some man has made me a proposition...\" or \"I fear that such and such person intends to...\") and asking for advice. Patronio responds always with the greatest humility, claiming not to wish to offer advice to so illustrious a person as the Count, but offering to tell him a story of which the Count's problem reminds him. (Thus, the stories are \"examples\" [ejemplos] of wise action.) At the end he advises the Count to do as the protagonist of his story did.\n\nEach chapter ends in more or less the same way, with slight variations on: \"And this pleased the Count greatly and he did just so, and found it well. And Don Johán (Juan) saw that this example was very good, and had it written in this book, and composed the following verses.\" A rhymed couplet closes, giving the moral of the story.\n\nOrigin of stories and influence on later literature\nMany of the stories written in the book are the first examples written in a modern European language of various stories, which many other writers would use in the proceeding centuries. Many of the stories he included were themselves derived from other stories, coming from western and Arab sources.\n\nShakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew has the basic elements of Tale 35, \"What Happened to a Young Man Who Married a Strong and Ill-tempered Woman\".\n\nTale 32, \"What Happened to the King and the Tricksters Who Made Cloth\" tells the story that Hans Christian Andersen made popular as The Emperor's New Clothes.\n\nStory 7, \"What Happened to a Woman Named Truhana\", a version of Aesop's The Milkmaid and Her Pail, was claimed by Max Müller to originate in the Hindu cycle Panchatantra.\n\nTale 2, \"What happened to a good Man and his Son, leading a beast to market,\" is the familiar fable The miller, his son and the donkey.\n\nIn 2016, Baroque Decay released a game under the name \"The Count Lucanor\". As well as some protagonists' names, certain events from the books inspired past events in the game.\n\nThe stories\n\nThe book opens with a prologue which introduces the characters of the Count and Patronio. The titles in the following list are those given in Keller and Keating's 1977 translation into English. James York's 1868 translation into English gives a significantly different ordering of the stories and omits the fifty-first.\n\n What Happened to a King and His Favorite \n What Happened to a Good Man and His Son \n How King Richard of England Leapt into the Sea against the Moors\n What a Genoese Said to His Soul When He Was about to Die \n What Happened to a Fox and a Crow Who Had a Piece of Cheese in His Beak\n How the Swallow Warned the Other Birds When She Saw Flax Being Sown \n What Happened to a Woman Named Truhana \n What Happened to a Man Whose Liver Had to Be Washed \n What Happened to Two Horses Which Were Thrown to the Lion \n What Happened to a Man Who on Account of Poverty and Lack of Other Food Was Eating Bitter Lentils \n What Happened to a Dean of Santiago de Compostela and Don Yllán, the Grand Master of Toledo\n What Happened to the Fox and the Rooster \n What Happened to a Man Who Was Hunting Partridges \n The Miracle of Saint Dominick When He Preached against the Usurer \n What Happened to Lorenzo Suárez at the Siege of Seville \n The Reply that count Fernán González Gave to His Relative Núño Laynes \n What Happened to a Very Hungry Man Who Was Half-heartedly Invited to Dinner \n What Happened to Pero Meléndez de Valdés When He Broke His Leg \n What Happened to the Crows and the Owls \n What Happened to a King for Whom a Man Promised to Perform Alchemy \n What Happened to a Young King and a Philosopher to Whom his Father Commended Him \n What Happened to the Lion and the Bull \n How the Ants Provide for Themselves \n What Happened to the King Who Wanted to Test His Three Sons \n What Happened to the Count of Provence and How He Was Freed from Prison by the Advice of Saladin\n What Happened to the Tree of Lies \n What Happened to an Emperor and to Don Alvarfáñez Minaya and Their Wives \n What Happened in Granada to Don Lorenzo Suárez Gallinato When He Beheaded the Renegade Chaplain \n What Happened to a Fox Who Lay down in the Street to Play Dead \n What Happened to King Abenabet of Seville and Ramayquía His Wife \n How a Cardinal Judged between the Canons of Paris and the Friars Minor \n What Happened to the King and the Tricksters Who Made Cloth \n What Happened to Don Juan Manuel's Saker Falcon and an Eagle and a Heron \n What Happened to a Blind Man Who Was Leading Another \n What Happened to a Young Man Who Married a Strong and Ill-tempered Woman\n What Happened to a Merchant When He Found His Son and His Wife Sleeping Together \n What Happened to Count Fernán González with His Men after He Had Won the Battle of Hacinas \n What Happened to a Man Who Was Loaded down with Precious Stones and Drowned in the River \n What Happened to a Man and a Swallow and a Sparrow \n Why the Seneschal of Carcassonne Lost His Soul \n What Happened to a King of Córdova Named Al-Haquem \n What Happened to a Woman of Sham Piety \n What Happened to Good and Evil and the Wise Man and the Madman \n What Happened to Don Pero Núñez the Loyal, to Don Ruy González de Zavallos, and to Don Gutier Roiz de Blaguiello with Don Rodrigo the Generous \n What Happened to a Man Who Became the Devil's Friend and Vassal \n What Happened to a Philosopher who by Accident Went down a Street Where Prostitutes Lived \n What Befell a Moor and His Sister Who Pretended That She Was Timid \n What Happened to a Man Who Tested His Friends \n What Happened to the Man Whom They Cast out Naked on an Island When They Took away from Him the Kingdom He Ruled \n What Happened to Saladin and a Lady, the Wife of a Knight Who Was His Vassal \n What Happened to a Christian King Who Was Very Powerful and Haughty\n\nReferences\n\nNotes\n\nBibliography\n\n Sturm, Harlan\n\n Wacks, David\n\nExternal links\n\nThe Internet Archive provides free access to the 1868 translation by James York.\nJSTOR has the to the 1977 translation by Keller and Keating.\nSelections in English and Spanish (pedagogical edition) with introduction, notes, and bibliography in Open Iberia/América (open access teaching anthology)\n\n14th-century books\nSpanish literature\n1335 books",
"\"Trail in Life\" is a song written and recorded by Canadian country music artist Dean Brody. It was released in October 2010 as the third single to his 2010 album Trail in Life. The song reached number 81 on the Canadian Hot 100 in early 2011.\n\nContent\nThe narrator is a man who wonders what happened to his teenage mother who gave him up for adoption.\n\nReception\nRoughstock critic Matt Bjorke called it a \"beautifully written and sung song that recalls Garth Brooks’ \"What She's Doing Now\" in some parts but is a much, much more interesting song in that the verses discuss different parts of the narrator's life, from that first love to that college best friend to his life as an adopted child in a loving family.\" He goes on to call it \"personal and intimate.\"\n\nMusic video\nThe music video was directed by Jeth Weinrich and premiered in November 2010. The music video was filmed in Manhattan and Montauk, New York, the video also features scenes set at Long Island’s Deep Hollow Ranch.\n\nChart positions\n\nReferences\n\n2010 singles\nDean Brody songs\nOpen Road Recordings singles\n2010 songs\nSongs written by Dean Brody\nCanadian Country Music Association Single of the Year singles\nCanadian Country Music Association Songwriter(s) of the Year winners"
]
|
[
"Bear Bryant",
"Legacy"
]
| C_1aa483b6375848cdae627105519c187c_0 | what was Bear Bryant's legacy? | 1 | what was Bear Bryant's legacy? | Bear Bryant | Many of Bryant's former players and assistant coaches went on to become head coaches at the collegiate level and in the National Football League. Danny Ford (Clemson, 1981), Howard Schnellenberger (Miami of Florida, 1983), and Gene Stallings (Alabama, 1992) all won national championships as head coaches for NCAA programs while Joey Jones, Mike Riley, and David Cutcliffe are active head coaches in the NCAA. Charles McClendon, Jerry Claiborne, Sylvester Croom, Jim Owens, Jackie Sherrill, Bill Battle, and Pat Dye were also notable NCAA head coaches. Croom was the SEC's first African-American head coach at Mississippi State from 2004 through 2008. Arizona Cardinals head coach Bruce Arians was a running backs coach under Bryant in 1981-82. Ozzie Newsome is active as the general manager of the Baltimore Ravens. He was a Professional Football Hall of Fame tight end for the Cleveland Browns for 13 seasons (1978-90) and stayed loyal to owner Art Modell after the move to Baltimore. Newsome was the GM of the Ravens' Super Bowl XXXV championship team in 2000, and their Super Bowl XLVII championship team in 2012. Jack Pardee, one of the Junction Boys, played linebacker in the NFL for 16 seasons with the Los Angeles Rams and Washington Redskins, was a college head coach at the University of Houston, and was an NFL head coach with Chicago, Washington, and Houston. Bryant was portrayed by Gary Busey in the 1984 film The Bear, by Sonny Shroyer in the 1994 film Forrest Gump, Tom Berenger in the 2002 film The Junction Boys, and Jon Voight in the 2015 film Woodlawn. In a 1980 interview with Time magazine, Bryant admitted that he had been too hard on the Junction Boys and "If I were one of their players, I probably would have quit too." CANNOTANSWER | Many of Bryant's former players and assistant coaches went on to become head coaches at the collegiate level and in the National Football League. | Paul William "Bear" Bryant (September 11, 1913 – January 26, 1983) was an American college football player and coach. He is considered by many to be the greatest college football coach of all time, and best known as the head coach of the University of Alabama football team. During his 25-year tenure as Alabama's head coach, he amassed six national championships and thirteen conference championships. Upon his retirement in 1982, he held the record for the most wins (323) as a head coach in collegiate football history. The Paul W. Bryant Museum, Paul W. Bryant Hall, Paul W. Bryant Drive, and Bryant–Denny Stadium are all named in his honor at the University of Alabama. He was also known for his trademark black and white houndstooth hat, deep voice, casually leaning up against the goal post during pre-game warmups, and holding his rolled-up game plan while on the sidelines. Before arriving at Alabama, Bryant was head football coach at the University of Maryland, the University of Kentucky, and Texas A&M University.
Early life
Bryant was the 11th of 12 children who were born to Wilson Monroe Bryant and Ida Kilgore Bryant in Moro Bottom, Cleveland County, Arkansas. His nickname stemmed from his having agreed to wrestle a captive bear during a carnival promotion when he was 13 years old. His mother wanted him to be a minister, but Bryant told her "Coaching is a lot like preaching".
He attended Fordyce High School, where tall Bryant, who as an adult would eventually stand , began playing on the school's football team as an eighth grader. During his senior season, the team, with Bryant playing offensive line and defensive end, won the 1930 Arkansas state football championship.
College playing career
Bryant accepted a scholarship to play for the University of Alabama in 1931. Since he elected to leave high school before completing his diploma, Bryant had to enroll in a Tuscaloosa high school to finish his education during the fall semester while he practiced with the college team. Bryant played end for the Crimson Tide and was a participant on the school's 1934 national championship team. Bryant was the self-described "other end" during his playing years with the team, playing opposite the big star, Don Hutson, who later became a star in the National Football League and a Pro Football Hall of Famer. Bryant himself was second team All-Southeastern Conference in 1934, and was third team all conference in both 1933 and 1935. Bryant played with a partially broken leg in a 1935 game against Tennessee. Bryant was a member of Sigma Nu Fraternity, and as a senior, he married Mary Harmon, which he kept a secret since Alabama did not allow active players to be married.
Bryant was selected in the fourth round by the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1936 NFL Draft, but never played professional football.
Coaching career
Assistant and North Carolina Pre-Flight
After graduating from the University of Alabama in 1936, Bryant took a coaching job under A. B. Hollingsworth at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee, but he left that position when offered an assistant coaching position under Frank Thomas at the University of Alabama. Over the next four years, the team compiled a 29–5–3 record. In 1940, he left Alabama to become an assistant at Vanderbilt University under Henry Russell Sanders. During their 1940 season, Bryant served as head coach of the Commodores for their 7–7 tie against Kentucky as Sanders was recovering from an appendectomy. After the 1941 season, Bryant was offered the head coaching job at the University of Arkansas. However, Pearl Harbor was bombed soon thereafter, and Bryant declined the position to join the United States Navy. In 1942 he served as an assistant coach with the Georgia Pre-Flight Skycrackers.
Bryant then served off North Africa, seeing no combat action. However, his ship, the converted liner , was rammed by an oil tanker near Bermuda and ordered to be abandoned. Bryant disobeyed the order, saving the lives of his men. Allen Barra claims that two hundred others died in the collision.
He was later granted an honorable discharge to train recruits and coach the North Carolina Navy Pre-Flight football team. One of the players he coached for the Navy was the future Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback Otto Graham. While in the navy, Bryant attained the rank of lieutenant commander.
Maryland
In 1945, 32-year-old Bryant met Washington Redskins owner George Marshall at a cocktail party hosted by the Chicago Tribune, and mentioned that he had turned down offers to be an assistant coach at Alabama and Georgia Tech because he was intent on becoming a head coach. Marshall put him in contact with Harry Clifton "Curley" Byrd, the president and former football coach of the University of Maryland.
After meeting with Byrd the next day, Bryant received the job as head coach of the Maryland Terrapins. In his only season at Maryland, Bryant led the team to a 6–2–1 record. However, Bryant and Byrd came into conflict. In the most prominent incident, while Bryant was on vacation, Byrd brought back a player that was suspended by Bryant for not following the team rules. After the 1945 season, Bryant left Maryland to take over as head coach at the University of Kentucky.
Kentucky
Bryant coached at Kentucky for eight seasons. Under Bryant, Kentucky made its first bowl appearance in 1947 and won its first Southeastern Conference title in 1950. The 1950 Kentucky Wildcats football team finished with a school best 11–1 record and concluded the season with a victory over Bud Wilkinson's top-ranked Oklahoma Sooners in the Sugar Bowl. The final AP poll was released before bowl games in that era, so Kentucky ended the regular season ranked #7. But several other contemporaneous polls, as well as the Sagarin Ratings System applied retrospectively, declared Bryant's 1950 Wildcats to be the national champions, but neither the NCAA nor College Football Data Warehouse recognizes this claim. Bryant also led Kentucky to appearances in the Great Lakes Bowl, Orange Bowl, and Cotton Bowl Classic. Kentucky's final AP poll rankings under Bryant included #11 in 1949, #7 in 1950, #15 in 1951, #20 in 1952, and #16 in 1953. The 1950 season was Kentucky's highest rank until it finished #6 in the final 1977 AP Poll.
Though he led Kentucky's football program to its greatest achievement, Bryant resigned after the 1953 season because he felt that Adolph Rupp's basketball team would always be the school's primary sport. Years after leaving Lexington, Bryant had a better relationship with Rupp. For instance, Bryant was Alabama's athletic director in 1969 and called Rupp to ask if he had any recommendations for Alabama's new basketball coach. Rupp recommended C. M. Newton, a former backup player at Kentucky in the late 1940s. Newton went on to lead the Crimson Tide to three straight SEC titles.
Texas A&M
In 1954, Bryant accepted the head coaching job at Texas A&M University. He also served as athletic director while at Texas A&M.
The Aggies suffered through a grueling 1–9 season in 1954, which began with the infamous training camp in Junction, Texas. The "survivors" were given the name "Junction Boys". Two years later, Bryant led the 1956 Texas A&M Aggies football team to the Southwest Conference championship with a 34–21 victory over the Texas Longhorns at Austin. The following year, Bryant's star back John David Crow won the Heisman Trophy, and the 1957 Aggies were in title contention until they lost to the #20 Rice Owls in Houston, amid rumors that Alabama would be going after Bryant.
Again, as at Kentucky, Bryant attempted to integrate the Texas A&M squad. "We'll be the last football team in the Southwest Conference to integrate", he was told by a Texas A&M official. "Well", Bryant replied, "then that's where we're going to finish in football."
At the close of the 1957 season, having compiled an overall 25–14–2 record at Texas A&M, Bryant returned to Tuscaloosa to take the head coaching position, succeeding Jennings B. Whitworth, as well as the athletic director job at Alabama.
Alabama
When asked why he returned to his alma mater, Bryant replied, "Mama called. And when Mama calls, you just have to come runnin'." Bryant's first spring practice back at Alabama was much like what happened at Junction. Some of Bryant's assistants thought it was even more difficult, as dozens of players quit the team. After winning a combined four games in the three years before Bryant's arrival (including Alabama's only winless season on the field in modern times), the Tide went 5–4–1 in Bryant's first season. The next year, in 1959, Alabama beat Auburn and appeared in the inaugural Liberty Bowl, the first time the Crimson Tide had beaten Auburn or appeared in a bowl game in six years. In 1961, with quarterback Pat Trammell and football greats Lee Roy Jordan and Billy Neighbors, Alabama went 11–0 and defeated Arkansas 10–3 in the Sugar Bowl to claim the national championship.
The next three years (1962–1964) featured Joe Namath at quarterback and were among Bryant's finest. The 1962 season ended with a 17–0 victory in the Orange Bowl over Bud Wilkinson's Oklahoma Sooners. The 1963 season ended with a 12–7 victory over Ole Miss in the Sugar Bowl, which was the first game between the two Southeastern Conference neighbors in almost 20 years, and only the second in 30 years. In 1964, the Tide won another national championship, but lost 21–17 to Texas in the Orange Bowl, in the first nationally televised college game in color. The Tide ended up sharing the 1964 national title with Arkansas, as the Razorbacks won the Cotton Bowl Classic, and had beaten Texas in Austin. Before 1968, the AP and UPI polls gave out their championships before the bowl games. The AP ceased this practice before the 1968 season, but the UPI continued until 1973. The 1965 Crimson Tide repeated as champions after defeating Nebraska, 39–28, in the Orange Bowl. Coming off back-to-back national championship seasons, Bryant's 1966 Alabama team went undefeated in, beating a strong Nebraska team, 34–7, in the Sugar Bowl. However, Alabama finished third in the nation behind Michigan State and champions Notre Dame, who had previously played to a 10–10 tie in a late regular season game. In a biography of Bryant written by Allen Barra, the author suggests that the major polling services refused to elect Alabama as national champion for a third straight year because of Alabama Governor George Wallace's recent stand against integration
The 1967 Alabama team was billed as another national championship contender with star quarterback Kenny Stabler returning, but they stumbled out of the gate and tied Florida State, 37–37, at Legion Field. Alabama finished the year at 8–2–1, losing 20–16 in the Cotton Bowl Classic to Texas A&M, coached by former Bryant player and assistant coach Gene Stallings. In 1968, Bryant again could not match his previous successes, as the team went 8–3, losing to the Missouri, 35–10, in the Gator Bowl.
The 1969 and 1970 teams finished 6–5 and 6–5–1 respectively. After these disappointing efforts, many began to wonder if the 57-year-old Bryant was washed up. He himself began feeling the same way and considered either retiring from coaching or leaving college football for the National Football League (NFL).
For years, Bryant was accused of racism for refusing to recruit black players. (He had tried to do so at Kentucky in the late 40s but was denied by then University President, Herman Donovan)
. Bryant said that the prevailing social climate and the overwhelming presence of noted segregationist George Wallace in Alabama, first as governor and then as a presidential candidate, did not let him do this. He finally was able to convince the administration to allow him to do so, leading to the recruitment of Wilbur Jackson as Alabama's first black scholarship player who was recruited in 1969 and signed in the Spring of 1970. Junior-college transfer John Mitchell became the first black player for Alabama in 1971 because freshmen, thus Jackson, were not eligible to play at that time. They would both be a credit to the University by their conduct and play, thus widening the door and warming the welcome for many more to follow. By 1973, one-third of the team's starters were black, and Mitchell became the Tide's first black coach that season.
In 1971, Bryant began engineering a comeback. This included abandoning Alabama's old power offense for the relatively new wishbone formation. Darrell Royal, the Texas football coach whose assistant, Emory Bellard virtually invented the wishbone, taught Bryant its basics, but Bryant developed successful variations of the wishbone that Royal had never used. The change helped make the remainder of the decade a successful one for the Crimson Tide.
The 1971 Alabama Crimson Tide football team went undefeated in the regular season and rose to #2 in the AP Poll, but were dominated by top-ranked Nebraska in the Orange Bowl.
Bryant's 1973 squad split national championships with Notre Dame, who defeated Alabama, 24–23, in the Sugar Bowl. The UPI thereafter moved its final poll until after the bowl games.
The 1978 Alabama Crimson Tide football team split the national title with USC despite losing to the Trojans in September. The Trojans would lose later in the year to three-loss Arizona State and drop to number 3. At the end of the year, number 2 Alabama would beat undefeated and top-ranked Penn State in the Sugar Bowl, with the famous late-game goal line stand to preserve the victory.
Bryant won his sixth and final national title in 1979 after a 24–9 Sugar Bowl victory over Arkansas.
Bryant coached at Alabama for 25 years, winning six national titles (1961, 1964, 1965, 1973, 1978, and 1979) and thirteen SEC championships. Bryant's win over in-state rival Auburn, coached by former Bryant assistant Pat Dye on November 28, 1981, was Bryant's 315th as a head coach, which was the most of any head coach at that time. His all-time record as a coach was 323–85–17.
Personal life and death
Bryant was a heavy smoker and drinker for most of his life, and his health began to decline in the late 1970s. He collapsed due to a cardiac episode in 1977 and decided to enter alcohol rehab, but resumed drinking after only a few months of sobriety. Bryant experienced a mild stroke in 1980 that weakened the left side of his body and another cardiac episode in 1981 and was taking a battery of medications in his final years.
Shortly before his death, Bryant met with evangelist Robert Schuller on a plane flight and the two talked extensively about religion, which apparently made an impression on the coach, who felt considerable guilt over his mistreatment of the Junction Boys and hiding his smoking and drinking habits from his mother.
After a sixth-place SEC finish in the 1982 season that included losses to LSU and Tennessee, each for the first time since 1970, Bryant, who had turned 69 that September, announced his retirement, stating, "This is my school, my alma mater. I love it and I love my players. But in my opinion, they deserved better coaching than they have been getting from me this year." His last game was a 21–15 victory in the Liberty Bowl in Memphis, Tennessee, over the University of Illinois. After the game, Bryant was asked what he planned to do now that he was retired. He replied, "Probably croak in a week."
Four weeks after making that comment, and just one day after passing a routine medical checkup, on January 25, 1983, Bryant checked into Druid City Hospital in Tuscaloosa after experiencing chest pain. A day later, when being prepared for an electrocardiogram, he died after suffering a massive heart attack.
His personal physician, Dr. William Hill, said that he was amazed that Bryant had been able to coach Alabama to two national championships in what would be the last five years of his life, given the poor state of his health. First news of Bryant's death came from Bert Bank (WTBC Radio Tuscaloosa) and on the NBC Radio Network (anchored by Stan Martyn and reported by Stewart Stogel). On his hand at the time of his death was the only piece of jewelry he ever wore, a gold ring inscribed "Junction Boys". He is interred at Birmingham's Elmwood Cemetery. A month after his death, Bryant was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award, by President Ronald Reagan. A moment of silence was held before Super Bowl XVII, played four days after Bryant's death.
Defamation suit
In 1962, Bryant filed a libel suit against The Saturday Evening Post for printing an article by Furman Bisher ("College Football Is Going Berserk") that charged him with encouraging his players to engage in brutality in a 1961 game against the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets. Six months later, the magazine published "The Story of a College Football Fix" that charged Bryant and Georgia Bulldogs athletic director and ex-coach Wally Butts with conspiring to fix their 1962 game together in Alabama's favor. Butts also sued Curtis Publishing Co. for libel. The case was decided in Butts' favor in the US District Court of Northern Georgia in August 1963, but Curtis Publishing appealed to the Supreme Court. As a result of Curtis Publishing Co. v. Butts 388 U.S. 130 (1967), Curtis Publishing was ordered to pay $3,060,000 in damages to Butts. The case is considered a landmark case because it established conditions under which a news organization can be held liable for defamation of a "public figure". Bryant reached a separate out-of-court settlement on both of his cases for $300,000 against Curtis Publishing in January 1964.
Honors and awards
Inducted into Omicron Delta Kappa at the University of Kentucky in 1949
12-time Southeastern Conference Coach of the Year
The portion of 10th Street which runs through the University of Alabama campus was renamed Paul W. Bryant Drive.
Three-time National Coach of the Year in 1961, 1971, and 1973. The national coach of the year award was subsequently named the Paul "Bear" Bryant Award in his honor.
In 1975, Alabama's Denny Stadium was renamed Bryant–Denny Stadium in his honor. Bryant would coach the final seven years of his tenure at the stadium, and is thus one of only four men in Division I-A/FBS to have coached in a stadium named after him. The others are Shug Jordan at Auburn, Bill Snyder at Kansas State and LaVell Edwards at BYU.
Was named Head Coach of Sports Illustrated's NCAA Football All-Century Team.
He received 1.5 votes for the Democratic Party Presidential nomination at the extremely contentious 1968 Democratic Convention
In 1979, Bryant received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. His Golden Plate was presented by Awards Council member Tom Landry.
In February 1983, Bryant was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Ronald Reagan.
Bryant was honored with a U.S. postage stamp in 1996.
Country singer Roger Hallmark recorded a tribute song in his honor.
Charles Ghigna wrote a poem that appeared in the Birmingham-Post Herald in 1983 as a tribute to Bryant.
Super Bowl XVII was dedicated to Bryant. A moment of silence was held in his memory during the pregame ceremonies. Some of his former Alabama players were on the rosters of both teams, including Miami Dolphins nose tackle Bob Baumhower and running back Tony Nathan, and Washington Redskins running back Wilbur Jackson. Also, at the end of Leslie Easterbrook's performance of the National Anthem, several planes from Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama did the traditional missing-man formation over the Rose Bowl in his memory.
The extinct shark Cretalamna bryanti was named after Bryant and his family in 2018, due to their contributions to the University of Alabama and McWane Science Center where the type material is held.
Legacy
Many of Bryant's former players and assistant coaches went on to become head coaches at the collegiate level and in the National Football League. Danny Ford (Clemson, 1981), Howard Schnellenberger (Miami of Florida, 1983), and Gene Stallings (Alabama, 1992), one of the Junction Boys, all won national championships as head coaches for NCAA programs while Joey Jones, Mike Riley, and David Cutcliffe are active head coaches in the NCAA. Charles McClendon, Jerry Claiborne, Sylvester Croom, Jim Owens, Jackie Sherrill, Bill Battle, Bud Moore and Pat Dye were also notable NCAA head coaches. Croom was the SEC's first African-American head coach at Mississippi State from 2004 through 2008. NFL head coach Bruce Arians was a running backs coach under Bryant in 1981–82.
Ozzie Newsome, who played for Bryant at Alabama from 1974 to 1977, played professional football for the Cleveland Browns for 13 seasons (1978-1990), and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1999. Newsome was the general manager of the Cleveland Browns-Baltimore Ravens from 1996 through 2018. Newsome was the GM of the Ravens' Super Bowl XXXV championship team in 2000, and their Super Bowl XLVII championship team in 2012.
Jack Pardee, one of the Junction Boys, played linebacker in the NFL for 16 seasons with the Los Angeles Rams and Washington Redskins, was a college head coach at the University of Houston, and an NFL head coach with Chicago, Washington, and Houston.
Bryant was portrayed by Gary Busey in the 1984 film The Bear, by Sonny Shroyer in the 1994 film Forrest Gump, Tom Berenger in the 2002 film The Junction Boys, and Jon Voight in the 2015 film Woodlawn.
In a 1980 interview with Time magazine, Bryant admitted that he had been too hard on the Junction Boys and "If I were one of their players, I probably would have quit too."
Bruce Arians, Tampa Bay Buccaneers head coach who would go onto win Super Bowl LV, was an assistant to Bryant at Alabama from 1981 to 1982.
Head coaching record
In his 38 seasons as a head coach, Bryant had 37 winning seasons and participated in a total of 29 postseason bowl games, including 24 consecutively at Alabama. He won 15 bowl games, including eight Sugar Bowls. Bryant still holds the records as the youngest college football head coach to win 300 games and compile 30 winning seasons.
See also
The Bear Bryant Show
List of presidents of the American Football Coaches Association
List of college football coaches with 200 wins
References
Further reading
Keith Dunnavant, Coach: The Life of Paul "Bear" Bryant (New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 2005).
Paul W. Bryant with John Underwood, Bear: The Hard Life and Good Times of Alabama's Coach Bryant (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1974).
Mickey Herskowitz, The Legend of Bear Bryant, (Austin, Texas: Eakin Press, 1993).
Jim Dent, The Junction Boys: How Ten Days in Hell with Bear Bryant Forged a Championship Team (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999).
Tom Stoddard, Turnaround: Bear Bryant's First Year at Alabama (Montgomery, Alabama: Black Belt Press, 2000).
Randy Roberts and Ed Krzemienski, Rising Tide: Bear Bryant, Joe Namath, and Dixie's Last Quarter (New York: Twelve, Hachette Book Group, 2013).
James Kirby, Fumble: Bear Bryant, Wally Butts, and the Great College Football Scandal (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanavich, 1986).
Albert Figone, Cheating the Spread: Gamblers, Point Shavers and Game Fixers in College Football and Basketball (University of Illinois Press, 2012).
Furman Bisher, "College Football is Going Berserk: A Game Ruled by Brute Force Needs a Housecleaning", Saturday Evening Post, October 20, 1962.
Frank Graham, Jr. "The Story of a College Football Fix", Saturday Evening Post, March 23, 1963.
John David Briley. 2006. Career in Crisis : Paul "Bear" Bryant And the 1971 Season of Change. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press.
External links
Paul W. Bryant Museum
"Paul 'Bear' Bryant" , Encyclopedia of Alabama
Digitized speeches and photographs of Coach Bryant from the University Libraries Division of Special Collections, The University of Alabama
1913 births
1983 deaths
American football ends
Alabama Crimson Tide athletic directors
Alabama Crimson Tide football coaches
Alabama Crimson Tide football players
Georgia Pre-Flight Skycrackers football coaches
Kentucky Wildcats football coaches
Maryland Terrapins football coaches
North Carolina Pre-Flight Cloudbusters football coaches
Texas A&M Aggies athletic directors
Texas A&M Aggies football coaches
Union Bulldogs football coaches
Vanderbilt Commodores football coaches
College Football Hall of Fame inductees
United States Navy personnel of World War II
United States Navy officers
Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients
People from Cleveland County, Arkansas
Coaches of American football from Arkansas
Players of American football from Arkansas
Burials at Elmwood Cemetery (Birmingham, Alabama) | true | [
"The Bear Bryant Show was a weekly coaches' show that served as a weekly recap of the Alabama Crimson Tide football team's previous day's game. The show ran during the tenure of head coach Paul \"Bear\" Bryant from the 1958 through the 1982 seasons. Co-hosted by John Forney (1961–1965), Bill Austin (1966), Charley Thornton (1967–1981) and Steadman Shealy (1982), The Bear Bryant Show was a cultural phenomenon within the state of Alabama that contributed to the rise in popularity and awareness of the university's football program during the 1960s and 1970s. The show ran for an hour during its entire run.\n\nHistory\n\nAs part of Bryant's contract with the University, he retained all of the rights to Alabama football game films. As such, he became one of the first collegiate football head coaches to have his own television program with the start of The Bear Bryant Show in 1958. Bryant was paid $3,000 per show and insisted on it being an hour long in order to cover the game in its entirety and for its perceived recruiting benefits. In 1966, the show became one of the first television shows produced in the state of Alabama to be broadcast in color.\n\nDuring the 25-year run of the program, several persons served as its co-host alongside Bryant. From the 1961 through 1965 seasons, the show was co-hosted by former Alabama broadcaster John Forney. Bill Austin, Sports Director of WCFT-TV Tuscaloosa co-hosted the 1966 season, Charley Thornton was later brought on as co-host and served alongside coach Bryant through the 1981 season. At the conclusion of that season, Thornton left Alabama to become an executive athletics director at Texas A&M University. In September 1982, former Crimson Tide quarterback Steadman Shealy was selected to serve as the co-host for the show. The announcement was made by the producer of the program, Sloan-Major Advertising. The show ended at the conclusion of the 1982 season with the retirement of Bryant as head coach of the Crimson Tide. During its run, over 250 episodes were produced and for several years the show was one of the highest-rated syndicated television shows in the country.\n\nAlthough over 250 episodes were produced, only 77 episodes survive on tape. So few recordings of the show remain as a result of both the show being aired live, and many of the videotapes used to record the show in the 1970s being reused week-to-week. Many of the tapes that date back to the 1970s were recorded at the request of the father of former Alabama halfback Mike Stock, so he could watch highlights of his son with the Crimson Tide. In 1992, Golden Flake and Coke donated the 77 surviving episodes to the Paul W. Bryant Museum, and in 2001 an exhibition that featured the show called \"Sundays at Four\" opened at the Bryant Museum. Efforts to re-release the show on DVD have been discussed at various times, but have yet to yield fruit.\n\nSponsors\nThe title sponsors of the show were the Birmingham Coca-Cola Bottling Company and Golden Flake Snack Foods. Their slogan was \"a great pair, says the Bear,\" and each episode opened with Bryant and his co-host opening a bag of Golden Flake potato chips and bottles of Coca-Cola.\n\nLegacy\nCulturally, the show reflected many of the values of the state not only in the way Bryant spoke about the game, but also in how he spoke about God, family and country. The ability of Bryant to connect with the fan base through the show helped to both \"create and sustain the legend of Bear Bryant\" as observed by Keith Dunnavant. During the 1960s and 1970s, National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) rules prohibited teams from appearing in more than two televised games on ABC per season. As such, The Bear Bryant Show became the primary way that fans of the Crimson Tide from across the state were able to see the games. For years, the show aired on Sundays at 4:00 p.m., and its popularity regularly caused many of the stations that carried it to preempt live coverage of National Football League games during the same timeslot. In addition to providing the fans a way to see highlights from the weekly games, the show was also watched by Crimson Tide players to see what coach Bryant had to say about their individual performances.\n\nReferences\n\n1958 American television series debuts\n1982 American television series endings\n1950s American television series\n1960s American television series\n1970s American television series\n1980s American television series\nEnglish-language television shows\nCollege football studio shows\nAlabama Crimson Tide football",
"The American Heart Association (AHA) Paul \"Bear\" Bryant Awards are an annual awards banquet that is hosted each year in January, in Houston, Texas, by the AHA. There are two awards. One of them—the Paul \"Bear\" Bryant Coach of the Year Award—has been given annually since 1986 to NCAA college football's national coach of the year. The Award was named in honor of longtime Alabama coach Bear Bryant after he died of a heart attack in 1983. It is voted on by the National Sports Media Association (formerly the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association) and proceeds from the awards ceremony benefit the Houston chapter of the American Heart Association, which is the organizing sponsor—since 1986, at the request of the Bryant family—and which obtains a \"presenting sponsor\" (currently Marathon Oil Corporation). The College Football Coach of the Year Award began in 1957 and was renamed for Bryant in 1986. Bryant himself won the AFCA Coach of the Year award in 1961, 1971, and 1973.\n\nAccording to the official website:\nThe Paul \"Bear\" Bryant College Football Coaching Awards is an exclusive event that honors a college football coach whose great accomplishments, both on and off the field, are legendary. The award recognizes the masters of coaching and allows them to take their deserved place in history beside other legends like Bear Bryant. \n\nUnlike many college football head coaching awards, it is presented after each season's bowl games.\n\nIn 2000, the AHA began presenting a second award, the Paul \"Bear\" Bryant Lifetime Achievement Award.\n\nWinners\nNote: The year indicates the season for which the award was presented. The award is presented in January of the following year.\n\nLifetime Achievement Award winners \nSee footnote.\n\n2000 – Darrell Royal\n2001 – Charles McClendon\n2002 – Bill Yeoman\n2003 – Frank Broyles\n2004 – Gene Stallings\n2005 – Lou Holtz\n2006 – Jack Pardee\n2007 – Bo Schembechler\n2008 – Tom Osborne\n2009 – Barry Switzer\n2010 – Vince Dooley\n2011 – Bobby Bowden\n2012 – Hayden Fry\n2013 – LaVell Edwards\n2014 – R. C. Slocum\n2015 – Jimmy Johnson\n2016 – Mack Brown\n2017 – Barry Alvarez\n2018 – Steve Spurrier\n2019 – Frank Beamer\n2020 – Bill Snyder\n2021 – Howard Schnellenberger\n\nSee also \nAFCA Coach of the Year\nAssociated Press College Football Coach of the Year Award\nWalter Camp Coach of the Year\nBobby Dodd Coach of the Year Award\nThe Home Depot Coach of the Year Award\nSporting News College Football Coach of the Year\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nPaul \"Bear\" Bryant College Football Coaching Awards\n\nCollege football coach of the year awards in the United States\nLifetime achievement awards\nAwards established in 1957"
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| C_1aa483b6375848cdae627105519c187c_0 | What position did he play? | 2 | What position did Bear Bryant play? | Bear Bryant | Many of Bryant's former players and assistant coaches went on to become head coaches at the collegiate level and in the National Football League. Danny Ford (Clemson, 1981), Howard Schnellenberger (Miami of Florida, 1983), and Gene Stallings (Alabama, 1992) all won national championships as head coaches for NCAA programs while Joey Jones, Mike Riley, and David Cutcliffe are active head coaches in the NCAA. Charles McClendon, Jerry Claiborne, Sylvester Croom, Jim Owens, Jackie Sherrill, Bill Battle, and Pat Dye were also notable NCAA head coaches. Croom was the SEC's first African-American head coach at Mississippi State from 2004 through 2008. Arizona Cardinals head coach Bruce Arians was a running backs coach under Bryant in 1981-82. Ozzie Newsome is active as the general manager of the Baltimore Ravens. He was a Professional Football Hall of Fame tight end for the Cleveland Browns for 13 seasons (1978-90) and stayed loyal to owner Art Modell after the move to Baltimore. Newsome was the GM of the Ravens' Super Bowl XXXV championship team in 2000, and their Super Bowl XLVII championship team in 2012. Jack Pardee, one of the Junction Boys, played linebacker in the NFL for 16 seasons with the Los Angeles Rams and Washington Redskins, was a college head coach at the University of Houston, and was an NFL head coach with Chicago, Washington, and Houston. Bryant was portrayed by Gary Busey in the 1984 film The Bear, by Sonny Shroyer in the 1994 film Forrest Gump, Tom Berenger in the 2002 film The Junction Boys, and Jon Voight in the 2015 film Woodlawn. In a 1980 interview with Time magazine, Bryant admitted that he had been too hard on the Junction Boys and "If I were one of their players, I probably would have quit too." CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Paul William "Bear" Bryant (September 11, 1913 – January 26, 1983) was an American college football player and coach. He is considered by many to be the greatest college football coach of all time, and best known as the head coach of the University of Alabama football team. During his 25-year tenure as Alabama's head coach, he amassed six national championships and thirteen conference championships. Upon his retirement in 1982, he held the record for the most wins (323) as a head coach in collegiate football history. The Paul W. Bryant Museum, Paul W. Bryant Hall, Paul W. Bryant Drive, and Bryant–Denny Stadium are all named in his honor at the University of Alabama. He was also known for his trademark black and white houndstooth hat, deep voice, casually leaning up against the goal post during pre-game warmups, and holding his rolled-up game plan while on the sidelines. Before arriving at Alabama, Bryant was head football coach at the University of Maryland, the University of Kentucky, and Texas A&M University.
Early life
Bryant was the 11th of 12 children who were born to Wilson Monroe Bryant and Ida Kilgore Bryant in Moro Bottom, Cleveland County, Arkansas. His nickname stemmed from his having agreed to wrestle a captive bear during a carnival promotion when he was 13 years old. His mother wanted him to be a minister, but Bryant told her "Coaching is a lot like preaching".
He attended Fordyce High School, where tall Bryant, who as an adult would eventually stand , began playing on the school's football team as an eighth grader. During his senior season, the team, with Bryant playing offensive line and defensive end, won the 1930 Arkansas state football championship.
College playing career
Bryant accepted a scholarship to play for the University of Alabama in 1931. Since he elected to leave high school before completing his diploma, Bryant had to enroll in a Tuscaloosa high school to finish his education during the fall semester while he practiced with the college team. Bryant played end for the Crimson Tide and was a participant on the school's 1934 national championship team. Bryant was the self-described "other end" during his playing years with the team, playing opposite the big star, Don Hutson, who later became a star in the National Football League and a Pro Football Hall of Famer. Bryant himself was second team All-Southeastern Conference in 1934, and was third team all conference in both 1933 and 1935. Bryant played with a partially broken leg in a 1935 game against Tennessee. Bryant was a member of Sigma Nu Fraternity, and as a senior, he married Mary Harmon, which he kept a secret since Alabama did not allow active players to be married.
Bryant was selected in the fourth round by the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1936 NFL Draft, but never played professional football.
Coaching career
Assistant and North Carolina Pre-Flight
After graduating from the University of Alabama in 1936, Bryant took a coaching job under A. B. Hollingsworth at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee, but he left that position when offered an assistant coaching position under Frank Thomas at the University of Alabama. Over the next four years, the team compiled a 29–5–3 record. In 1940, he left Alabama to become an assistant at Vanderbilt University under Henry Russell Sanders. During their 1940 season, Bryant served as head coach of the Commodores for their 7–7 tie against Kentucky as Sanders was recovering from an appendectomy. After the 1941 season, Bryant was offered the head coaching job at the University of Arkansas. However, Pearl Harbor was bombed soon thereafter, and Bryant declined the position to join the United States Navy. In 1942 he served as an assistant coach with the Georgia Pre-Flight Skycrackers.
Bryant then served off North Africa, seeing no combat action. However, his ship, the converted liner , was rammed by an oil tanker near Bermuda and ordered to be abandoned. Bryant disobeyed the order, saving the lives of his men. Allen Barra claims that two hundred others died in the collision.
He was later granted an honorable discharge to train recruits and coach the North Carolina Navy Pre-Flight football team. One of the players he coached for the Navy was the future Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback Otto Graham. While in the navy, Bryant attained the rank of lieutenant commander.
Maryland
In 1945, 32-year-old Bryant met Washington Redskins owner George Marshall at a cocktail party hosted by the Chicago Tribune, and mentioned that he had turned down offers to be an assistant coach at Alabama and Georgia Tech because he was intent on becoming a head coach. Marshall put him in contact with Harry Clifton "Curley" Byrd, the president and former football coach of the University of Maryland.
After meeting with Byrd the next day, Bryant received the job as head coach of the Maryland Terrapins. In his only season at Maryland, Bryant led the team to a 6–2–1 record. However, Bryant and Byrd came into conflict. In the most prominent incident, while Bryant was on vacation, Byrd brought back a player that was suspended by Bryant for not following the team rules. After the 1945 season, Bryant left Maryland to take over as head coach at the University of Kentucky.
Kentucky
Bryant coached at Kentucky for eight seasons. Under Bryant, Kentucky made its first bowl appearance in 1947 and won its first Southeastern Conference title in 1950. The 1950 Kentucky Wildcats football team finished with a school best 11–1 record and concluded the season with a victory over Bud Wilkinson's top-ranked Oklahoma Sooners in the Sugar Bowl. The final AP poll was released before bowl games in that era, so Kentucky ended the regular season ranked #7. But several other contemporaneous polls, as well as the Sagarin Ratings System applied retrospectively, declared Bryant's 1950 Wildcats to be the national champions, but neither the NCAA nor College Football Data Warehouse recognizes this claim. Bryant also led Kentucky to appearances in the Great Lakes Bowl, Orange Bowl, and Cotton Bowl Classic. Kentucky's final AP poll rankings under Bryant included #11 in 1949, #7 in 1950, #15 in 1951, #20 in 1952, and #16 in 1953. The 1950 season was Kentucky's highest rank until it finished #6 in the final 1977 AP Poll.
Though he led Kentucky's football program to its greatest achievement, Bryant resigned after the 1953 season because he felt that Adolph Rupp's basketball team would always be the school's primary sport. Years after leaving Lexington, Bryant had a better relationship with Rupp. For instance, Bryant was Alabama's athletic director in 1969 and called Rupp to ask if he had any recommendations for Alabama's new basketball coach. Rupp recommended C. M. Newton, a former backup player at Kentucky in the late 1940s. Newton went on to lead the Crimson Tide to three straight SEC titles.
Texas A&M
In 1954, Bryant accepted the head coaching job at Texas A&M University. He also served as athletic director while at Texas A&M.
The Aggies suffered through a grueling 1–9 season in 1954, which began with the infamous training camp in Junction, Texas. The "survivors" were given the name "Junction Boys". Two years later, Bryant led the 1956 Texas A&M Aggies football team to the Southwest Conference championship with a 34–21 victory over the Texas Longhorns at Austin. The following year, Bryant's star back John David Crow won the Heisman Trophy, and the 1957 Aggies were in title contention until they lost to the #20 Rice Owls in Houston, amid rumors that Alabama would be going after Bryant.
Again, as at Kentucky, Bryant attempted to integrate the Texas A&M squad. "We'll be the last football team in the Southwest Conference to integrate", he was told by a Texas A&M official. "Well", Bryant replied, "then that's where we're going to finish in football."
At the close of the 1957 season, having compiled an overall 25–14–2 record at Texas A&M, Bryant returned to Tuscaloosa to take the head coaching position, succeeding Jennings B. Whitworth, as well as the athletic director job at Alabama.
Alabama
When asked why he returned to his alma mater, Bryant replied, "Mama called. And when Mama calls, you just have to come runnin'." Bryant's first spring practice back at Alabama was much like what happened at Junction. Some of Bryant's assistants thought it was even more difficult, as dozens of players quit the team. After winning a combined four games in the three years before Bryant's arrival (including Alabama's only winless season on the field in modern times), the Tide went 5–4–1 in Bryant's first season. The next year, in 1959, Alabama beat Auburn and appeared in the inaugural Liberty Bowl, the first time the Crimson Tide had beaten Auburn or appeared in a bowl game in six years. In 1961, with quarterback Pat Trammell and football greats Lee Roy Jordan and Billy Neighbors, Alabama went 11–0 and defeated Arkansas 10–3 in the Sugar Bowl to claim the national championship.
The next three years (1962–1964) featured Joe Namath at quarterback and were among Bryant's finest. The 1962 season ended with a 17–0 victory in the Orange Bowl over Bud Wilkinson's Oklahoma Sooners. The 1963 season ended with a 12–7 victory over Ole Miss in the Sugar Bowl, which was the first game between the two Southeastern Conference neighbors in almost 20 years, and only the second in 30 years. In 1964, the Tide won another national championship, but lost 21–17 to Texas in the Orange Bowl, in the first nationally televised college game in color. The Tide ended up sharing the 1964 national title with Arkansas, as the Razorbacks won the Cotton Bowl Classic, and had beaten Texas in Austin. Before 1968, the AP and UPI polls gave out their championships before the bowl games. The AP ceased this practice before the 1968 season, but the UPI continued until 1973. The 1965 Crimson Tide repeated as champions after defeating Nebraska, 39–28, in the Orange Bowl. Coming off back-to-back national championship seasons, Bryant's 1966 Alabama team went undefeated in, beating a strong Nebraska team, 34–7, in the Sugar Bowl. However, Alabama finished third in the nation behind Michigan State and champions Notre Dame, who had previously played to a 10–10 tie in a late regular season game. In a biography of Bryant written by Allen Barra, the author suggests that the major polling services refused to elect Alabama as national champion for a third straight year because of Alabama Governor George Wallace's recent stand against integration
The 1967 Alabama team was billed as another national championship contender with star quarterback Kenny Stabler returning, but they stumbled out of the gate and tied Florida State, 37–37, at Legion Field. Alabama finished the year at 8–2–1, losing 20–16 in the Cotton Bowl Classic to Texas A&M, coached by former Bryant player and assistant coach Gene Stallings. In 1968, Bryant again could not match his previous successes, as the team went 8–3, losing to the Missouri, 35–10, in the Gator Bowl.
The 1969 and 1970 teams finished 6–5 and 6–5–1 respectively. After these disappointing efforts, many began to wonder if the 57-year-old Bryant was washed up. He himself began feeling the same way and considered either retiring from coaching or leaving college football for the National Football League (NFL).
For years, Bryant was accused of racism for refusing to recruit black players. (He had tried to do so at Kentucky in the late 40s but was denied by then University President, Herman Donovan)
. Bryant said that the prevailing social climate and the overwhelming presence of noted segregationist George Wallace in Alabama, first as governor and then as a presidential candidate, did not let him do this. He finally was able to convince the administration to allow him to do so, leading to the recruitment of Wilbur Jackson as Alabama's first black scholarship player who was recruited in 1969 and signed in the Spring of 1970. Junior-college transfer John Mitchell became the first black player for Alabama in 1971 because freshmen, thus Jackson, were not eligible to play at that time. They would both be a credit to the University by their conduct and play, thus widening the door and warming the welcome for many more to follow. By 1973, one-third of the team's starters were black, and Mitchell became the Tide's first black coach that season.
In 1971, Bryant began engineering a comeback. This included abandoning Alabama's old power offense for the relatively new wishbone formation. Darrell Royal, the Texas football coach whose assistant, Emory Bellard virtually invented the wishbone, taught Bryant its basics, but Bryant developed successful variations of the wishbone that Royal had never used. The change helped make the remainder of the decade a successful one for the Crimson Tide.
The 1971 Alabama Crimson Tide football team went undefeated in the regular season and rose to #2 in the AP Poll, but were dominated by top-ranked Nebraska in the Orange Bowl.
Bryant's 1973 squad split national championships with Notre Dame, who defeated Alabama, 24–23, in the Sugar Bowl. The UPI thereafter moved its final poll until after the bowl games.
The 1978 Alabama Crimson Tide football team split the national title with USC despite losing to the Trojans in September. The Trojans would lose later in the year to three-loss Arizona State and drop to number 3. At the end of the year, number 2 Alabama would beat undefeated and top-ranked Penn State in the Sugar Bowl, with the famous late-game goal line stand to preserve the victory.
Bryant won his sixth and final national title in 1979 after a 24–9 Sugar Bowl victory over Arkansas.
Bryant coached at Alabama for 25 years, winning six national titles (1961, 1964, 1965, 1973, 1978, and 1979) and thirteen SEC championships. Bryant's win over in-state rival Auburn, coached by former Bryant assistant Pat Dye on November 28, 1981, was Bryant's 315th as a head coach, which was the most of any head coach at that time. His all-time record as a coach was 323–85–17.
Personal life and death
Bryant was a heavy smoker and drinker for most of his life, and his health began to decline in the late 1970s. He collapsed due to a cardiac episode in 1977 and decided to enter alcohol rehab, but resumed drinking after only a few months of sobriety. Bryant experienced a mild stroke in 1980 that weakened the left side of his body and another cardiac episode in 1981 and was taking a battery of medications in his final years.
Shortly before his death, Bryant met with evangelist Robert Schuller on a plane flight and the two talked extensively about religion, which apparently made an impression on the coach, who felt considerable guilt over his mistreatment of the Junction Boys and hiding his smoking and drinking habits from his mother.
After a sixth-place SEC finish in the 1982 season that included losses to LSU and Tennessee, each for the first time since 1970, Bryant, who had turned 69 that September, announced his retirement, stating, "This is my school, my alma mater. I love it and I love my players. But in my opinion, they deserved better coaching than they have been getting from me this year." His last game was a 21–15 victory in the Liberty Bowl in Memphis, Tennessee, over the University of Illinois. After the game, Bryant was asked what he planned to do now that he was retired. He replied, "Probably croak in a week."
Four weeks after making that comment, and just one day after passing a routine medical checkup, on January 25, 1983, Bryant checked into Druid City Hospital in Tuscaloosa after experiencing chest pain. A day later, when being prepared for an electrocardiogram, he died after suffering a massive heart attack.
His personal physician, Dr. William Hill, said that he was amazed that Bryant had been able to coach Alabama to two national championships in what would be the last five years of his life, given the poor state of his health. First news of Bryant's death came from Bert Bank (WTBC Radio Tuscaloosa) and on the NBC Radio Network (anchored by Stan Martyn and reported by Stewart Stogel). On his hand at the time of his death was the only piece of jewelry he ever wore, a gold ring inscribed "Junction Boys". He is interred at Birmingham's Elmwood Cemetery. A month after his death, Bryant was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award, by President Ronald Reagan. A moment of silence was held before Super Bowl XVII, played four days after Bryant's death.
Defamation suit
In 1962, Bryant filed a libel suit against The Saturday Evening Post for printing an article by Furman Bisher ("College Football Is Going Berserk") that charged him with encouraging his players to engage in brutality in a 1961 game against the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets. Six months later, the magazine published "The Story of a College Football Fix" that charged Bryant and Georgia Bulldogs athletic director and ex-coach Wally Butts with conspiring to fix their 1962 game together in Alabama's favor. Butts also sued Curtis Publishing Co. for libel. The case was decided in Butts' favor in the US District Court of Northern Georgia in August 1963, but Curtis Publishing appealed to the Supreme Court. As a result of Curtis Publishing Co. v. Butts 388 U.S. 130 (1967), Curtis Publishing was ordered to pay $3,060,000 in damages to Butts. The case is considered a landmark case because it established conditions under which a news organization can be held liable for defamation of a "public figure". Bryant reached a separate out-of-court settlement on both of his cases for $300,000 against Curtis Publishing in January 1964.
Honors and awards
Inducted into Omicron Delta Kappa at the University of Kentucky in 1949
12-time Southeastern Conference Coach of the Year
The portion of 10th Street which runs through the University of Alabama campus was renamed Paul W. Bryant Drive.
Three-time National Coach of the Year in 1961, 1971, and 1973. The national coach of the year award was subsequently named the Paul "Bear" Bryant Award in his honor.
In 1975, Alabama's Denny Stadium was renamed Bryant–Denny Stadium in his honor. Bryant would coach the final seven years of his tenure at the stadium, and is thus one of only four men in Division I-A/FBS to have coached in a stadium named after him. The others are Shug Jordan at Auburn, Bill Snyder at Kansas State and LaVell Edwards at BYU.
Was named Head Coach of Sports Illustrated's NCAA Football All-Century Team.
He received 1.5 votes for the Democratic Party Presidential nomination at the extremely contentious 1968 Democratic Convention
In 1979, Bryant received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. His Golden Plate was presented by Awards Council member Tom Landry.
In February 1983, Bryant was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Ronald Reagan.
Bryant was honored with a U.S. postage stamp in 1996.
Country singer Roger Hallmark recorded a tribute song in his honor.
Charles Ghigna wrote a poem that appeared in the Birmingham-Post Herald in 1983 as a tribute to Bryant.
Super Bowl XVII was dedicated to Bryant. A moment of silence was held in his memory during the pregame ceremonies. Some of his former Alabama players were on the rosters of both teams, including Miami Dolphins nose tackle Bob Baumhower and running back Tony Nathan, and Washington Redskins running back Wilbur Jackson. Also, at the end of Leslie Easterbrook's performance of the National Anthem, several planes from Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama did the traditional missing-man formation over the Rose Bowl in his memory.
The extinct shark Cretalamna bryanti was named after Bryant and his family in 2018, due to their contributions to the University of Alabama and McWane Science Center where the type material is held.
Legacy
Many of Bryant's former players and assistant coaches went on to become head coaches at the collegiate level and in the National Football League. Danny Ford (Clemson, 1981), Howard Schnellenberger (Miami of Florida, 1983), and Gene Stallings (Alabama, 1992), one of the Junction Boys, all won national championships as head coaches for NCAA programs while Joey Jones, Mike Riley, and David Cutcliffe are active head coaches in the NCAA. Charles McClendon, Jerry Claiborne, Sylvester Croom, Jim Owens, Jackie Sherrill, Bill Battle, Bud Moore and Pat Dye were also notable NCAA head coaches. Croom was the SEC's first African-American head coach at Mississippi State from 2004 through 2008. NFL head coach Bruce Arians was a running backs coach under Bryant in 1981–82.
Ozzie Newsome, who played for Bryant at Alabama from 1974 to 1977, played professional football for the Cleveland Browns for 13 seasons (1978-1990), and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1999. Newsome was the general manager of the Cleveland Browns-Baltimore Ravens from 1996 through 2018. Newsome was the GM of the Ravens' Super Bowl XXXV championship team in 2000, and their Super Bowl XLVII championship team in 2012.
Jack Pardee, one of the Junction Boys, played linebacker in the NFL for 16 seasons with the Los Angeles Rams and Washington Redskins, was a college head coach at the University of Houston, and an NFL head coach with Chicago, Washington, and Houston.
Bryant was portrayed by Gary Busey in the 1984 film The Bear, by Sonny Shroyer in the 1994 film Forrest Gump, Tom Berenger in the 2002 film The Junction Boys, and Jon Voight in the 2015 film Woodlawn.
In a 1980 interview with Time magazine, Bryant admitted that he had been too hard on the Junction Boys and "If I were one of their players, I probably would have quit too."
Bruce Arians, Tampa Bay Buccaneers head coach who would go onto win Super Bowl LV, was an assistant to Bryant at Alabama from 1981 to 1982.
Head coaching record
In his 38 seasons as a head coach, Bryant had 37 winning seasons and participated in a total of 29 postseason bowl games, including 24 consecutively at Alabama. He won 15 bowl games, including eight Sugar Bowls. Bryant still holds the records as the youngest college football head coach to win 300 games and compile 30 winning seasons.
See also
The Bear Bryant Show
List of presidents of the American Football Coaches Association
List of college football coaches with 200 wins
References
Further reading
Keith Dunnavant, Coach: The Life of Paul "Bear" Bryant (New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 2005).
Paul W. Bryant with John Underwood, Bear: The Hard Life and Good Times of Alabama's Coach Bryant (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1974).
Mickey Herskowitz, The Legend of Bear Bryant, (Austin, Texas: Eakin Press, 1993).
Jim Dent, The Junction Boys: How Ten Days in Hell with Bear Bryant Forged a Championship Team (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999).
Tom Stoddard, Turnaround: Bear Bryant's First Year at Alabama (Montgomery, Alabama: Black Belt Press, 2000).
Randy Roberts and Ed Krzemienski, Rising Tide: Bear Bryant, Joe Namath, and Dixie's Last Quarter (New York: Twelve, Hachette Book Group, 2013).
James Kirby, Fumble: Bear Bryant, Wally Butts, and the Great College Football Scandal (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanavich, 1986).
Albert Figone, Cheating the Spread: Gamblers, Point Shavers and Game Fixers in College Football and Basketball (University of Illinois Press, 2012).
Furman Bisher, "College Football is Going Berserk: A Game Ruled by Brute Force Needs a Housecleaning", Saturday Evening Post, October 20, 1962.
Frank Graham, Jr. "The Story of a College Football Fix", Saturday Evening Post, March 23, 1963.
John David Briley. 2006. Career in Crisis : Paul "Bear" Bryant And the 1971 Season of Change. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press.
External links
Paul W. Bryant Museum
"Paul 'Bear' Bryant" , Encyclopedia of Alabama
Digitized speeches and photographs of Coach Bryant from the University Libraries Division of Special Collections, The University of Alabama
1913 births
1983 deaths
American football ends
Alabama Crimson Tide athletic directors
Alabama Crimson Tide football coaches
Alabama Crimson Tide football players
Georgia Pre-Flight Skycrackers football coaches
Kentucky Wildcats football coaches
Maryland Terrapins football coaches
North Carolina Pre-Flight Cloudbusters football coaches
Texas A&M Aggies athletic directors
Texas A&M Aggies football coaches
Union Bulldogs football coaches
Vanderbilt Commodores football coaches
College Football Hall of Fame inductees
United States Navy personnel of World War II
United States Navy officers
Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients
People from Cleveland County, Arkansas
Coaches of American football from Arkansas
Players of American football from Arkansas
Burials at Elmwood Cemetery (Birmingham, Alabama) | false | [
"is a former Japanese football player.\n\nPlaying career\nIwamaru was born in Fujioka on December 4, 1981. After graduating from high school, he joined the J1 League club Vissel Kobe in 2000. However he did not play as much as Makoto Kakegawa until 2003. In 2004, he played more often, after Kakegawa got hurt. In September 2004, he moved to Júbilo Iwata. In late 2004, he played often, after regular goalkeeper Yohei Sato got hurt. In 2005, he moved to the newly promoted J2 League club, Thespa Kusatsu (later Thespakusatsu Gunma), based in his home region. He competed with Nobuyuki Kojima for the position and played often. \n\nIn 2006, he moved to the newly promoted J1 club, Avispa Fukuoka. However he did not play as much as Yuichi Mizutani. In 2007, he moved to the newly promoted J1 club, Yokohama FC. However he did not play as much as Takanori Sugeno and the club was relegated to J2 within a year. Although he did not play as much as Kenji Koyama in 2008, he played often in 2009. He did not play at all in 2010. \n\nIn 2011, he moved to the J2 club Roasso Kumamoto. He did not play as much as Yuta Minami. In 2013, he moved to the newly promoted J2 club, V-Varen Nagasaki. Although he played in the first three matches, he did play at all after the fourth match, when Junki Kanayama played in his place. In 2014, he moved to the J2 club Thespakusatsu Gunma based in his local region. However he did not play at all, and retired at the end of the 2014 season.\n\nClub statistics\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n\n \n\n1981 births\nLiving people\nAssociation football people from Gunma Prefecture\nJapanese footballers\nJ1 League players\nJ2 League players\nVissel Kobe players\nJúbilo Iwata players\nThespakusatsu Gunma players\nAvispa Fukuoka players\nYokohama FC players\nRoasso Kumamoto players\nV-Varen Nagasaki players\nAssociation football goalkeepers",
"John Stirk (born 5 September 1955) is an English former footballer. His primary position was as a right back. During his career he played for Ipswich Town, Watford, Chesterfield and North Shields. He also made two appearances for England at youth level.\n\nCareer \n\nBorn in Consett, Stirk played youth football for local non-league team Consett A.F.C. He joined Ipswich Town on schoolboy terms in 1971, and after making two appearances for the England youth team, turned professional in 1973. During his time at Ipswich he was largely a reserve. He made his first-team debut on 5 November 1977, in a Football League First Division match against Manchester City at Portman Road. His manager at the time was Bobby Robson, who later went on to manage the England national football team. Ipswich won the FA Cup in 1978, in what proved to be Stirk's final season at the club. However, Stirk himself did not play in the final, nor did he play in any of the rounds en route to the final.\n\nAnother future England manager, Watford's Graham Taylor, signed Stirk for a transfer fee of £30,000 at the end of the 1977–78 season. Stirk went on to play every Watford league game in the 1978–79 season, as Watford gained promotion to the Second Division. However, Stirk did not play for Watford in the Second Division. Two months before the end of the 1979–80 season, Stirk was sold to Third Division side Chesterfield, at a profit to Watford of £10,000. After making 56 league appearances over two and a half seasons, Stirk left Chesterfield in 1983 moving on to Blyth Spartans then Tow Law Town, and finished his career at non-league North Shields.\n\nReferences \n\n1955 births\nLiving people\nConsett A.F.C. players\nIpswich Town F.C. players\nWatford F.C. players\nChesterfield F.C. players\nEnglish Football League players\nNorth Shields F.C. players\nSportspeople from Consett\nAssociation football fullbacks\nEnglish footballers"
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| C_1aa483b6375848cdae627105519c187c_0 | what team did he coach? | 3 | what team did Bear Bryant coach? | Bear Bryant | Many of Bryant's former players and assistant coaches went on to become head coaches at the collegiate level and in the National Football League. Danny Ford (Clemson, 1981), Howard Schnellenberger (Miami of Florida, 1983), and Gene Stallings (Alabama, 1992) all won national championships as head coaches for NCAA programs while Joey Jones, Mike Riley, and David Cutcliffe are active head coaches in the NCAA. Charles McClendon, Jerry Claiborne, Sylvester Croom, Jim Owens, Jackie Sherrill, Bill Battle, and Pat Dye were also notable NCAA head coaches. Croom was the SEC's first African-American head coach at Mississippi State from 2004 through 2008. Arizona Cardinals head coach Bruce Arians was a running backs coach under Bryant in 1981-82. Ozzie Newsome is active as the general manager of the Baltimore Ravens. He was a Professional Football Hall of Fame tight end for the Cleveland Browns for 13 seasons (1978-90) and stayed loyal to owner Art Modell after the move to Baltimore. Newsome was the GM of the Ravens' Super Bowl XXXV championship team in 2000, and their Super Bowl XLVII championship team in 2012. Jack Pardee, one of the Junction Boys, played linebacker in the NFL for 16 seasons with the Los Angeles Rams and Washington Redskins, was a college head coach at the University of Houston, and was an NFL head coach with Chicago, Washington, and Houston. Bryant was portrayed by Gary Busey in the 1984 film The Bear, by Sonny Shroyer in the 1994 film Forrest Gump, Tom Berenger in the 2002 film The Junction Boys, and Jon Voight in the 2015 film Woodlawn. In a 1980 interview with Time magazine, Bryant admitted that he had been too hard on the Junction Boys and "If I were one of their players, I probably would have quit too." CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Paul William "Bear" Bryant (September 11, 1913 – January 26, 1983) was an American college football player and coach. He is considered by many to be the greatest college football coach of all time, and best known as the head coach of the University of Alabama football team. During his 25-year tenure as Alabama's head coach, he amassed six national championships and thirteen conference championships. Upon his retirement in 1982, he held the record for the most wins (323) as a head coach in collegiate football history. The Paul W. Bryant Museum, Paul W. Bryant Hall, Paul W. Bryant Drive, and Bryant–Denny Stadium are all named in his honor at the University of Alabama. He was also known for his trademark black and white houndstooth hat, deep voice, casually leaning up against the goal post during pre-game warmups, and holding his rolled-up game plan while on the sidelines. Before arriving at Alabama, Bryant was head football coach at the University of Maryland, the University of Kentucky, and Texas A&M University.
Early life
Bryant was the 11th of 12 children who were born to Wilson Monroe Bryant and Ida Kilgore Bryant in Moro Bottom, Cleveland County, Arkansas. His nickname stemmed from his having agreed to wrestle a captive bear during a carnival promotion when he was 13 years old. His mother wanted him to be a minister, but Bryant told her "Coaching is a lot like preaching".
He attended Fordyce High School, where tall Bryant, who as an adult would eventually stand , began playing on the school's football team as an eighth grader. During his senior season, the team, with Bryant playing offensive line and defensive end, won the 1930 Arkansas state football championship.
College playing career
Bryant accepted a scholarship to play for the University of Alabama in 1931. Since he elected to leave high school before completing his diploma, Bryant had to enroll in a Tuscaloosa high school to finish his education during the fall semester while he practiced with the college team. Bryant played end for the Crimson Tide and was a participant on the school's 1934 national championship team. Bryant was the self-described "other end" during his playing years with the team, playing opposite the big star, Don Hutson, who later became a star in the National Football League and a Pro Football Hall of Famer. Bryant himself was second team All-Southeastern Conference in 1934, and was third team all conference in both 1933 and 1935. Bryant played with a partially broken leg in a 1935 game against Tennessee. Bryant was a member of Sigma Nu Fraternity, and as a senior, he married Mary Harmon, which he kept a secret since Alabama did not allow active players to be married.
Bryant was selected in the fourth round by the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1936 NFL Draft, but never played professional football.
Coaching career
Assistant and North Carolina Pre-Flight
After graduating from the University of Alabama in 1936, Bryant took a coaching job under A. B. Hollingsworth at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee, but he left that position when offered an assistant coaching position under Frank Thomas at the University of Alabama. Over the next four years, the team compiled a 29–5–3 record. In 1940, he left Alabama to become an assistant at Vanderbilt University under Henry Russell Sanders. During their 1940 season, Bryant served as head coach of the Commodores for their 7–7 tie against Kentucky as Sanders was recovering from an appendectomy. After the 1941 season, Bryant was offered the head coaching job at the University of Arkansas. However, Pearl Harbor was bombed soon thereafter, and Bryant declined the position to join the United States Navy. In 1942 he served as an assistant coach with the Georgia Pre-Flight Skycrackers.
Bryant then served off North Africa, seeing no combat action. However, his ship, the converted liner , was rammed by an oil tanker near Bermuda and ordered to be abandoned. Bryant disobeyed the order, saving the lives of his men. Allen Barra claims that two hundred others died in the collision.
He was later granted an honorable discharge to train recruits and coach the North Carolina Navy Pre-Flight football team. One of the players he coached for the Navy was the future Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback Otto Graham. While in the navy, Bryant attained the rank of lieutenant commander.
Maryland
In 1945, 32-year-old Bryant met Washington Redskins owner George Marshall at a cocktail party hosted by the Chicago Tribune, and mentioned that he had turned down offers to be an assistant coach at Alabama and Georgia Tech because he was intent on becoming a head coach. Marshall put him in contact with Harry Clifton "Curley" Byrd, the president and former football coach of the University of Maryland.
After meeting with Byrd the next day, Bryant received the job as head coach of the Maryland Terrapins. In his only season at Maryland, Bryant led the team to a 6–2–1 record. However, Bryant and Byrd came into conflict. In the most prominent incident, while Bryant was on vacation, Byrd brought back a player that was suspended by Bryant for not following the team rules. After the 1945 season, Bryant left Maryland to take over as head coach at the University of Kentucky.
Kentucky
Bryant coached at Kentucky for eight seasons. Under Bryant, Kentucky made its first bowl appearance in 1947 and won its first Southeastern Conference title in 1950. The 1950 Kentucky Wildcats football team finished with a school best 11–1 record and concluded the season with a victory over Bud Wilkinson's top-ranked Oklahoma Sooners in the Sugar Bowl. The final AP poll was released before bowl games in that era, so Kentucky ended the regular season ranked #7. But several other contemporaneous polls, as well as the Sagarin Ratings System applied retrospectively, declared Bryant's 1950 Wildcats to be the national champions, but neither the NCAA nor College Football Data Warehouse recognizes this claim. Bryant also led Kentucky to appearances in the Great Lakes Bowl, Orange Bowl, and Cotton Bowl Classic. Kentucky's final AP poll rankings under Bryant included #11 in 1949, #7 in 1950, #15 in 1951, #20 in 1952, and #16 in 1953. The 1950 season was Kentucky's highest rank until it finished #6 in the final 1977 AP Poll.
Though he led Kentucky's football program to its greatest achievement, Bryant resigned after the 1953 season because he felt that Adolph Rupp's basketball team would always be the school's primary sport. Years after leaving Lexington, Bryant had a better relationship with Rupp. For instance, Bryant was Alabama's athletic director in 1969 and called Rupp to ask if he had any recommendations for Alabama's new basketball coach. Rupp recommended C. M. Newton, a former backup player at Kentucky in the late 1940s. Newton went on to lead the Crimson Tide to three straight SEC titles.
Texas A&M
In 1954, Bryant accepted the head coaching job at Texas A&M University. He also served as athletic director while at Texas A&M.
The Aggies suffered through a grueling 1–9 season in 1954, which began with the infamous training camp in Junction, Texas. The "survivors" were given the name "Junction Boys". Two years later, Bryant led the 1956 Texas A&M Aggies football team to the Southwest Conference championship with a 34–21 victory over the Texas Longhorns at Austin. The following year, Bryant's star back John David Crow won the Heisman Trophy, and the 1957 Aggies were in title contention until they lost to the #20 Rice Owls in Houston, amid rumors that Alabama would be going after Bryant.
Again, as at Kentucky, Bryant attempted to integrate the Texas A&M squad. "We'll be the last football team in the Southwest Conference to integrate", he was told by a Texas A&M official. "Well", Bryant replied, "then that's where we're going to finish in football."
At the close of the 1957 season, having compiled an overall 25–14–2 record at Texas A&M, Bryant returned to Tuscaloosa to take the head coaching position, succeeding Jennings B. Whitworth, as well as the athletic director job at Alabama.
Alabama
When asked why he returned to his alma mater, Bryant replied, "Mama called. And when Mama calls, you just have to come runnin'." Bryant's first spring practice back at Alabama was much like what happened at Junction. Some of Bryant's assistants thought it was even more difficult, as dozens of players quit the team. After winning a combined four games in the three years before Bryant's arrival (including Alabama's only winless season on the field in modern times), the Tide went 5–4–1 in Bryant's first season. The next year, in 1959, Alabama beat Auburn and appeared in the inaugural Liberty Bowl, the first time the Crimson Tide had beaten Auburn or appeared in a bowl game in six years. In 1961, with quarterback Pat Trammell and football greats Lee Roy Jordan and Billy Neighbors, Alabama went 11–0 and defeated Arkansas 10–3 in the Sugar Bowl to claim the national championship.
The next three years (1962–1964) featured Joe Namath at quarterback and were among Bryant's finest. The 1962 season ended with a 17–0 victory in the Orange Bowl over Bud Wilkinson's Oklahoma Sooners. The 1963 season ended with a 12–7 victory over Ole Miss in the Sugar Bowl, which was the first game between the two Southeastern Conference neighbors in almost 20 years, and only the second in 30 years. In 1964, the Tide won another national championship, but lost 21–17 to Texas in the Orange Bowl, in the first nationally televised college game in color. The Tide ended up sharing the 1964 national title with Arkansas, as the Razorbacks won the Cotton Bowl Classic, and had beaten Texas in Austin. Before 1968, the AP and UPI polls gave out their championships before the bowl games. The AP ceased this practice before the 1968 season, but the UPI continued until 1973. The 1965 Crimson Tide repeated as champions after defeating Nebraska, 39–28, in the Orange Bowl. Coming off back-to-back national championship seasons, Bryant's 1966 Alabama team went undefeated in, beating a strong Nebraska team, 34–7, in the Sugar Bowl. However, Alabama finished third in the nation behind Michigan State and champions Notre Dame, who had previously played to a 10–10 tie in a late regular season game. In a biography of Bryant written by Allen Barra, the author suggests that the major polling services refused to elect Alabama as national champion for a third straight year because of Alabama Governor George Wallace's recent stand against integration
The 1967 Alabama team was billed as another national championship contender with star quarterback Kenny Stabler returning, but they stumbled out of the gate and tied Florida State, 37–37, at Legion Field. Alabama finished the year at 8–2–1, losing 20–16 in the Cotton Bowl Classic to Texas A&M, coached by former Bryant player and assistant coach Gene Stallings. In 1968, Bryant again could not match his previous successes, as the team went 8–3, losing to the Missouri, 35–10, in the Gator Bowl.
The 1969 and 1970 teams finished 6–5 and 6–5–1 respectively. After these disappointing efforts, many began to wonder if the 57-year-old Bryant was washed up. He himself began feeling the same way and considered either retiring from coaching or leaving college football for the National Football League (NFL).
For years, Bryant was accused of racism for refusing to recruit black players. (He had tried to do so at Kentucky in the late 40s but was denied by then University President, Herman Donovan)
. Bryant said that the prevailing social climate and the overwhelming presence of noted segregationist George Wallace in Alabama, first as governor and then as a presidential candidate, did not let him do this. He finally was able to convince the administration to allow him to do so, leading to the recruitment of Wilbur Jackson as Alabama's first black scholarship player who was recruited in 1969 and signed in the Spring of 1970. Junior-college transfer John Mitchell became the first black player for Alabama in 1971 because freshmen, thus Jackson, were not eligible to play at that time. They would both be a credit to the University by their conduct and play, thus widening the door and warming the welcome for many more to follow. By 1973, one-third of the team's starters were black, and Mitchell became the Tide's first black coach that season.
In 1971, Bryant began engineering a comeback. This included abandoning Alabama's old power offense for the relatively new wishbone formation. Darrell Royal, the Texas football coach whose assistant, Emory Bellard virtually invented the wishbone, taught Bryant its basics, but Bryant developed successful variations of the wishbone that Royal had never used. The change helped make the remainder of the decade a successful one for the Crimson Tide.
The 1971 Alabama Crimson Tide football team went undefeated in the regular season and rose to #2 in the AP Poll, but were dominated by top-ranked Nebraska in the Orange Bowl.
Bryant's 1973 squad split national championships with Notre Dame, who defeated Alabama, 24–23, in the Sugar Bowl. The UPI thereafter moved its final poll until after the bowl games.
The 1978 Alabama Crimson Tide football team split the national title with USC despite losing to the Trojans in September. The Trojans would lose later in the year to three-loss Arizona State and drop to number 3. At the end of the year, number 2 Alabama would beat undefeated and top-ranked Penn State in the Sugar Bowl, with the famous late-game goal line stand to preserve the victory.
Bryant won his sixth and final national title in 1979 after a 24–9 Sugar Bowl victory over Arkansas.
Bryant coached at Alabama for 25 years, winning six national titles (1961, 1964, 1965, 1973, 1978, and 1979) and thirteen SEC championships. Bryant's win over in-state rival Auburn, coached by former Bryant assistant Pat Dye on November 28, 1981, was Bryant's 315th as a head coach, which was the most of any head coach at that time. His all-time record as a coach was 323–85–17.
Personal life and death
Bryant was a heavy smoker and drinker for most of his life, and his health began to decline in the late 1970s. He collapsed due to a cardiac episode in 1977 and decided to enter alcohol rehab, but resumed drinking after only a few months of sobriety. Bryant experienced a mild stroke in 1980 that weakened the left side of his body and another cardiac episode in 1981 and was taking a battery of medications in his final years.
Shortly before his death, Bryant met with evangelist Robert Schuller on a plane flight and the two talked extensively about religion, which apparently made an impression on the coach, who felt considerable guilt over his mistreatment of the Junction Boys and hiding his smoking and drinking habits from his mother.
After a sixth-place SEC finish in the 1982 season that included losses to LSU and Tennessee, each for the first time since 1970, Bryant, who had turned 69 that September, announced his retirement, stating, "This is my school, my alma mater. I love it and I love my players. But in my opinion, they deserved better coaching than they have been getting from me this year." His last game was a 21–15 victory in the Liberty Bowl in Memphis, Tennessee, over the University of Illinois. After the game, Bryant was asked what he planned to do now that he was retired. He replied, "Probably croak in a week."
Four weeks after making that comment, and just one day after passing a routine medical checkup, on January 25, 1983, Bryant checked into Druid City Hospital in Tuscaloosa after experiencing chest pain. A day later, when being prepared for an electrocardiogram, he died after suffering a massive heart attack.
His personal physician, Dr. William Hill, said that he was amazed that Bryant had been able to coach Alabama to two national championships in what would be the last five years of his life, given the poor state of his health. First news of Bryant's death came from Bert Bank (WTBC Radio Tuscaloosa) and on the NBC Radio Network (anchored by Stan Martyn and reported by Stewart Stogel). On his hand at the time of his death was the only piece of jewelry he ever wore, a gold ring inscribed "Junction Boys". He is interred at Birmingham's Elmwood Cemetery. A month after his death, Bryant was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award, by President Ronald Reagan. A moment of silence was held before Super Bowl XVII, played four days after Bryant's death.
Defamation suit
In 1962, Bryant filed a libel suit against The Saturday Evening Post for printing an article by Furman Bisher ("College Football Is Going Berserk") that charged him with encouraging his players to engage in brutality in a 1961 game against the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets. Six months later, the magazine published "The Story of a College Football Fix" that charged Bryant and Georgia Bulldogs athletic director and ex-coach Wally Butts with conspiring to fix their 1962 game together in Alabama's favor. Butts also sued Curtis Publishing Co. for libel. The case was decided in Butts' favor in the US District Court of Northern Georgia in August 1963, but Curtis Publishing appealed to the Supreme Court. As a result of Curtis Publishing Co. v. Butts 388 U.S. 130 (1967), Curtis Publishing was ordered to pay $3,060,000 in damages to Butts. The case is considered a landmark case because it established conditions under which a news organization can be held liable for defamation of a "public figure". Bryant reached a separate out-of-court settlement on both of his cases for $300,000 against Curtis Publishing in January 1964.
Honors and awards
Inducted into Omicron Delta Kappa at the University of Kentucky in 1949
12-time Southeastern Conference Coach of the Year
The portion of 10th Street which runs through the University of Alabama campus was renamed Paul W. Bryant Drive.
Three-time National Coach of the Year in 1961, 1971, and 1973. The national coach of the year award was subsequently named the Paul "Bear" Bryant Award in his honor.
In 1975, Alabama's Denny Stadium was renamed Bryant–Denny Stadium in his honor. Bryant would coach the final seven years of his tenure at the stadium, and is thus one of only four men in Division I-A/FBS to have coached in a stadium named after him. The others are Shug Jordan at Auburn, Bill Snyder at Kansas State and LaVell Edwards at BYU.
Was named Head Coach of Sports Illustrated's NCAA Football All-Century Team.
He received 1.5 votes for the Democratic Party Presidential nomination at the extremely contentious 1968 Democratic Convention
In 1979, Bryant received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. His Golden Plate was presented by Awards Council member Tom Landry.
In February 1983, Bryant was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Ronald Reagan.
Bryant was honored with a U.S. postage stamp in 1996.
Country singer Roger Hallmark recorded a tribute song in his honor.
Charles Ghigna wrote a poem that appeared in the Birmingham-Post Herald in 1983 as a tribute to Bryant.
Super Bowl XVII was dedicated to Bryant. A moment of silence was held in his memory during the pregame ceremonies. Some of his former Alabama players were on the rosters of both teams, including Miami Dolphins nose tackle Bob Baumhower and running back Tony Nathan, and Washington Redskins running back Wilbur Jackson. Also, at the end of Leslie Easterbrook's performance of the National Anthem, several planes from Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama did the traditional missing-man formation over the Rose Bowl in his memory.
The extinct shark Cretalamna bryanti was named after Bryant and his family in 2018, due to their contributions to the University of Alabama and McWane Science Center where the type material is held.
Legacy
Many of Bryant's former players and assistant coaches went on to become head coaches at the collegiate level and in the National Football League. Danny Ford (Clemson, 1981), Howard Schnellenberger (Miami of Florida, 1983), and Gene Stallings (Alabama, 1992), one of the Junction Boys, all won national championships as head coaches for NCAA programs while Joey Jones, Mike Riley, and David Cutcliffe are active head coaches in the NCAA. Charles McClendon, Jerry Claiborne, Sylvester Croom, Jim Owens, Jackie Sherrill, Bill Battle, Bud Moore and Pat Dye were also notable NCAA head coaches. Croom was the SEC's first African-American head coach at Mississippi State from 2004 through 2008. NFL head coach Bruce Arians was a running backs coach under Bryant in 1981–82.
Ozzie Newsome, who played for Bryant at Alabama from 1974 to 1977, played professional football for the Cleveland Browns for 13 seasons (1978-1990), and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1999. Newsome was the general manager of the Cleveland Browns-Baltimore Ravens from 1996 through 2018. Newsome was the GM of the Ravens' Super Bowl XXXV championship team in 2000, and their Super Bowl XLVII championship team in 2012.
Jack Pardee, one of the Junction Boys, played linebacker in the NFL for 16 seasons with the Los Angeles Rams and Washington Redskins, was a college head coach at the University of Houston, and an NFL head coach with Chicago, Washington, and Houston.
Bryant was portrayed by Gary Busey in the 1984 film The Bear, by Sonny Shroyer in the 1994 film Forrest Gump, Tom Berenger in the 2002 film The Junction Boys, and Jon Voight in the 2015 film Woodlawn.
In a 1980 interview with Time magazine, Bryant admitted that he had been too hard on the Junction Boys and "If I were one of their players, I probably would have quit too."
Bruce Arians, Tampa Bay Buccaneers head coach who would go onto win Super Bowl LV, was an assistant to Bryant at Alabama from 1981 to 1982.
Head coaching record
In his 38 seasons as a head coach, Bryant had 37 winning seasons and participated in a total of 29 postseason bowl games, including 24 consecutively at Alabama. He won 15 bowl games, including eight Sugar Bowls. Bryant still holds the records as the youngest college football head coach to win 300 games and compile 30 winning seasons.
See also
The Bear Bryant Show
List of presidents of the American Football Coaches Association
List of college football coaches with 200 wins
References
Further reading
Keith Dunnavant, Coach: The Life of Paul "Bear" Bryant (New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 2005).
Paul W. Bryant with John Underwood, Bear: The Hard Life and Good Times of Alabama's Coach Bryant (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1974).
Mickey Herskowitz, The Legend of Bear Bryant, (Austin, Texas: Eakin Press, 1993).
Jim Dent, The Junction Boys: How Ten Days in Hell with Bear Bryant Forged a Championship Team (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999).
Tom Stoddard, Turnaround: Bear Bryant's First Year at Alabama (Montgomery, Alabama: Black Belt Press, 2000).
Randy Roberts and Ed Krzemienski, Rising Tide: Bear Bryant, Joe Namath, and Dixie's Last Quarter (New York: Twelve, Hachette Book Group, 2013).
James Kirby, Fumble: Bear Bryant, Wally Butts, and the Great College Football Scandal (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanavich, 1986).
Albert Figone, Cheating the Spread: Gamblers, Point Shavers and Game Fixers in College Football and Basketball (University of Illinois Press, 2012).
Furman Bisher, "College Football is Going Berserk: A Game Ruled by Brute Force Needs a Housecleaning", Saturday Evening Post, October 20, 1962.
Frank Graham, Jr. "The Story of a College Football Fix", Saturday Evening Post, March 23, 1963.
John David Briley. 2006. Career in Crisis : Paul "Bear" Bryant And the 1971 Season of Change. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press.
External links
Paul W. Bryant Museum
"Paul 'Bear' Bryant" , Encyclopedia of Alabama
Digitized speeches and photographs of Coach Bryant from the University Libraries Division of Special Collections, The University of Alabama
1913 births
1983 deaths
American football ends
Alabama Crimson Tide athletic directors
Alabama Crimson Tide football coaches
Alabama Crimson Tide football players
Georgia Pre-Flight Skycrackers football coaches
Kentucky Wildcats football coaches
Maryland Terrapins football coaches
North Carolina Pre-Flight Cloudbusters football coaches
Texas A&M Aggies athletic directors
Texas A&M Aggies football coaches
Union Bulldogs football coaches
Vanderbilt Commodores football coaches
College Football Hall of Fame inductees
United States Navy personnel of World War II
United States Navy officers
Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients
People from Cleveland County, Arkansas
Coaches of American football from Arkansas
Players of American football from Arkansas
Burials at Elmwood Cemetery (Birmingham, Alabama) | false | [
"The 1932 Whittier Poets football team was an American football team that represented Whittier College in the Southern California Conference (SCC) during the 1932 college football season. In its third season under head coach Wallace Newman, the team compiled a 10–1 record (5–1 against conference opponents) and won the SCC championship. Tackle Bob Gibbs was the team captain. The team played its home games at Hadley Field in Whittier, California.\n\nRole of Richard Nixon\nRichard Nixon played for the team at the tackle position, and occasionally at end. Though typically a reserve, Nixon was the team's starting left tackle in its October 28 victory over the 160th Infantry team. The team's waterboy, Harold Litten, recalled that Nixon was uncoordinated and \"had two left feet\" but was a leader: \"But, boy, was he an inspiration! He was always talking it up. That's why Chief let him hang around. He was one of those inspirational guys every team needs.\"\n\nCoach Newman in 1969 said the following of Nixon's role on the team: \"No, he never did get a letter, he wasn't that good. But what a scrapper. I remember some of the boys then telling what a licking Dick was taking. And we all marveled at the way he got up and came back for more. . . . Dick had enthusiasm and drive, you betcha. And no one had more moxie. To be a sub, and as light as he was, even then, was rugged. He was practice bait. I don't know if I could have taken the beating he took. Dick liked the battle, though, and the smell of the sweat.\"\n\nNixon later said that he admired coach Newman more than any man he had known other than his father.\n\nSchedule\n\nReferences\n\nWhittier\nWhittier Poets football seasons\nSouthern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference football champion seasons\nWhittier Poets football",
"Joseph Merrill Hoeffel (October 31, 1890 – April 15, 1964) was an American football player and coach who served as head coach of the Green Bay Packers in . Historically, Curly Lambeau has been credited as being the Packers' that year, although this is primarily due to the different rules of American football in the early 1900s. In Hoeffel's era, the head coach was not allowed to communicate with the players while they were playing a game. Lambeau, as team captain, would call the plays during a game and also organized practices, tasks that are now allocated to the head coaching position.\n\nHoffel played college football for Wisconsin, being an All-America selection by Walter Camp in 1912. He played the end position.\n\nEarly life and education\nHoeffel was born on October 31, 1890, in Green Bay, Wisconsin. He attended Green Bay East High School and was a \"star player\" for their football team. He was team captain as a senior. After graduating in 1908, he joined the University of Wisconsin. \n\nThough he did not see much action as a freshman, Hoeffel became a varsity member in 1909, earning a letter. \"Too small to capture a backfield spot at Wisconsin but too good to be ignored,\" he became an end. \"Three physical qualities made him a great player,\" wrote Jack Rudolph of the Green Bay Press-Gazette. \"He was fast, a deadly tackler, and he had a sense of timing that enabled him to get the jump on every play,\" the Press-Gazette reported. \n\nHoeffel continued as a letterman in the following two years, being named all-conference and all-western as a junior. He was named team captain as a senior, and earned the same honors again. He also was a second-team All-America selection by Walter Camp. The 1912 Wisconsin football team compiled an undefeated 7–0 record, winning the conference title.\n\nCoaching career\nAfter graduating from the University of Wisconsin, Hoeffel became an assistant coach at Nebraska. He coached them for three years, before later assisting the staff of Green Bay East High School.\n\nIn , Hoeffel served as the head coach of the Green Bay Packers, a professional team in the American Professional Football Association (APFA) (now National Football League). The team compiled a record of 3–2–1, and Hoeffel did not return to the team in .\n\nHistorically, Curly Lambeau has been credited as being the Packers' in 1921, although this is primarily due to the different rules of American football in the early 1900s. In his era, the head coach was not allowed to communicate with the players while they were playing a game. Lambeau, as team captain, would call the plays during a game and also organized practices, tasks that are now given at the head coaching position.\n\nIn 2001, the Milwaukee Journal led an investigation studying the early Packers, finding through historical newspapers and Packer records that two coaches preceded Lambeau: Hoeffel and Willard Ryan. However, the Packers refused to recognize them as the head coaches. In an interview, Packers president Bob Harlan said, \"He (Lambeau) ran everything. Now, what his title was and what a title meant at that particular time, I'm really not comfortable saying. But he was the one running the show. Considering what he did, I'm a little reluctant to take away any significance to his career.\"\n\nLater life and death\nAfter his sports career, Hoeffel became a businessman, operating the Joseph M. Hoeffel Sales Co. in Green Bay. He died on April 15, 1964, at his home in Green Bay. He was 73 at the time of his death.\n\nReferences\n\n1890 births\n1964 deaths\nAmerican football ends\nGreen Bay Packers coaches\nNebraska Cornhuskers football coaches\nWisconsin Badgers football players\nSportspeople from Green Bay, Wisconsin\nCoaches of American football from Wisconsin\nPlayers of American football from Wisconsin"
]
|
[
"Bear Bryant",
"Legacy",
"what was Bear Bryant's legacy?",
"Many of Bryant's former players and assistant coaches went on to become head coaches at the collegiate level and in the National Football League.",
"What position did he play?",
"I don't know.",
"what team did he coach?",
"I don't know."
]
| C_1aa483b6375848cdae627105519c187c_0 | Did he win awards? | 4 | Did Bear Bryant win awards? | Bear Bryant | Many of Bryant's former players and assistant coaches went on to become head coaches at the collegiate level and in the National Football League. Danny Ford (Clemson, 1981), Howard Schnellenberger (Miami of Florida, 1983), and Gene Stallings (Alabama, 1992) all won national championships as head coaches for NCAA programs while Joey Jones, Mike Riley, and David Cutcliffe are active head coaches in the NCAA. Charles McClendon, Jerry Claiborne, Sylvester Croom, Jim Owens, Jackie Sherrill, Bill Battle, and Pat Dye were also notable NCAA head coaches. Croom was the SEC's first African-American head coach at Mississippi State from 2004 through 2008. Arizona Cardinals head coach Bruce Arians was a running backs coach under Bryant in 1981-82. Ozzie Newsome is active as the general manager of the Baltimore Ravens. He was a Professional Football Hall of Fame tight end for the Cleveland Browns for 13 seasons (1978-90) and stayed loyal to owner Art Modell after the move to Baltimore. Newsome was the GM of the Ravens' Super Bowl XXXV championship team in 2000, and their Super Bowl XLVII championship team in 2012. Jack Pardee, one of the Junction Boys, played linebacker in the NFL for 16 seasons with the Los Angeles Rams and Washington Redskins, was a college head coach at the University of Houston, and was an NFL head coach with Chicago, Washington, and Houston. Bryant was portrayed by Gary Busey in the 1984 film The Bear, by Sonny Shroyer in the 1994 film Forrest Gump, Tom Berenger in the 2002 film The Junction Boys, and Jon Voight in the 2015 film Woodlawn. In a 1980 interview with Time magazine, Bryant admitted that he had been too hard on the Junction Boys and "If I were one of their players, I probably would have quit too." CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Paul William "Bear" Bryant (September 11, 1913 – January 26, 1983) was an American college football player and coach. He is considered by many to be the greatest college football coach of all time, and best known as the head coach of the University of Alabama football team. During his 25-year tenure as Alabama's head coach, he amassed six national championships and thirteen conference championships. Upon his retirement in 1982, he held the record for the most wins (323) as a head coach in collegiate football history. The Paul W. Bryant Museum, Paul W. Bryant Hall, Paul W. Bryant Drive, and Bryant–Denny Stadium are all named in his honor at the University of Alabama. He was also known for his trademark black and white houndstooth hat, deep voice, casually leaning up against the goal post during pre-game warmups, and holding his rolled-up game plan while on the sidelines. Before arriving at Alabama, Bryant was head football coach at the University of Maryland, the University of Kentucky, and Texas A&M University.
Early life
Bryant was the 11th of 12 children who were born to Wilson Monroe Bryant and Ida Kilgore Bryant in Moro Bottom, Cleveland County, Arkansas. His nickname stemmed from his having agreed to wrestle a captive bear during a carnival promotion when he was 13 years old. His mother wanted him to be a minister, but Bryant told her "Coaching is a lot like preaching".
He attended Fordyce High School, where tall Bryant, who as an adult would eventually stand , began playing on the school's football team as an eighth grader. During his senior season, the team, with Bryant playing offensive line and defensive end, won the 1930 Arkansas state football championship.
College playing career
Bryant accepted a scholarship to play for the University of Alabama in 1931. Since he elected to leave high school before completing his diploma, Bryant had to enroll in a Tuscaloosa high school to finish his education during the fall semester while he practiced with the college team. Bryant played end for the Crimson Tide and was a participant on the school's 1934 national championship team. Bryant was the self-described "other end" during his playing years with the team, playing opposite the big star, Don Hutson, who later became a star in the National Football League and a Pro Football Hall of Famer. Bryant himself was second team All-Southeastern Conference in 1934, and was third team all conference in both 1933 and 1935. Bryant played with a partially broken leg in a 1935 game against Tennessee. Bryant was a member of Sigma Nu Fraternity, and as a senior, he married Mary Harmon, which he kept a secret since Alabama did not allow active players to be married.
Bryant was selected in the fourth round by the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1936 NFL Draft, but never played professional football.
Coaching career
Assistant and North Carolina Pre-Flight
After graduating from the University of Alabama in 1936, Bryant took a coaching job under A. B. Hollingsworth at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee, but he left that position when offered an assistant coaching position under Frank Thomas at the University of Alabama. Over the next four years, the team compiled a 29–5–3 record. In 1940, he left Alabama to become an assistant at Vanderbilt University under Henry Russell Sanders. During their 1940 season, Bryant served as head coach of the Commodores for their 7–7 tie against Kentucky as Sanders was recovering from an appendectomy. After the 1941 season, Bryant was offered the head coaching job at the University of Arkansas. However, Pearl Harbor was bombed soon thereafter, and Bryant declined the position to join the United States Navy. In 1942 he served as an assistant coach with the Georgia Pre-Flight Skycrackers.
Bryant then served off North Africa, seeing no combat action. However, his ship, the converted liner , was rammed by an oil tanker near Bermuda and ordered to be abandoned. Bryant disobeyed the order, saving the lives of his men. Allen Barra claims that two hundred others died in the collision.
He was later granted an honorable discharge to train recruits and coach the North Carolina Navy Pre-Flight football team. One of the players he coached for the Navy was the future Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback Otto Graham. While in the navy, Bryant attained the rank of lieutenant commander.
Maryland
In 1945, 32-year-old Bryant met Washington Redskins owner George Marshall at a cocktail party hosted by the Chicago Tribune, and mentioned that he had turned down offers to be an assistant coach at Alabama and Georgia Tech because he was intent on becoming a head coach. Marshall put him in contact with Harry Clifton "Curley" Byrd, the president and former football coach of the University of Maryland.
After meeting with Byrd the next day, Bryant received the job as head coach of the Maryland Terrapins. In his only season at Maryland, Bryant led the team to a 6–2–1 record. However, Bryant and Byrd came into conflict. In the most prominent incident, while Bryant was on vacation, Byrd brought back a player that was suspended by Bryant for not following the team rules. After the 1945 season, Bryant left Maryland to take over as head coach at the University of Kentucky.
Kentucky
Bryant coached at Kentucky for eight seasons. Under Bryant, Kentucky made its first bowl appearance in 1947 and won its first Southeastern Conference title in 1950. The 1950 Kentucky Wildcats football team finished with a school best 11–1 record and concluded the season with a victory over Bud Wilkinson's top-ranked Oklahoma Sooners in the Sugar Bowl. The final AP poll was released before bowl games in that era, so Kentucky ended the regular season ranked #7. But several other contemporaneous polls, as well as the Sagarin Ratings System applied retrospectively, declared Bryant's 1950 Wildcats to be the national champions, but neither the NCAA nor College Football Data Warehouse recognizes this claim. Bryant also led Kentucky to appearances in the Great Lakes Bowl, Orange Bowl, and Cotton Bowl Classic. Kentucky's final AP poll rankings under Bryant included #11 in 1949, #7 in 1950, #15 in 1951, #20 in 1952, and #16 in 1953. The 1950 season was Kentucky's highest rank until it finished #6 in the final 1977 AP Poll.
Though he led Kentucky's football program to its greatest achievement, Bryant resigned after the 1953 season because he felt that Adolph Rupp's basketball team would always be the school's primary sport. Years after leaving Lexington, Bryant had a better relationship with Rupp. For instance, Bryant was Alabama's athletic director in 1969 and called Rupp to ask if he had any recommendations for Alabama's new basketball coach. Rupp recommended C. M. Newton, a former backup player at Kentucky in the late 1940s. Newton went on to lead the Crimson Tide to three straight SEC titles.
Texas A&M
In 1954, Bryant accepted the head coaching job at Texas A&M University. He also served as athletic director while at Texas A&M.
The Aggies suffered through a grueling 1–9 season in 1954, which began with the infamous training camp in Junction, Texas. The "survivors" were given the name "Junction Boys". Two years later, Bryant led the 1956 Texas A&M Aggies football team to the Southwest Conference championship with a 34–21 victory over the Texas Longhorns at Austin. The following year, Bryant's star back John David Crow won the Heisman Trophy, and the 1957 Aggies were in title contention until they lost to the #20 Rice Owls in Houston, amid rumors that Alabama would be going after Bryant.
Again, as at Kentucky, Bryant attempted to integrate the Texas A&M squad. "We'll be the last football team in the Southwest Conference to integrate", he was told by a Texas A&M official. "Well", Bryant replied, "then that's where we're going to finish in football."
At the close of the 1957 season, having compiled an overall 25–14–2 record at Texas A&M, Bryant returned to Tuscaloosa to take the head coaching position, succeeding Jennings B. Whitworth, as well as the athletic director job at Alabama.
Alabama
When asked why he returned to his alma mater, Bryant replied, "Mama called. And when Mama calls, you just have to come runnin'." Bryant's first spring practice back at Alabama was much like what happened at Junction. Some of Bryant's assistants thought it was even more difficult, as dozens of players quit the team. After winning a combined four games in the three years before Bryant's arrival (including Alabama's only winless season on the field in modern times), the Tide went 5–4–1 in Bryant's first season. The next year, in 1959, Alabama beat Auburn and appeared in the inaugural Liberty Bowl, the first time the Crimson Tide had beaten Auburn or appeared in a bowl game in six years. In 1961, with quarterback Pat Trammell and football greats Lee Roy Jordan and Billy Neighbors, Alabama went 11–0 and defeated Arkansas 10–3 in the Sugar Bowl to claim the national championship.
The next three years (1962–1964) featured Joe Namath at quarterback and were among Bryant's finest. The 1962 season ended with a 17–0 victory in the Orange Bowl over Bud Wilkinson's Oklahoma Sooners. The 1963 season ended with a 12–7 victory over Ole Miss in the Sugar Bowl, which was the first game between the two Southeastern Conference neighbors in almost 20 years, and only the second in 30 years. In 1964, the Tide won another national championship, but lost 21–17 to Texas in the Orange Bowl, in the first nationally televised college game in color. The Tide ended up sharing the 1964 national title with Arkansas, as the Razorbacks won the Cotton Bowl Classic, and had beaten Texas in Austin. Before 1968, the AP and UPI polls gave out their championships before the bowl games. The AP ceased this practice before the 1968 season, but the UPI continued until 1973. The 1965 Crimson Tide repeated as champions after defeating Nebraska, 39–28, in the Orange Bowl. Coming off back-to-back national championship seasons, Bryant's 1966 Alabama team went undefeated in, beating a strong Nebraska team, 34–7, in the Sugar Bowl. However, Alabama finished third in the nation behind Michigan State and champions Notre Dame, who had previously played to a 10–10 tie in a late regular season game. In a biography of Bryant written by Allen Barra, the author suggests that the major polling services refused to elect Alabama as national champion for a third straight year because of Alabama Governor George Wallace's recent stand against integration
The 1967 Alabama team was billed as another national championship contender with star quarterback Kenny Stabler returning, but they stumbled out of the gate and tied Florida State, 37–37, at Legion Field. Alabama finished the year at 8–2–1, losing 20–16 in the Cotton Bowl Classic to Texas A&M, coached by former Bryant player and assistant coach Gene Stallings. In 1968, Bryant again could not match his previous successes, as the team went 8–3, losing to the Missouri, 35–10, in the Gator Bowl.
The 1969 and 1970 teams finished 6–5 and 6–5–1 respectively. After these disappointing efforts, many began to wonder if the 57-year-old Bryant was washed up. He himself began feeling the same way and considered either retiring from coaching or leaving college football for the National Football League (NFL).
For years, Bryant was accused of racism for refusing to recruit black players. (He had tried to do so at Kentucky in the late 40s but was denied by then University President, Herman Donovan)
. Bryant said that the prevailing social climate and the overwhelming presence of noted segregationist George Wallace in Alabama, first as governor and then as a presidential candidate, did not let him do this. He finally was able to convince the administration to allow him to do so, leading to the recruitment of Wilbur Jackson as Alabama's first black scholarship player who was recruited in 1969 and signed in the Spring of 1970. Junior-college transfer John Mitchell became the first black player for Alabama in 1971 because freshmen, thus Jackson, were not eligible to play at that time. They would both be a credit to the University by their conduct and play, thus widening the door and warming the welcome for many more to follow. By 1973, one-third of the team's starters were black, and Mitchell became the Tide's first black coach that season.
In 1971, Bryant began engineering a comeback. This included abandoning Alabama's old power offense for the relatively new wishbone formation. Darrell Royal, the Texas football coach whose assistant, Emory Bellard virtually invented the wishbone, taught Bryant its basics, but Bryant developed successful variations of the wishbone that Royal had never used. The change helped make the remainder of the decade a successful one for the Crimson Tide.
The 1971 Alabama Crimson Tide football team went undefeated in the regular season and rose to #2 in the AP Poll, but were dominated by top-ranked Nebraska in the Orange Bowl.
Bryant's 1973 squad split national championships with Notre Dame, who defeated Alabama, 24–23, in the Sugar Bowl. The UPI thereafter moved its final poll until after the bowl games.
The 1978 Alabama Crimson Tide football team split the national title with USC despite losing to the Trojans in September. The Trojans would lose later in the year to three-loss Arizona State and drop to number 3. At the end of the year, number 2 Alabama would beat undefeated and top-ranked Penn State in the Sugar Bowl, with the famous late-game goal line stand to preserve the victory.
Bryant won his sixth and final national title in 1979 after a 24–9 Sugar Bowl victory over Arkansas.
Bryant coached at Alabama for 25 years, winning six national titles (1961, 1964, 1965, 1973, 1978, and 1979) and thirteen SEC championships. Bryant's win over in-state rival Auburn, coached by former Bryant assistant Pat Dye on November 28, 1981, was Bryant's 315th as a head coach, which was the most of any head coach at that time. His all-time record as a coach was 323–85–17.
Personal life and death
Bryant was a heavy smoker and drinker for most of his life, and his health began to decline in the late 1970s. He collapsed due to a cardiac episode in 1977 and decided to enter alcohol rehab, but resumed drinking after only a few months of sobriety. Bryant experienced a mild stroke in 1980 that weakened the left side of his body and another cardiac episode in 1981 and was taking a battery of medications in his final years.
Shortly before his death, Bryant met with evangelist Robert Schuller on a plane flight and the two talked extensively about religion, which apparently made an impression on the coach, who felt considerable guilt over his mistreatment of the Junction Boys and hiding his smoking and drinking habits from his mother.
After a sixth-place SEC finish in the 1982 season that included losses to LSU and Tennessee, each for the first time since 1970, Bryant, who had turned 69 that September, announced his retirement, stating, "This is my school, my alma mater. I love it and I love my players. But in my opinion, they deserved better coaching than they have been getting from me this year." His last game was a 21–15 victory in the Liberty Bowl in Memphis, Tennessee, over the University of Illinois. After the game, Bryant was asked what he planned to do now that he was retired. He replied, "Probably croak in a week."
Four weeks after making that comment, and just one day after passing a routine medical checkup, on January 25, 1983, Bryant checked into Druid City Hospital in Tuscaloosa after experiencing chest pain. A day later, when being prepared for an electrocardiogram, he died after suffering a massive heart attack.
His personal physician, Dr. William Hill, said that he was amazed that Bryant had been able to coach Alabama to two national championships in what would be the last five years of his life, given the poor state of his health. First news of Bryant's death came from Bert Bank (WTBC Radio Tuscaloosa) and on the NBC Radio Network (anchored by Stan Martyn and reported by Stewart Stogel). On his hand at the time of his death was the only piece of jewelry he ever wore, a gold ring inscribed "Junction Boys". He is interred at Birmingham's Elmwood Cemetery. A month after his death, Bryant was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award, by President Ronald Reagan. A moment of silence was held before Super Bowl XVII, played four days after Bryant's death.
Defamation suit
In 1962, Bryant filed a libel suit against The Saturday Evening Post for printing an article by Furman Bisher ("College Football Is Going Berserk") that charged him with encouraging his players to engage in brutality in a 1961 game against the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets. Six months later, the magazine published "The Story of a College Football Fix" that charged Bryant and Georgia Bulldogs athletic director and ex-coach Wally Butts with conspiring to fix their 1962 game together in Alabama's favor. Butts also sued Curtis Publishing Co. for libel. The case was decided in Butts' favor in the US District Court of Northern Georgia in August 1963, but Curtis Publishing appealed to the Supreme Court. As a result of Curtis Publishing Co. v. Butts 388 U.S. 130 (1967), Curtis Publishing was ordered to pay $3,060,000 in damages to Butts. The case is considered a landmark case because it established conditions under which a news organization can be held liable for defamation of a "public figure". Bryant reached a separate out-of-court settlement on both of his cases for $300,000 against Curtis Publishing in January 1964.
Honors and awards
Inducted into Omicron Delta Kappa at the University of Kentucky in 1949
12-time Southeastern Conference Coach of the Year
The portion of 10th Street which runs through the University of Alabama campus was renamed Paul W. Bryant Drive.
Three-time National Coach of the Year in 1961, 1971, and 1973. The national coach of the year award was subsequently named the Paul "Bear" Bryant Award in his honor.
In 1975, Alabama's Denny Stadium was renamed Bryant–Denny Stadium in his honor. Bryant would coach the final seven years of his tenure at the stadium, and is thus one of only four men in Division I-A/FBS to have coached in a stadium named after him. The others are Shug Jordan at Auburn, Bill Snyder at Kansas State and LaVell Edwards at BYU.
Was named Head Coach of Sports Illustrated's NCAA Football All-Century Team.
He received 1.5 votes for the Democratic Party Presidential nomination at the extremely contentious 1968 Democratic Convention
In 1979, Bryant received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. His Golden Plate was presented by Awards Council member Tom Landry.
In February 1983, Bryant was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Ronald Reagan.
Bryant was honored with a U.S. postage stamp in 1996.
Country singer Roger Hallmark recorded a tribute song in his honor.
Charles Ghigna wrote a poem that appeared in the Birmingham-Post Herald in 1983 as a tribute to Bryant.
Super Bowl XVII was dedicated to Bryant. A moment of silence was held in his memory during the pregame ceremonies. Some of his former Alabama players were on the rosters of both teams, including Miami Dolphins nose tackle Bob Baumhower and running back Tony Nathan, and Washington Redskins running back Wilbur Jackson. Also, at the end of Leslie Easterbrook's performance of the National Anthem, several planes from Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama did the traditional missing-man formation over the Rose Bowl in his memory.
The extinct shark Cretalamna bryanti was named after Bryant and his family in 2018, due to their contributions to the University of Alabama and McWane Science Center where the type material is held.
Legacy
Many of Bryant's former players and assistant coaches went on to become head coaches at the collegiate level and in the National Football League. Danny Ford (Clemson, 1981), Howard Schnellenberger (Miami of Florida, 1983), and Gene Stallings (Alabama, 1992), one of the Junction Boys, all won national championships as head coaches for NCAA programs while Joey Jones, Mike Riley, and David Cutcliffe are active head coaches in the NCAA. Charles McClendon, Jerry Claiborne, Sylvester Croom, Jim Owens, Jackie Sherrill, Bill Battle, Bud Moore and Pat Dye were also notable NCAA head coaches. Croom was the SEC's first African-American head coach at Mississippi State from 2004 through 2008. NFL head coach Bruce Arians was a running backs coach under Bryant in 1981–82.
Ozzie Newsome, who played for Bryant at Alabama from 1974 to 1977, played professional football for the Cleveland Browns for 13 seasons (1978-1990), and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1999. Newsome was the general manager of the Cleveland Browns-Baltimore Ravens from 1996 through 2018. Newsome was the GM of the Ravens' Super Bowl XXXV championship team in 2000, and their Super Bowl XLVII championship team in 2012.
Jack Pardee, one of the Junction Boys, played linebacker in the NFL for 16 seasons with the Los Angeles Rams and Washington Redskins, was a college head coach at the University of Houston, and an NFL head coach with Chicago, Washington, and Houston.
Bryant was portrayed by Gary Busey in the 1984 film The Bear, by Sonny Shroyer in the 1994 film Forrest Gump, Tom Berenger in the 2002 film The Junction Boys, and Jon Voight in the 2015 film Woodlawn.
In a 1980 interview with Time magazine, Bryant admitted that he had been too hard on the Junction Boys and "If I were one of their players, I probably would have quit too."
Bruce Arians, Tampa Bay Buccaneers head coach who would go onto win Super Bowl LV, was an assistant to Bryant at Alabama from 1981 to 1982.
Head coaching record
In his 38 seasons as a head coach, Bryant had 37 winning seasons and participated in a total of 29 postseason bowl games, including 24 consecutively at Alabama. He won 15 bowl games, including eight Sugar Bowls. Bryant still holds the records as the youngest college football head coach to win 300 games and compile 30 winning seasons.
See also
The Bear Bryant Show
List of presidents of the American Football Coaches Association
List of college football coaches with 200 wins
References
Further reading
Keith Dunnavant, Coach: The Life of Paul "Bear" Bryant (New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 2005).
Paul W. Bryant with John Underwood, Bear: The Hard Life and Good Times of Alabama's Coach Bryant (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1974).
Mickey Herskowitz, The Legend of Bear Bryant, (Austin, Texas: Eakin Press, 1993).
Jim Dent, The Junction Boys: How Ten Days in Hell with Bear Bryant Forged a Championship Team (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999).
Tom Stoddard, Turnaround: Bear Bryant's First Year at Alabama (Montgomery, Alabama: Black Belt Press, 2000).
Randy Roberts and Ed Krzemienski, Rising Tide: Bear Bryant, Joe Namath, and Dixie's Last Quarter (New York: Twelve, Hachette Book Group, 2013).
James Kirby, Fumble: Bear Bryant, Wally Butts, and the Great College Football Scandal (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanavich, 1986).
Albert Figone, Cheating the Spread: Gamblers, Point Shavers and Game Fixers in College Football and Basketball (University of Illinois Press, 2012).
Furman Bisher, "College Football is Going Berserk: A Game Ruled by Brute Force Needs a Housecleaning", Saturday Evening Post, October 20, 1962.
Frank Graham, Jr. "The Story of a College Football Fix", Saturday Evening Post, March 23, 1963.
John David Briley. 2006. Career in Crisis : Paul "Bear" Bryant And the 1971 Season of Change. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press.
External links
Paul W. Bryant Museum
"Paul 'Bear' Bryant" , Encyclopedia of Alabama
Digitized speeches and photographs of Coach Bryant from the University Libraries Division of Special Collections, The University of Alabama
1913 births
1983 deaths
American football ends
Alabama Crimson Tide athletic directors
Alabama Crimson Tide football coaches
Alabama Crimson Tide football players
Georgia Pre-Flight Skycrackers football coaches
Kentucky Wildcats football coaches
Maryland Terrapins football coaches
North Carolina Pre-Flight Cloudbusters football coaches
Texas A&M Aggies athletic directors
Texas A&M Aggies football coaches
Union Bulldogs football coaches
Vanderbilt Commodores football coaches
College Football Hall of Fame inductees
United States Navy personnel of World War II
United States Navy officers
Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients
People from Cleveland County, Arkansas
Coaches of American football from Arkansas
Players of American football from Arkansas
Burials at Elmwood Cemetery (Birmingham, Alabama) | false | [
"The following is a list of awards and nominations received by Welsh actor and director Anthony Hopkins. \n\nHe is an Oscar-winning actor, having received six Academy award nominations winning two of these for Best Actor for his performance as Hannibal Lecter in the Jonathan Demme thriller The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and for his performance as Anthony in Florian Zeller's drama The Father (2020). He also was nominated for his performances as in James Ivory's The Remains of the Day (1993), Richard Nixon in Oliver Stone's drama Nixon (1995), John Quincy Adams in Amistad (1997), and Pope Benedict XVI in the Fernando Meirelles drama The Two Popes (2019). \n\nFor his work on film and television, he has received eight Golden Globe award nominations. In 2006 he was honored with the Cecil B. DeMille award for his lifetime achievement in the entertainment industry. He has received six Primetime Emmy award nominations winning two—one in 1976 for his performance as Richard Hauptmann in The Lindbergh Kidnapping Case and the other in 1981 for his performance as Adolf Hitler in The Bunker, as well as seven Screen Actors Guild award nominations all of which have been respectively lost.\n\nMajor associations\n\nAcademy Awards \n2 wins out of 6 nominations\n\nBAFTA Awards \n4 wins (and one honorary award) out of 9 nominations\n\nEmmy Awards \n2 wins out of 6 nominations\n\nGolden Globe Awards \n0 wins (and one honorary award) out of 8 nominations\n\nOlivier Awards \n1 win out of 2 nominations\n\nScreen Actors Guild Awards \n0 wins out of 7 nominations\n\nAudience awards\n\nMTV Movie + TV awards \n0 wins out of 2 nominations\n\nPeople's Choice awards \n0 wins out of 1 nomination\n\nCritic and association awards\n\nAlliance of Women Film Journalists awards \n1 win out of 2 nominations\n\nBoston Society of Film Critics awards \n1 win out of 1 nomination\n\nCableACE awards \n1 win out of 2 nominations\n\nChicago Film Critics Association awards \n1 win out of 5 nominations\n\nCritics' Choice awards \n1 win out of 4 nominations\n\nDallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association awards \n2 wins out of 2 nominations\n\nKansas City Film Critics Circle awards \n2 wins out of 2 nominations\n\nLondon Critics Circle Film awards \n1 win out of 5 nominations\n\nLos Angeles Film Critics Association awards \n1 win out of 2 nominations\n\nNational Board of Review awards \n2 wins out of 2 nominations\n\nNational Society of Film Critics awards \n0 wins out of 1 nomination\n\nNew York Film Critics Circle awards \n1 win out of 3 nominations\n\nOnline Film & Television Association awards \n1 win out of 3 nominations\n\nOnline Film Critics Society awards \n0 wins out of 1 nomination\n\nPhoenix Film Critics Society awards \n0 wins out of 1 nomination\n\nSoutheastern Film Critics Association awards \n1 win out of 2 nominations\n\nSt. Louis Film Critics Association awards \n1 win out of 2 nomination\n\nWomen's Image Network awards \n0 wins out of 1 nomination\n\nFilm festival awards\n\nHollywood Film Festival awards \n2 wins out of 2 nominations\n\nLocarno International Film Festival awards \n1 win out of 2 nominations\n\nMethod Fest awards \n0 wins out of 1 nomination\n\nMoscow International Film Festival awards \n1 win out of 1 nomination\n\nSan Sebastian International Film Festival awards \n1 win out of 1 nomination\n\nSanta Barbara International Film Festival awards \n1 win out of 1 nomination\n\nShoWest Convention awards \n1 win out of 1 nomination\n\nSitges - Catalonian International Film Festival awards \n0 wins out of 1 nomination\n\nUSA Film Festival awards \n1 win out of 1 nomination\n\nVirginia Film Festival awards \n1 win out of 1 nomination\n\nInternational awards\n\nBAFTA/LA Britannia awards \n1 win out of 1 nominations\n\nDavid di Donatello awards \n1 win out of 2 nominations\n\nEuropean Film Awards \n1 win out of 1 nomination\n\nEvening Standard British Film awards \n1 win out of 1 nomination\n\nJupiter awards \n0 wins out of 1 nomination\n\nNew Zealand Screen awards \n1 win out of 1 nomination\n\nSant Jordi awards \n1 win out of 1 nomination\n\nYoga awards \n1 win out of 1 nomination\n\nMiscellaneous awards\n\n20/20 awards \n1 win out of 3 nominations\n\nAARP Movies for Grownups awards \n1 win out of 4 nominations\n\nFangoria Chainsaw awards \n3 wins out of 4 nominations\n\nGolden Raspberry awards \n0 wins out of 2 nominations\n\nHasty Pudding Theatricals awards \n1 win out of 1 nomination\n\nMovieGuide awards \n0 wins out of 1 nomination\n\nSatellite awards \n0 wins out of 1 nomination\n\nSaturn awards \n1 win out of 5 nominations\n\nWalk of Fame \n1 win out of 1 nomination\n\nWestern Heritage awards \n1 win out of 1 nomination\n\nReferences\n\nHopkins, Anthony",
"Ricky Gervais ( ; born 25 June 1961) is an English comedian, actor, writer, producer, and director. He is best known for co-creating, writing, and acting in the British television series The Office (2001–2003). He has won seven BAFTA Awards, five British Comedy Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, and the Rose d'Or twice (2006 and 2019), as well as a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination. In 2007, he was placed at No. 11 on Channel 4's 100 Greatest Stand-Ups and at No. 3 on the updated 2010 list. In 2010, he was named on the Time 100 list of the world's most influential people. In 2002 he was nominated to be Britain's Funniest Man but did not win the award, he did however beat some gangsters up in a pub when an old man was being hassled, against the odds.\n\nMajor awards\n\nPrimetime Emmy Awards\n\nGolden Globe Awards\n\nBAFTA Television Awards\n\nScreen Actors Guild Awards\n\nWriters Guild of America Awards\n\nProducers Guild of America Awards\n\nOther awards\n\nBritannia Awards\n\nBritish Comedy Guide Awards\n\nBritish Comedy Awards\n\nBroadcasting Press Guild Awards\n\nEvening Standard British Film Awards\n\nSatellite Award\n\nTelevision Critics Association Awards\n\nReferences \n\nLists of awards received by actor"
]
|
[
"Twinkle Khanna",
"Off-screen work"
]
| C_4c6cb10736a34a13b6e06fbbf66c328d_0 | Are there any other interesting aspects about this article? | 1 | Are there any other interesting aspects about this article in addition to Twinkle Khanna's off screen work? | Twinkle Khanna | In 1996, Khanna campaigned for her father's election in New Delhi (Lok Sabha constituency). In 2000, she was part of the judges panel at Femina Miss India. She made her theater debut as the female lead in Feroz Khan's All The Best in February 2001. In 2002, Khanna opened her own interior design store in Crawford Market, Mumbai, called The White Window, in partnership with her longtime friend Gurlein Manchanda. Since then, the store has received the Elle Decor International Design Award. She has opened up another branch of the store elsewhere in Mumbai. She does not hold a professional degree and worked with an architect for two years to learn the procedures. During her pregnancy, she practised maps and designs using CAD. Khanna did the interiors for Rani Mukerji's, Reemma Sen's and Tabu's houses, Kareena Kapoor's Bandra flat in 2008 and Poonam Bajaj's design studio. On the request of one of her clients, she ordered a company to make a golden toilet seat. Khanna has also endorsed for and designed Supertech's ORB project in Noida and another residential project in Pune. However, Khanna filed a case against Supertech for failing to pay Rs1.04 crore (US$160,000) as endorsement fees. She also mentors International Institute of Fashion Designing's Academy of Interiors. Khanna is the co-founder of Grazing Goat Pictures and has co-produced the films Tees Maar Khan (2010) and Patiala House (2011). She also did a cameo appearance in the former film. Khanna has also co-produced Thank You (2011), Khiladi 786 (2012), 72 Miles (2013) and Holiday: A Soldier Is Never Off Duty (2014). She has also been the brand ambassador for the watch brand Movado and endorsed Coca-Cola and Micromax Mobile. In 2014, Khanna and her sister sold their father's house for Rs85 crore (US$13 million). Twinkle Khanna is a popular columnist at Daily News and Analysis after hours and The Times of India. Penguin Random House have announced that Twinkle Khanna's book Mrs Funnybones hit the Nielsen bestseller list at number 2 in its first week of sales. Launched in Mumbai on 18 August, the book has already reached number 1 on the bestseller chart of Crossword's Kemps Corner store and has been receiving praise from readers and press. Khanna's second book The Legend of Lakshmi Prasad, a collection of four short stories, launched in November 2016 sold more than 1,00,000 copies. CANNOTANSWER | Khanna campaigned for her father's election in New Delhi ( | Twinkle Khanna (also known as Tina Jatin Khanna; born on 29 December 1973) is a former film actress.
Early life and family
Twinkle Khanna was born on 29 December 1973 in Mumbai, the first of two daughters of veteran Hindi film actors Dimple Kapadia and Rajesh Khanna, with whom she shared her birthday. Her maternal grandfather, Chunnibhai Kapadia was a Gujarati businessman and her father Rajesh Khanna, born in Punjabi Khatri in Amritsar, Punjab, was from a family of railway contractors. On her mother's side, she was the niece of Simple Kapadia, an actress and costume designer whom she "adored". Her sister Rinke Khanna and cousin Karan Kapadia have also acted in films.
Khanna attended the New Era High School, Panchgani and the Narsee Monjee College of Commerce and Economics. After finishing her Class 12th, she wanted to pursue a career as chartered accountant and gave the entrance examination but joined the film industry instead on the insistence of her parents. Before beginning her film career, Khanna went through an eye surgery.
Career
Acting career
Khanna made her screen debut opposite Bobby Deol in Rajkumar Santoshi's romance Barsaat (1995). She was cast by Dharmendra and before the film's release Khanna signed for two more projects. It performed well at the box office and became the sixth-highest-grossing film of the year, and she received the Filmfare Award for Best Female Debut for her performance. The following year she played lead roles in Raj Kanwar's action film Jaan and Lawrence D'Souza's romance Dil Tera Diwana opposite Ajay Devgn and Saif Ali Khan respectively. Jaan was a box office hit and Dil Tera Deewana failed to do well. K.N. Vijiyan of the New Straits Times wrote that "Khanna does not look like a typical Hindi actress". While reviewing Dil Tera Diwana, Vijiyan wrote about Khanna: "Unlike her previous movies, she looks really good in all her scenes and she can act well." In 1997, two films featuring her; Uff! Yeh Mohabbat and Itihaas were released. Both of these films were poor box office performers. Her only release in 1998 was Jab Pyaar Kisise Hota Hai, which featured her as Salman Khan's love interest and was a box office success. Khanna acted opposite Akshay Kumar in two action films: International Khiladi and Zulmi (both 1999). In the former she played a news reporter who falls in love with a criminal whom she interviews. Both performed poorly at the box office. She was paired with Daggubati Venkatesh in the Telugu film Seenu (1999).
Khanna played the lead role in Baadshah (1999), featuring Shah Rukh Khan as a detective. In the same year, she acted opposite Saif Ali Khan in Yeh Hai Mumbai Meri Jaan, a romantic comedy directed by Mahesh Bhatt. She was paired opposite Aamir Khan in Dharmesh Darshan's Mela (2000). Similar to The Seven Samurai in story, it was an average grosser at the box office. Chal Mere Bhai (2000) featured Khanna in a special appearance beside a leading role in the comedy Joru Ka Ghulam, opposite Govinda. She also acted in the David Dhawan-directed comedy Jodi No.1 (2001). Her acting in the film met with poor reviews. Film director Karan Johar admitted in an interview that Khanna was in his mind for the role of Tina in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, but she refused it, and thus Rani Mukerji was signed. She left the industry after her marriage to Akshay Kumar in 2001, citing that she did not enjoy the acting profession any more. Her last film was Love Ke Liye Kuch Bhi Karega (2001), a remake of the Telugu movie Money (1993). It featured her opposite Fardeen Khan and was an average grosser at the box office.
Off-screen work
In August and October 1999, Khanna performed in the Awesome Foursome concert held at the Shah Alam Outdoor Stadium, Malaysia and the Magnificent Five concert at Birmingham, England. Juhi Chawla, Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan accompanied her in the former while in the latter she performed alongside Aamir Khan, Aishwarya Rai, Akshaye Khanna and Rani Mukherjee. The following year, she was part of the judges panel at Femina Miss India. She made her theatre debut as the female lead in Feroz Khan's All The Best in February 2001. In 2002, Khanna opened her own interior design store in Crawford Market, Mumbai, called The White Window, in partnership with her longtime friend Gurlein Manchanda. Since then, the store has received the Elle Decor International Design Award. She has opened up another branch of the store elsewhere in Mumbai. She does not hold a professional degree and worked with an architect for two years to learn the procedures. During her pregnancy, she practised maps and designs using CAD. Khanna did the interiors for Rani Mukerji's, Reemma Sen's and Tabu's houses, Kareena Kapoor's Bandra flat in 2008 and Poonam Bajaj's design studio. On the request of one of her clients, she ordered a company to make a golden toilet seat. Khanna is the Indian brand ambassador for L'Oréal.
Khanna has also endorsed for and designed Supertech's ORB project in Noida and another residential project in Pune. However, Khanna filed a case against Supertech for failing to pay as endorsement fees. She also mentors International Institute of Fashion Designing's Academy of Interiors. Khanna is the co-founder of Grazing Goat Pictures and has co-produced the films Tees Maar Khan (2010) and Patiala House (2011). She also did a cameo appearance in the former film. Khanna has also co-produced Thank You (2011), Khiladi 786 (2012), 72 Miles (2013) and Holiday: A Soldier Is Never Off Duty (2014). She has also been the brand ambassador for the watch brand Movado and endorsed Coca-Cola and Micromax Mobile. In December 2016, Khanna launched her production house Mrs. Funnybones Movies which eventually co-produced Pad Man. The film went on to win the 2018 National Film Award for Best Film on Other Social Issues.
Khanna is a columnist at Daily News and Analysis after hours and The Times of India. Penguin Random House have announced that Khanna's book Mrs Funnybones hit the Nielsen bestseller list at number 2 in its first week of sales. Launched in Mumbai on 18 August 2015, the book reached number 1 on the bestseller chart of Crossword's Kemps Corner store and received praise from readers and press, eventually making Khanna the highest-selling female author in India for that year. Khanna's second book The Legend of Lakshmi Prasad, a collection of four short stories, launched in November 2016 sold more than copies. Her latest book, Pyjamas Are Forgiving (Juggernaut Books, 2018) was released in September 2018 and has made her the highest-selling female author in India in the year 2018, according to Nielsen BookScan India. The publisher reported that the book debuted at number 1 on the Nielsen Bookscan All-India Bestseller List and sold over 100,000 copies.
Khanna has been actively advocating the cause of menstrual hygiene. She joined hands with Save the Children to promote the right to menstrual hygiene among children and slum communities. She was invited to speak at the University of Oxford in 2018. She was also invited to be a part of an eminent panel at the United Nations, New York and also appeared on BBC world Impact show to talk about menstrual hygiene and sanitation globally. In 2019, Khanna also launched Tweak, a bilingual digital media platform for women.
Life
In 2001, Khanna campaigned for her father's election in New Delhi. She met Akshay Kumar, for the first time during a photo session for Filmfare magazine. They got married on 17 January 2001 and together have a son, Aarav and a daughter, Nitara. Kumar often credits Khanna for his success. In 2009, People magazine listed her as the fourth-best-dressed celebrity in India. In February 2014, she was operated on at the Breach Candy hospital for the removal of a kidney stone.
In 2009, during Lakme Fashion Week, she unbuttoned Akshay Kumar's jeans (only the first button). This incident created a controversy. A social worker wanted to file a complaint against the couple and the event organisers for obscenity. Khanna surrendered at the Vakola police station and was released on bail. She eventually served 30 days in prison for the crime. In July 2013, the Bombay High Court ordered the police to prosecute Khanna and her husband. In 2014, Khanna and her sister sold their father's house for 85 crores. She has maintained a Twitter account since November 2014.
Filmography
As actress
As producer
Awards
Bibliography
References
Further reading
External links
Collected News and commentary at The Times of India
1974 births
20th-century Indian actresses
21st-century Indian actresses
21st-century Indian businesspeople
21st-century Indian businesswomen
21st-century Indian designers
21st-century Indian journalists
21st-century Indian women writers
Actresses from Mumbai
Actresses from Pune
Actresses in Hindi cinema
Businesswomen from Maharashtra
Film producers from Mumbai
Gujarati people
Indian columnists
Indian interior designers
Indian women designers
Indian women film producers
Living people
Punjabi people
Women columnists
Women writers from Maharashtra
Writers from Mumbai
Writers from Pune | false | [
"Přírodní park Třebíčsko (before Oblast klidu Třebíčsko) is a natural park near Třebíč in the Czech Republic. There are many interesting plants. The park was founded in 1983.\n\nKobylinec and Ptáčovský kopeček\n\nKobylinec is a natural monument situated ca 0,5 km from the village of Trnava.\nThe area of this monument is 0,44 ha. Pulsatilla grandis can be found here and in the Ptáčovský kopeček park near Ptáčov near Třebíč. Both monuments are very popular for tourists.\n\nPonds\n\nIn the natural park there are some interesting ponds such as Velký Bor, Malý Bor, Buršík near Přeckov and a brook Březinka. Dams on the brook are examples of European beaver activity.\n\nSyenitové skály near Pocoucov\n\nSyenitové skály (rocks of syenit) near Pocoucov is one of famed locations. There are interesting granite boulders. The area of the reservation is 0,77 ha.\n\nExternal links\nParts of this article or all article was translated from Czech. The original article is :cs:Přírodní park Třebíčsko.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nNature near the village Trnava which is there\n\nTřebíč\nParks in the Czech Republic\nTourist attractions in the Vysočina Region",
"Damn Interesting is an independent website founded by Alan Bellows in 2005. The website presents true stories from science, history, and psychology, primarily as long-form articles, often illustrated with original artwork. Works are written by various authors, and published at irregular intervals. The website openly rejects advertising, relying on reader and listener donations to cover operating costs.\n\nAs of October 2012, each article is also published as a podcast under the same name. In November 2019, a second podcast was launched under the title Damn Interesting Week, featuring unscripted commentary on an assortment of news articles featured on the website's \"Curated Links\" section that week. In mid-2020, a third podcast called Damn Interesting Curio Cabinet began highlighting the website's periodic short-form articles in the same radioplay format as the original podcast.\n\nIn July 2009, Damn Interesting published the print book Alien Hand Syndrome through Workman Publishing. It contains some favorites from the site and some exclusive content.\n\nAwards and recognition \nIn August 2007, PC Magazine named Damn Interesting one of the \"Top 100 Undiscovered Web Sites\".\nThe article \"The Zero-Armed Bandit\" by Alan Bellows won a 2015 Sidney Award from David Brooks in The New York Times.\nThe article \"Ghoulish Acts and Dastardly Deeds\" by Alan Bellows was cited as \"nonfiction journalism from 2017 that will stand the test of time\" by Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic.\nThe article \"Dupes and Duplicity\" by Jennifer Lee Noonan won a 2020 Sidney Award from David Brooks in the New York Times.\n\nAccusing The Dollop of plagiarism \n\nOn July 9, 2015, Bellows posted an open letter accusing The Dollop, a comedy podcast about history, of plagiarism due to their repeated use of verbatim text from Damn Interesting articles without permission or attribution. Dave Anthony, the writer of The Dollop, responded on reddit, admitting to using Damn Interesting content, but claiming that the use was protected by fair use, and that \"historical facts are not copyrightable.\" In an article about the controversy on Plagiarism Today, Jonathan Bailey concluded, \"Any way one looks at it, The Dollop failed its ethical obligations to all of the people, not just those writing for Damn Interesting, who put in the time, energy and expertise into writing the original content upon which their show is based.\"\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n Official website\n\n2005 podcast debuts"
]
|
[
"Twinkle Khanna",
"Off-screen work",
"Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?",
"Khanna campaigned for her father's election in New Delhi ("
]
| C_4c6cb10736a34a13b6e06fbbf66c328d_0 | What other involvement did she have in politics? | 2 | What other involvement did Twinkle Khanna have in politics in addition to campaining for her father's election in New Delhi? | Twinkle Khanna | In 1996, Khanna campaigned for her father's election in New Delhi (Lok Sabha constituency). In 2000, she was part of the judges panel at Femina Miss India. She made her theater debut as the female lead in Feroz Khan's All The Best in February 2001. In 2002, Khanna opened her own interior design store in Crawford Market, Mumbai, called The White Window, in partnership with her longtime friend Gurlein Manchanda. Since then, the store has received the Elle Decor International Design Award. She has opened up another branch of the store elsewhere in Mumbai. She does not hold a professional degree and worked with an architect for two years to learn the procedures. During her pregnancy, she practised maps and designs using CAD. Khanna did the interiors for Rani Mukerji's, Reemma Sen's and Tabu's houses, Kareena Kapoor's Bandra flat in 2008 and Poonam Bajaj's design studio. On the request of one of her clients, she ordered a company to make a golden toilet seat. Khanna has also endorsed for and designed Supertech's ORB project in Noida and another residential project in Pune. However, Khanna filed a case against Supertech for failing to pay Rs1.04 crore (US$160,000) as endorsement fees. She also mentors International Institute of Fashion Designing's Academy of Interiors. Khanna is the co-founder of Grazing Goat Pictures and has co-produced the films Tees Maar Khan (2010) and Patiala House (2011). She also did a cameo appearance in the former film. Khanna has also co-produced Thank You (2011), Khiladi 786 (2012), 72 Miles (2013) and Holiday: A Soldier Is Never Off Duty (2014). She has also been the brand ambassador for the watch brand Movado and endorsed Coca-Cola and Micromax Mobile. In 2014, Khanna and her sister sold their father's house for Rs85 crore (US$13 million). Twinkle Khanna is a popular columnist at Daily News and Analysis after hours and The Times of India. Penguin Random House have announced that Twinkle Khanna's book Mrs Funnybones hit the Nielsen bestseller list at number 2 in its first week of sales. Launched in Mumbai on 18 August, the book has already reached number 1 on the bestseller chart of Crossword's Kemps Corner store and has been receiving praise from readers and press. Khanna's second book The Legend of Lakshmi Prasad, a collection of four short stories, launched in November 2016 sold more than 1,00,000 copies. CANNOTANSWER | In 2000, she was part of the judges panel at Femina Miss India. | Twinkle Khanna (also known as Tina Jatin Khanna; born on 29 December 1973) is a former film actress.
Early life and family
Twinkle Khanna was born on 29 December 1973 in Mumbai, the first of two daughters of veteran Hindi film actors Dimple Kapadia and Rajesh Khanna, with whom she shared her birthday. Her maternal grandfather, Chunnibhai Kapadia was a Gujarati businessman and her father Rajesh Khanna, born in Punjabi Khatri in Amritsar, Punjab, was from a family of railway contractors. On her mother's side, she was the niece of Simple Kapadia, an actress and costume designer whom she "adored". Her sister Rinke Khanna and cousin Karan Kapadia have also acted in films.
Khanna attended the New Era High School, Panchgani and the Narsee Monjee College of Commerce and Economics. After finishing her Class 12th, she wanted to pursue a career as chartered accountant and gave the entrance examination but joined the film industry instead on the insistence of her parents. Before beginning her film career, Khanna went through an eye surgery.
Career
Acting career
Khanna made her screen debut opposite Bobby Deol in Rajkumar Santoshi's romance Barsaat (1995). She was cast by Dharmendra and before the film's release Khanna signed for two more projects. It performed well at the box office and became the sixth-highest-grossing film of the year, and she received the Filmfare Award for Best Female Debut for her performance. The following year she played lead roles in Raj Kanwar's action film Jaan and Lawrence D'Souza's romance Dil Tera Diwana opposite Ajay Devgn and Saif Ali Khan respectively. Jaan was a box office hit and Dil Tera Deewana failed to do well. K.N. Vijiyan of the New Straits Times wrote that "Khanna does not look like a typical Hindi actress". While reviewing Dil Tera Diwana, Vijiyan wrote about Khanna: "Unlike her previous movies, she looks really good in all her scenes and she can act well." In 1997, two films featuring her; Uff! Yeh Mohabbat and Itihaas were released. Both of these films were poor box office performers. Her only release in 1998 was Jab Pyaar Kisise Hota Hai, which featured her as Salman Khan's love interest and was a box office success. Khanna acted opposite Akshay Kumar in two action films: International Khiladi and Zulmi (both 1999). In the former she played a news reporter who falls in love with a criminal whom she interviews. Both performed poorly at the box office. She was paired with Daggubati Venkatesh in the Telugu film Seenu (1999).
Khanna played the lead role in Baadshah (1999), featuring Shah Rukh Khan as a detective. In the same year, she acted opposite Saif Ali Khan in Yeh Hai Mumbai Meri Jaan, a romantic comedy directed by Mahesh Bhatt. She was paired opposite Aamir Khan in Dharmesh Darshan's Mela (2000). Similar to The Seven Samurai in story, it was an average grosser at the box office. Chal Mere Bhai (2000) featured Khanna in a special appearance beside a leading role in the comedy Joru Ka Ghulam, opposite Govinda. She also acted in the David Dhawan-directed comedy Jodi No.1 (2001). Her acting in the film met with poor reviews. Film director Karan Johar admitted in an interview that Khanna was in his mind for the role of Tina in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, but she refused it, and thus Rani Mukerji was signed. She left the industry after her marriage to Akshay Kumar in 2001, citing that she did not enjoy the acting profession any more. Her last film was Love Ke Liye Kuch Bhi Karega (2001), a remake of the Telugu movie Money (1993). It featured her opposite Fardeen Khan and was an average grosser at the box office.
Off-screen work
In August and October 1999, Khanna performed in the Awesome Foursome concert held at the Shah Alam Outdoor Stadium, Malaysia and the Magnificent Five concert at Birmingham, England. Juhi Chawla, Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan accompanied her in the former while in the latter she performed alongside Aamir Khan, Aishwarya Rai, Akshaye Khanna and Rani Mukherjee. The following year, she was part of the judges panel at Femina Miss India. She made her theatre debut as the female lead in Feroz Khan's All The Best in February 2001. In 2002, Khanna opened her own interior design store in Crawford Market, Mumbai, called The White Window, in partnership with her longtime friend Gurlein Manchanda. Since then, the store has received the Elle Decor International Design Award. She has opened up another branch of the store elsewhere in Mumbai. She does not hold a professional degree and worked with an architect for two years to learn the procedures. During her pregnancy, she practised maps and designs using CAD. Khanna did the interiors for Rani Mukerji's, Reemma Sen's and Tabu's houses, Kareena Kapoor's Bandra flat in 2008 and Poonam Bajaj's design studio. On the request of one of her clients, she ordered a company to make a golden toilet seat. Khanna is the Indian brand ambassador for L'Oréal.
Khanna has also endorsed for and designed Supertech's ORB project in Noida and another residential project in Pune. However, Khanna filed a case against Supertech for failing to pay as endorsement fees. She also mentors International Institute of Fashion Designing's Academy of Interiors. Khanna is the co-founder of Grazing Goat Pictures and has co-produced the films Tees Maar Khan (2010) and Patiala House (2011). She also did a cameo appearance in the former film. Khanna has also co-produced Thank You (2011), Khiladi 786 (2012), 72 Miles (2013) and Holiday: A Soldier Is Never Off Duty (2014). She has also been the brand ambassador for the watch brand Movado and endorsed Coca-Cola and Micromax Mobile. In December 2016, Khanna launched her production house Mrs. Funnybones Movies which eventually co-produced Pad Man. The film went on to win the 2018 National Film Award for Best Film on Other Social Issues.
Khanna is a columnist at Daily News and Analysis after hours and The Times of India. Penguin Random House have announced that Khanna's book Mrs Funnybones hit the Nielsen bestseller list at number 2 in its first week of sales. Launched in Mumbai on 18 August 2015, the book reached number 1 on the bestseller chart of Crossword's Kemps Corner store and received praise from readers and press, eventually making Khanna the highest-selling female author in India for that year. Khanna's second book The Legend of Lakshmi Prasad, a collection of four short stories, launched in November 2016 sold more than copies. Her latest book, Pyjamas Are Forgiving (Juggernaut Books, 2018) was released in September 2018 and has made her the highest-selling female author in India in the year 2018, according to Nielsen BookScan India. The publisher reported that the book debuted at number 1 on the Nielsen Bookscan All-India Bestseller List and sold over 100,000 copies.
Khanna has been actively advocating the cause of menstrual hygiene. She joined hands with Save the Children to promote the right to menstrual hygiene among children and slum communities. She was invited to speak at the University of Oxford in 2018. She was also invited to be a part of an eminent panel at the United Nations, New York and also appeared on BBC world Impact show to talk about menstrual hygiene and sanitation globally. In 2019, Khanna also launched Tweak, a bilingual digital media platform for women.
Life
In 2001, Khanna campaigned for her father's election in New Delhi. She met Akshay Kumar, for the first time during a photo session for Filmfare magazine. They got married on 17 January 2001 and together have a son, Aarav and a daughter, Nitara. Kumar often credits Khanna for his success. In 2009, People magazine listed her as the fourth-best-dressed celebrity in India. In February 2014, she was operated on at the Breach Candy hospital for the removal of a kidney stone.
In 2009, during Lakme Fashion Week, she unbuttoned Akshay Kumar's jeans (only the first button). This incident created a controversy. A social worker wanted to file a complaint against the couple and the event organisers for obscenity. Khanna surrendered at the Vakola police station and was released on bail. She eventually served 30 days in prison for the crime. In July 2013, the Bombay High Court ordered the police to prosecute Khanna and her husband. In 2014, Khanna and her sister sold their father's house for 85 crores. She has maintained a Twitter account since November 2014.
Filmography
As actress
As producer
Awards
Bibliography
References
Further reading
External links
Collected News and commentary at The Times of India
1974 births
20th-century Indian actresses
21st-century Indian actresses
21st-century Indian businesspeople
21st-century Indian businesswomen
21st-century Indian designers
21st-century Indian journalists
21st-century Indian women writers
Actresses from Mumbai
Actresses from Pune
Actresses in Hindi cinema
Businesswomen from Maharashtra
Film producers from Mumbai
Gujarati people
Indian columnists
Indian interior designers
Indian women designers
Indian women film producers
Living people
Punjabi people
Women columnists
Women writers from Maharashtra
Writers from Mumbai
Writers from Pune | false | [
"Helen Ursula Williams BEM (1896 – November 1979), was a British Liberal Party politician who legally stood for parliament even though she was too young to vote.\n\nBackground\nShe was the daughter of Liberal MP, Aneurin Williams and Helen Elizabeth Pattinson. Her brother was Iolo Aneurin Williams. She was awarded the British Empire Medal. Her nephew was the composer Edward Williams.\n\nPolitics\nHer introduction to politics came from having campaigned for her father at Consett in 1918 and 1922. In 1923 at the age of 27 she was selected as Liberal candidate, in succession to her father, for the Consett Division of Durham at the 1923 General Election. This put her in an anomalous position. Since 1918, under the Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act 1918, women over 21 were allowed to stand for parliament. However, in 1923 only women over the age of 30 were allowed to vote. So Williams could ask people to vote for her even though she was not allowed to vote for herself. Up to this point, she was the youngest woman to have ever stood for parliament. Having such a young woman as a parliamentary candidate attracted a lot of media attention, not least after an exchange at one of her public meetings. She was interrupted by a man who demanded \"Oh, what do you know?\" \"Many things\" replied Williams. \"Well, how many ribs has a pig got?\" asked her heckler. \"I don't know offhand\" retorted Williams, \"but if the gentleman will step up on the platform I will be glad to count them.\" Despite achieving a swing of 5.4% she was unable to unseat the Labour candidate who had defeated her father in 1922.\n\nShe did not stand for parliament again though she continued her political involvement inside the Liberal party. In 1924 she was elected to the Executive Committee of the Women's Liberal Federation. In 1925 she served as Honorary Treasurer of the London Young Liberal Federation. In 1926 she became a leading Liberal party advocate of birth control in welfare centres. She took a particular interest in Proportional Representation and was a member of the Proportional Representation Society.\n\nHer brother Iolo Aneurin Williams was also involved in politics as Liberal candidate for Chelsea in 1924 and 1929.\n\nShe died in 1979 at the age of 83.\n\nReferences\n\n1896 births\n1979 deaths\nLiberal Party (UK) parliamentary candidates",
"Maura McNiel (April 11, 1921 – July 18, 2020) was an American feminist whose actions paved the way for women's studies, modern social work, advocacy on behalf of abused women, promotion of the Equal Rights Amendment, and passage of Title IX. McNiel was active for over forty years in the Dallas women's movement. She died on July 18, 2020, aged 99.\n\nEarly life\n\nMaura McNiel was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota on April 11, 1921 where she learned the importance of individual rights from the integration of Minneapolis area schools. In 1941, she attended University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. Moving to the Dallas area in the early 1950s, she became active within Dallas political and feminist groups, and was instrumental in the founding of the Women's Center of Dallas (now closed).\n\nAn ardent and early adopter of feminism in the 1960s, McNiel joined several women's groups focused on expanding women's roles and eliminating prevalent stereotypes. She became a member of the National Organization for Women and People for the American Way, seeking to expand her opportunities in the working world as a recent college graduate. Growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, McNiel witnessed changes like desegregation, which motivated her to improve the rights and benefits of the disenfranchised.\n\nPersonal life\nShe married Thomas H. McNiel on February 1, 1952; they were divorced in Dallas on July 16, 1991.\n\nInvolvement in Dallas politics\nMcNiel became very involved in the Dallas feminist movement in the late 1960s through the 1980s. Her involvement in Women for Change, the Domestic Violence Interaction Alliance of Dallas (DVIA), and EXPLORE — a women's identity group — expanded her interest in local politics. McNiel actively lobbied in Dallas City Hall for the rights and protections of battered women, which led to the creation of the Women's Center of Dallas — a resource for local women, most notably financial assistance, legal assistance, housing, and job training to victims of domestic violence. The Women's Center in Dallas was modeled after established organizations nationwide which acted as a means to remove battered women from troubled homes, and into a safe haven of their own.\n\nInvolvement in national politics\nMaura McNiel also worked for the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment of 1972 by speaking at local assemblies and rallies across Texas, However, the amendment fell three short of the number of states needed to ratify it. McNiel participated in other campaigns that proved more successful, such as the passage of Title IX in 1972. While not providing the blanket coverage, the Equal Rights Amendment would have, Title IX did grant the rights of educational freedom for women that would have resounding repercussions, expanding into the creation of more women's sports teams and athletic scholarships at the collegiate level.\n\nAwards\n\nIn 1978, McNiel won the Women Helping Women award from the Women's Center of Dallas. \nIn 1984, the Women Helping Women awards were renamed \"The Maura's\" in honor of McNiel's contributions to the advancement of women in society. \nIn 1985, McNiel was nominated for admission into the Texas Women's Hall of Fame. \nIn 1985, the Women's Center of Dallas renamed their annual Women Helping Women awards to the honorary Maura Women Helping Women awards.\n\nSee also \n History of feminism\n History of women in the United States\n\nReferences\n\n1921 births\n2020 deaths\nActivists from Minnesota\nActivists from Texas\nAmerican women's rights activists\nPoliticians from Dallas\nPoliticians from Minneapolis\nStanford University alumni\nUniversity of Minnesota alumni"
]
|
[
"Twinkle Khanna",
"Off-screen work",
"Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?",
"Khanna campaigned for her father's election in New Delhi (",
"What other involvement did she have in politics?",
"In 2000, she was part of the judges panel at Femina Miss India."
]
| C_4c6cb10736a34a13b6e06fbbf66c328d_0 | What involvement did she have in publishing? | 3 | What involvement did Twinkle Khanna have in publishing? | Twinkle Khanna | In 1996, Khanna campaigned for her father's election in New Delhi (Lok Sabha constituency). In 2000, she was part of the judges panel at Femina Miss India. She made her theater debut as the female lead in Feroz Khan's All The Best in February 2001. In 2002, Khanna opened her own interior design store in Crawford Market, Mumbai, called The White Window, in partnership with her longtime friend Gurlein Manchanda. Since then, the store has received the Elle Decor International Design Award. She has opened up another branch of the store elsewhere in Mumbai. She does not hold a professional degree and worked with an architect for two years to learn the procedures. During her pregnancy, she practised maps and designs using CAD. Khanna did the interiors for Rani Mukerji's, Reemma Sen's and Tabu's houses, Kareena Kapoor's Bandra flat in 2008 and Poonam Bajaj's design studio. On the request of one of her clients, she ordered a company to make a golden toilet seat. Khanna has also endorsed for and designed Supertech's ORB project in Noida and another residential project in Pune. However, Khanna filed a case against Supertech for failing to pay Rs1.04 crore (US$160,000) as endorsement fees. She also mentors International Institute of Fashion Designing's Academy of Interiors. Khanna is the co-founder of Grazing Goat Pictures and has co-produced the films Tees Maar Khan (2010) and Patiala House (2011). She also did a cameo appearance in the former film. Khanna has also co-produced Thank You (2011), Khiladi 786 (2012), 72 Miles (2013) and Holiday: A Soldier Is Never Off Duty (2014). She has also been the brand ambassador for the watch brand Movado and endorsed Coca-Cola and Micromax Mobile. In 2014, Khanna and her sister sold their father's house for Rs85 crore (US$13 million). Twinkle Khanna is a popular columnist at Daily News and Analysis after hours and The Times of India. Penguin Random House have announced that Twinkle Khanna's book Mrs Funnybones hit the Nielsen bestseller list at number 2 in its first week of sales. Launched in Mumbai on 18 August, the book has already reached number 1 on the bestseller chart of Crossword's Kemps Corner store and has been receiving praise from readers and press. Khanna's second book The Legend of Lakshmi Prasad, a collection of four short stories, launched in November 2016 sold more than 1,00,000 copies. CANNOTANSWER | Twinkle Khanna is a popular columnist at Daily News and Analysis after hours and The Times of India. | Twinkle Khanna (also known as Tina Jatin Khanna; born on 29 December 1973) is a former film actress.
Early life and family
Twinkle Khanna was born on 29 December 1973 in Mumbai, the first of two daughters of veteran Hindi film actors Dimple Kapadia and Rajesh Khanna, with whom she shared her birthday. Her maternal grandfather, Chunnibhai Kapadia was a Gujarati businessman and her father Rajesh Khanna, born in Punjabi Khatri in Amritsar, Punjab, was from a family of railway contractors. On her mother's side, she was the niece of Simple Kapadia, an actress and costume designer whom she "adored". Her sister Rinke Khanna and cousin Karan Kapadia have also acted in films.
Khanna attended the New Era High School, Panchgani and the Narsee Monjee College of Commerce and Economics. After finishing her Class 12th, she wanted to pursue a career as chartered accountant and gave the entrance examination but joined the film industry instead on the insistence of her parents. Before beginning her film career, Khanna went through an eye surgery.
Career
Acting career
Khanna made her screen debut opposite Bobby Deol in Rajkumar Santoshi's romance Barsaat (1995). She was cast by Dharmendra and before the film's release Khanna signed for two more projects. It performed well at the box office and became the sixth-highest-grossing film of the year, and she received the Filmfare Award for Best Female Debut for her performance. The following year she played lead roles in Raj Kanwar's action film Jaan and Lawrence D'Souza's romance Dil Tera Diwana opposite Ajay Devgn and Saif Ali Khan respectively. Jaan was a box office hit and Dil Tera Deewana failed to do well. K.N. Vijiyan of the New Straits Times wrote that "Khanna does not look like a typical Hindi actress". While reviewing Dil Tera Diwana, Vijiyan wrote about Khanna: "Unlike her previous movies, she looks really good in all her scenes and she can act well." In 1997, two films featuring her; Uff! Yeh Mohabbat and Itihaas were released. Both of these films were poor box office performers. Her only release in 1998 was Jab Pyaar Kisise Hota Hai, which featured her as Salman Khan's love interest and was a box office success. Khanna acted opposite Akshay Kumar in two action films: International Khiladi and Zulmi (both 1999). In the former she played a news reporter who falls in love with a criminal whom she interviews. Both performed poorly at the box office. She was paired with Daggubati Venkatesh in the Telugu film Seenu (1999).
Khanna played the lead role in Baadshah (1999), featuring Shah Rukh Khan as a detective. In the same year, she acted opposite Saif Ali Khan in Yeh Hai Mumbai Meri Jaan, a romantic comedy directed by Mahesh Bhatt. She was paired opposite Aamir Khan in Dharmesh Darshan's Mela (2000). Similar to The Seven Samurai in story, it was an average grosser at the box office. Chal Mere Bhai (2000) featured Khanna in a special appearance beside a leading role in the comedy Joru Ka Ghulam, opposite Govinda. She also acted in the David Dhawan-directed comedy Jodi No.1 (2001). Her acting in the film met with poor reviews. Film director Karan Johar admitted in an interview that Khanna was in his mind for the role of Tina in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, but she refused it, and thus Rani Mukerji was signed. She left the industry after her marriage to Akshay Kumar in 2001, citing that she did not enjoy the acting profession any more. Her last film was Love Ke Liye Kuch Bhi Karega (2001), a remake of the Telugu movie Money (1993). It featured her opposite Fardeen Khan and was an average grosser at the box office.
Off-screen work
In August and October 1999, Khanna performed in the Awesome Foursome concert held at the Shah Alam Outdoor Stadium, Malaysia and the Magnificent Five concert at Birmingham, England. Juhi Chawla, Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan accompanied her in the former while in the latter she performed alongside Aamir Khan, Aishwarya Rai, Akshaye Khanna and Rani Mukherjee. The following year, she was part of the judges panel at Femina Miss India. She made her theatre debut as the female lead in Feroz Khan's All The Best in February 2001. In 2002, Khanna opened her own interior design store in Crawford Market, Mumbai, called The White Window, in partnership with her longtime friend Gurlein Manchanda. Since then, the store has received the Elle Decor International Design Award. She has opened up another branch of the store elsewhere in Mumbai. She does not hold a professional degree and worked with an architect for two years to learn the procedures. During her pregnancy, she practised maps and designs using CAD. Khanna did the interiors for Rani Mukerji's, Reemma Sen's and Tabu's houses, Kareena Kapoor's Bandra flat in 2008 and Poonam Bajaj's design studio. On the request of one of her clients, she ordered a company to make a golden toilet seat. Khanna is the Indian brand ambassador for L'Oréal.
Khanna has also endorsed for and designed Supertech's ORB project in Noida and another residential project in Pune. However, Khanna filed a case against Supertech for failing to pay as endorsement fees. She also mentors International Institute of Fashion Designing's Academy of Interiors. Khanna is the co-founder of Grazing Goat Pictures and has co-produced the films Tees Maar Khan (2010) and Patiala House (2011). She also did a cameo appearance in the former film. Khanna has also co-produced Thank You (2011), Khiladi 786 (2012), 72 Miles (2013) and Holiday: A Soldier Is Never Off Duty (2014). She has also been the brand ambassador for the watch brand Movado and endorsed Coca-Cola and Micromax Mobile. In December 2016, Khanna launched her production house Mrs. Funnybones Movies which eventually co-produced Pad Man. The film went on to win the 2018 National Film Award for Best Film on Other Social Issues.
Khanna is a columnist at Daily News and Analysis after hours and The Times of India. Penguin Random House have announced that Khanna's book Mrs Funnybones hit the Nielsen bestseller list at number 2 in its first week of sales. Launched in Mumbai on 18 August 2015, the book reached number 1 on the bestseller chart of Crossword's Kemps Corner store and received praise from readers and press, eventually making Khanna the highest-selling female author in India for that year. Khanna's second book The Legend of Lakshmi Prasad, a collection of four short stories, launched in November 2016 sold more than copies. Her latest book, Pyjamas Are Forgiving (Juggernaut Books, 2018) was released in September 2018 and has made her the highest-selling female author in India in the year 2018, according to Nielsen BookScan India. The publisher reported that the book debuted at number 1 on the Nielsen Bookscan All-India Bestseller List and sold over 100,000 copies.
Khanna has been actively advocating the cause of menstrual hygiene. She joined hands with Save the Children to promote the right to menstrual hygiene among children and slum communities. She was invited to speak at the University of Oxford in 2018. She was also invited to be a part of an eminent panel at the United Nations, New York and also appeared on BBC world Impact show to talk about menstrual hygiene and sanitation globally. In 2019, Khanna also launched Tweak, a bilingual digital media platform for women.
Life
In 2001, Khanna campaigned for her father's election in New Delhi. She met Akshay Kumar, for the first time during a photo session for Filmfare magazine. They got married on 17 January 2001 and together have a son, Aarav and a daughter, Nitara. Kumar often credits Khanna for his success. In 2009, People magazine listed her as the fourth-best-dressed celebrity in India. In February 2014, she was operated on at the Breach Candy hospital for the removal of a kidney stone.
In 2009, during Lakme Fashion Week, she unbuttoned Akshay Kumar's jeans (only the first button). This incident created a controversy. A social worker wanted to file a complaint against the couple and the event organisers for obscenity. Khanna surrendered at the Vakola police station and was released on bail. She eventually served 30 days in prison for the crime. In July 2013, the Bombay High Court ordered the police to prosecute Khanna and her husband. In 2014, Khanna and her sister sold their father's house for 85 crores. She has maintained a Twitter account since November 2014.
Filmography
As actress
As producer
Awards
Bibliography
References
Further reading
External links
Collected News and commentary at The Times of India
1974 births
20th-century Indian actresses
21st-century Indian actresses
21st-century Indian businesspeople
21st-century Indian businesswomen
21st-century Indian designers
21st-century Indian journalists
21st-century Indian women writers
Actresses from Mumbai
Actresses from Pune
Actresses in Hindi cinema
Businesswomen from Maharashtra
Film producers from Mumbai
Gujarati people
Indian columnists
Indian interior designers
Indian women designers
Indian women film producers
Living people
Punjabi people
Women columnists
Women writers from Maharashtra
Writers from Mumbai
Writers from Pune | false | [
"Anastasia Melnichenko or usually Nastya Melnichenko (; born 1984) is a Ukrainian activist and author who writes on social, historical, and cultural issues. She is a co-founder of STUDENA, a non-profit human rights organization. She is also known as the initiator of the #IAmNotAfraidToSayIt social media campaign in Ukraine and Russia in 2016, a precursor to the MeToo movement.\n\nEducation \n\nShe earned a bachelor's degree at the Institute of Journalism of the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv in 2007. She earned a master's degree with distinction in archeology and history of Ukraine at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in 2010. In 2018, she enrolled in a graduate program in management at the Ukrainian Catholic University.\n\nCareer \n\nMelnichenko started her career as a journalist. During the 2000s, she wrote for Ukrainian newspapers, news agencies, and magazines. She served as Editor in Chief of Golden Age magazine (Золотий вік) in 2007. For five years, she was Editor in Chief of Zhila (Жила), a family magazine.\n\nIn 2010, she began working as a project coordinator, organizing conferences, lectures, and festivals. Among the projects she worked on were \"Equal Opportunities and Women's Rights in Ukraine,\" a project led by the United Nations Development Programme; the Volyn Center for Research and Revival; and the traveling cultural and educational festival, \"From Country to Ukraine.\"\n\nIn September 2015, she co-founded STUDENA, a non-profit organization that aims \"to reduce aggressiveness and intolerance in society, promote the idea of equality of rights and opportunities of people, regardless of their sex, race, religion.\"\n\n#IAmNotAfraidToSayIt \n\nOn July 5, 2016, Melnichenko read an online discussion in which a rape victim was told she was to blame. Melnichenko responded by publishing a post on Facebook in which she recounted her personal experience of sexual abuse and repudiated the idea that she was somehow to blame. She included the Ukrainian-language hashtag #яНеБоюсьСказати, which translates to #IAmNotAfraidToSayIt or #IAmNotAfraidToSpeak in English. In an interview with Meduza later that month, she said:\n\nIn our country, and yes generally throughout the post-Soviet space, instead of unequivocally blaming the rapist, people immediately start asking what the woman did wrong. They want to know what is wrong with her. Maybe she was wearing a short skirt? Maybe she was walking home too late? Or maybe she was drunk? In the end, a woman is guilty simply because she was born a woman.\n\nHer post was widely shared, and soon afterwards, women in Russia and Ukraine began posting their own stories of sexual harassment and assault. Many said it was the first time they had spoken of the incidents. By August 2016, almost 200,000 women and men had expressed support or shared their stories on social media using her hashtag. In 2018, she published a book by the same name.\n\nBooks \n\n 2019 – And now everything is different. Vydavnytstvo Publishing House.\n 2019 – From Khruli to Ziuziuky. Teza Publishing House.\n 2019 – What’s Found in Khruli. Teza Publishing House.\n 2017 – #IAmNotAfraidToSayIt. Folio Publishing House.\n\nSee also \n Violence against women in Ukraine\n Domestic violence in Russia\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n The original #IAmNotAfraidToSayIt post on Facebook\n \n \n\n1984 births\nUkrainian women's rights activists\nUkrainian women activists\nUkrainian journalists\nTaras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv alumni\nNational University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy alumni\nLiving people",
"Fátima Langa (June 24, 1953 – June 24, 2017) was a Mozambican writer, primarily of stories for young readers, which drew on her childhood in southeastern Mozambique. She was the founder of the publishing house Editora Mulheres e Jovens Moçambicanos.\n\nBiography \nFátima José Correia Langa was born in 1953 in Bahanine, Manjacaze District, in what was then Portuguese Mozambique. She was the oldest of 10 children. \n\nUntil she was six years old, she only spoke Chopi. She learned to speak Portuguese in primary school, continuing her education in Xai-Xai and then in the Mozambican capital, Maputo.\n\nSince she was a child, Langa had told stories in her native language around the fire, but it did not occur to her to publish them. But she was encouraged by the Mozambican writer Lília Momplé to begin writing them down.\n\nShe began to publish stories and poems in various newspapers and magazines, but she did not publish her first book, Uma Jibóia no Congelador (\"A Boa Constrictor in the Freezer\"), until 2004.\n\nShe went on to publish at least 10 children's books, which present educational stores anchored in daily life, usually using anthropomorphic animals to illustrate everyday situations. Her books were published in various local languages, including Chopi, Makhuwa, Chuwabu, and Makonde, as well as in Braille.\n\nWith the support of the Fundação Fernando Leite Couto, two of Langa's books, Ndinema vai à escola and O gato e o coelho, were turned into plays.\n\nIn 2010, at age 57, she enrolled at Eduardo Mondlane University, where she obtained a bachelor's degree in journalism.\n\nShe founded her own publishing house, Editora Mulheres e Jovens Moçambicanos (Mozambican Women and Youth Publishing, or EMUJOMO), in 2015. She was also a founding member of Muchefa, an association of women heads of household, which supports women and children in need as well as people with HIV/AIDS.\n\nShe died on June 24, 2017, after falling ill while preparing to celebrate her 64th birthday.\n\nSelected works \n\n 2004: Uma Jibóia no Congelador\n 2006: Vhembeleti e outros\n 2012: O menino e a raposa \n 2013: O coelho e a água\n 2014: O leão, a mulher e a criança\n 2015: O galo e o coelho\n 2015: A gazela, o carneiro e o coelho\n 2015: Ndinema e o final de ano\n 2016: Memórias de uma inclui\n 2016: Ndinema vai à escola\n\nReferences \n\n1953 births\n2017 deaths\nMozambican women writers\nMozambican children's writers"
]
|
[
"Twinkle Khanna",
"Off-screen work",
"Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?",
"Khanna campaigned for her father's election in New Delhi (",
"What other involvement did she have in politics?",
"In 2000, she was part of the judges panel at Femina Miss India.",
"What involvement did she have in publishing?",
"Twinkle Khanna is a popular columnist at Daily News and Analysis after hours and The Times of India."
]
| C_4c6cb10736a34a13b6e06fbbf66c328d_0 | Has she won any awards for her journalism? | 4 | Has Twinkle Khanna won any awards for her journalism? | Twinkle Khanna | In 1996, Khanna campaigned for her father's election in New Delhi (Lok Sabha constituency). In 2000, she was part of the judges panel at Femina Miss India. She made her theater debut as the female lead in Feroz Khan's All The Best in February 2001. In 2002, Khanna opened her own interior design store in Crawford Market, Mumbai, called The White Window, in partnership with her longtime friend Gurlein Manchanda. Since then, the store has received the Elle Decor International Design Award. She has opened up another branch of the store elsewhere in Mumbai. She does not hold a professional degree and worked with an architect for two years to learn the procedures. During her pregnancy, she practised maps and designs using CAD. Khanna did the interiors for Rani Mukerji's, Reemma Sen's and Tabu's houses, Kareena Kapoor's Bandra flat in 2008 and Poonam Bajaj's design studio. On the request of one of her clients, she ordered a company to make a golden toilet seat. Khanna has also endorsed for and designed Supertech's ORB project in Noida and another residential project in Pune. However, Khanna filed a case against Supertech for failing to pay Rs1.04 crore (US$160,000) as endorsement fees. She also mentors International Institute of Fashion Designing's Academy of Interiors. Khanna is the co-founder of Grazing Goat Pictures and has co-produced the films Tees Maar Khan (2010) and Patiala House (2011). She also did a cameo appearance in the former film. Khanna has also co-produced Thank You (2011), Khiladi 786 (2012), 72 Miles (2013) and Holiday: A Soldier Is Never Off Duty (2014). She has also been the brand ambassador for the watch brand Movado and endorsed Coca-Cola and Micromax Mobile. In 2014, Khanna and her sister sold their father's house for Rs85 crore (US$13 million). Twinkle Khanna is a popular columnist at Daily News and Analysis after hours and The Times of India. Penguin Random House have announced that Twinkle Khanna's book Mrs Funnybones hit the Nielsen bestseller list at number 2 in its first week of sales. Launched in Mumbai on 18 August, the book has already reached number 1 on the bestseller chart of Crossword's Kemps Corner store and has been receiving praise from readers and press. Khanna's second book The Legend of Lakshmi Prasad, a collection of four short stories, launched in November 2016 sold more than 1,00,000 copies. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Twinkle Khanna (also known as Tina Jatin Khanna; born on 29 December 1973) is a former film actress.
Early life and family
Twinkle Khanna was born on 29 December 1973 in Mumbai, the first of two daughters of veteran Hindi film actors Dimple Kapadia and Rajesh Khanna, with whom she shared her birthday. Her maternal grandfather, Chunnibhai Kapadia was a Gujarati businessman and her father Rajesh Khanna, born in Punjabi Khatri in Amritsar, Punjab, was from a family of railway contractors. On her mother's side, she was the niece of Simple Kapadia, an actress and costume designer whom she "adored". Her sister Rinke Khanna and cousin Karan Kapadia have also acted in films.
Khanna attended the New Era High School, Panchgani and the Narsee Monjee College of Commerce and Economics. After finishing her Class 12th, she wanted to pursue a career as chartered accountant and gave the entrance examination but joined the film industry instead on the insistence of her parents. Before beginning her film career, Khanna went through an eye surgery.
Career
Acting career
Khanna made her screen debut opposite Bobby Deol in Rajkumar Santoshi's romance Barsaat (1995). She was cast by Dharmendra and before the film's release Khanna signed for two more projects. It performed well at the box office and became the sixth-highest-grossing film of the year, and she received the Filmfare Award for Best Female Debut for her performance. The following year she played lead roles in Raj Kanwar's action film Jaan and Lawrence D'Souza's romance Dil Tera Diwana opposite Ajay Devgn and Saif Ali Khan respectively. Jaan was a box office hit and Dil Tera Deewana failed to do well. K.N. Vijiyan of the New Straits Times wrote that "Khanna does not look like a typical Hindi actress". While reviewing Dil Tera Diwana, Vijiyan wrote about Khanna: "Unlike her previous movies, she looks really good in all her scenes and she can act well." In 1997, two films featuring her; Uff! Yeh Mohabbat and Itihaas were released. Both of these films were poor box office performers. Her only release in 1998 was Jab Pyaar Kisise Hota Hai, which featured her as Salman Khan's love interest and was a box office success. Khanna acted opposite Akshay Kumar in two action films: International Khiladi and Zulmi (both 1999). In the former she played a news reporter who falls in love with a criminal whom she interviews. Both performed poorly at the box office. She was paired with Daggubati Venkatesh in the Telugu film Seenu (1999).
Khanna played the lead role in Baadshah (1999), featuring Shah Rukh Khan as a detective. In the same year, she acted opposite Saif Ali Khan in Yeh Hai Mumbai Meri Jaan, a romantic comedy directed by Mahesh Bhatt. She was paired opposite Aamir Khan in Dharmesh Darshan's Mela (2000). Similar to The Seven Samurai in story, it was an average grosser at the box office. Chal Mere Bhai (2000) featured Khanna in a special appearance beside a leading role in the comedy Joru Ka Ghulam, opposite Govinda. She also acted in the David Dhawan-directed comedy Jodi No.1 (2001). Her acting in the film met with poor reviews. Film director Karan Johar admitted in an interview that Khanna was in his mind for the role of Tina in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, but she refused it, and thus Rani Mukerji was signed. She left the industry after her marriage to Akshay Kumar in 2001, citing that she did not enjoy the acting profession any more. Her last film was Love Ke Liye Kuch Bhi Karega (2001), a remake of the Telugu movie Money (1993). It featured her opposite Fardeen Khan and was an average grosser at the box office.
Off-screen work
In August and October 1999, Khanna performed in the Awesome Foursome concert held at the Shah Alam Outdoor Stadium, Malaysia and the Magnificent Five concert at Birmingham, England. Juhi Chawla, Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan accompanied her in the former while in the latter she performed alongside Aamir Khan, Aishwarya Rai, Akshaye Khanna and Rani Mukherjee. The following year, she was part of the judges panel at Femina Miss India. She made her theatre debut as the female lead in Feroz Khan's All The Best in February 2001. In 2002, Khanna opened her own interior design store in Crawford Market, Mumbai, called The White Window, in partnership with her longtime friend Gurlein Manchanda. Since then, the store has received the Elle Decor International Design Award. She has opened up another branch of the store elsewhere in Mumbai. She does not hold a professional degree and worked with an architect for two years to learn the procedures. During her pregnancy, she practised maps and designs using CAD. Khanna did the interiors for Rani Mukerji's, Reemma Sen's and Tabu's houses, Kareena Kapoor's Bandra flat in 2008 and Poonam Bajaj's design studio. On the request of one of her clients, she ordered a company to make a golden toilet seat. Khanna is the Indian brand ambassador for L'Oréal.
Khanna has also endorsed for and designed Supertech's ORB project in Noida and another residential project in Pune. However, Khanna filed a case against Supertech for failing to pay as endorsement fees. She also mentors International Institute of Fashion Designing's Academy of Interiors. Khanna is the co-founder of Grazing Goat Pictures and has co-produced the films Tees Maar Khan (2010) and Patiala House (2011). She also did a cameo appearance in the former film. Khanna has also co-produced Thank You (2011), Khiladi 786 (2012), 72 Miles (2013) and Holiday: A Soldier Is Never Off Duty (2014). She has also been the brand ambassador for the watch brand Movado and endorsed Coca-Cola and Micromax Mobile. In December 2016, Khanna launched her production house Mrs. Funnybones Movies which eventually co-produced Pad Man. The film went on to win the 2018 National Film Award for Best Film on Other Social Issues.
Khanna is a columnist at Daily News and Analysis after hours and The Times of India. Penguin Random House have announced that Khanna's book Mrs Funnybones hit the Nielsen bestseller list at number 2 in its first week of sales. Launched in Mumbai on 18 August 2015, the book reached number 1 on the bestseller chart of Crossword's Kemps Corner store and received praise from readers and press, eventually making Khanna the highest-selling female author in India for that year. Khanna's second book The Legend of Lakshmi Prasad, a collection of four short stories, launched in November 2016 sold more than copies. Her latest book, Pyjamas Are Forgiving (Juggernaut Books, 2018) was released in September 2018 and has made her the highest-selling female author in India in the year 2018, according to Nielsen BookScan India. The publisher reported that the book debuted at number 1 on the Nielsen Bookscan All-India Bestseller List and sold over 100,000 copies.
Khanna has been actively advocating the cause of menstrual hygiene. She joined hands with Save the Children to promote the right to menstrual hygiene among children and slum communities. She was invited to speak at the University of Oxford in 2018. She was also invited to be a part of an eminent panel at the United Nations, New York and also appeared on BBC world Impact show to talk about menstrual hygiene and sanitation globally. In 2019, Khanna also launched Tweak, a bilingual digital media platform for women.
Life
In 2001, Khanna campaigned for her father's election in New Delhi. She met Akshay Kumar, for the first time during a photo session for Filmfare magazine. They got married on 17 January 2001 and together have a son, Aarav and a daughter, Nitara. Kumar often credits Khanna for his success. In 2009, People magazine listed her as the fourth-best-dressed celebrity in India. In February 2014, she was operated on at the Breach Candy hospital for the removal of a kidney stone.
In 2009, during Lakme Fashion Week, she unbuttoned Akshay Kumar's jeans (only the first button). This incident created a controversy. A social worker wanted to file a complaint against the couple and the event organisers for obscenity. Khanna surrendered at the Vakola police station and was released on bail. She eventually served 30 days in prison for the crime. In July 2013, the Bombay High Court ordered the police to prosecute Khanna and her husband. In 2014, Khanna and her sister sold their father's house for 85 crores. She has maintained a Twitter account since November 2014.
Filmography
As actress
As producer
Awards
Bibliography
References
Further reading
External links
Collected News and commentary at The Times of India
1974 births
20th-century Indian actresses
21st-century Indian actresses
21st-century Indian businesspeople
21st-century Indian businesswomen
21st-century Indian designers
21st-century Indian journalists
21st-century Indian women writers
Actresses from Mumbai
Actresses from Pune
Actresses in Hindi cinema
Businesswomen from Maharashtra
Film producers from Mumbai
Gujarati people
Indian columnists
Indian interior designers
Indian women designers
Indian women film producers
Living people
Punjabi people
Women columnists
Women writers from Maharashtra
Writers from Mumbai
Writers from Pune | false | [
"Claudia Rowe is a journalist who currently works for The Seattle Times. In the past, she has worked for The New York Times, Mother Jones, Woman’s Day, The Huffington Post and The Stranger and other newspapers and magazines. She has been a member of the Humanities Washington Speakers Bureau.\n\nAwards\n\nClaudia has won many awards for her work in journalism and is a celebrated reporter and advocate. \n She received the Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism award in 2006, for \"Judgment Calls: When to remove a child?\", and won in 2008 for “One Fatal Shot”.\n She also received first place awards from the Society of Professional Journalists. \n She was given the Taylor Award from the Nieman Foundation for Journalism in 2009.\n\nThe Spider and the Fly\n\nIn 1998, Claudia was living in Poughkeepsie, New York, working for The New York Times. She was assigned to cover the murders by Kendall Francois, a serial killer who murdered at least eight women. Claudia spent five years talking with Kendall in a quest to understand what made him tick and why he committed such horrific crimes. The end result is The Spider and the Fly: A Reporter, a Serial Killer, and the Meaning of Murder, a book about Kendall, his effect upon her and how he helped her to overcome her own struggles. Published by Dey Street Books on January 24, 2017, the book is presented as \"part psychological thriller and part gut-wrenching memoir.\" (Review from Robert Kolker.)\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nOfficial Site\n\nAmerican journalists\nAmerican women journalists\nLiving people\nYear of birth missing (living people)\n21st-century American women",
"Susan Antilla is a journalist and reporting fellow for The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute. She is also a contributor to The New York Times DealBook. Antilla is the author of Tales From the Boom-Boom Room: The Landmark Legal Battles That Exposed Wall Street’s Shocking Culture of Sexual Harassment (2002), an exposé of sexual harassment on Wall Street in the 1990s, focusing especially upon Smith Barney. The New York Observer called the book “a work of compelling Wall Street anthropology.”\n\nCareer\nShe has written about business and finance since 1978, and was author of the Sunday “Wall Street” column at The New York Times. She also was a columnist for Bloomberg View and TheStreet.com. Antilla has headed the New York Bureau of the Money section of USA Today and the financial bureau of the Baltimore Sun. She began her career as a business writer at Dun’s Business Month, and has written for Bloomberg View, New York magazine, The Motley Fool, CNN.com, thestreet.com, Investopedia and The Scotsman. She has a master's degree in journalism from New York University.\n\nAntilla was formerly an adjunct professor in the graduate journalism department of New York University and an adjunct professor of journalism at Fairfield University.\n\nHer career has included:\n1978 to 1982: Reporter at Dun's Business Month\n1982 to 1985: Stock market reporter, USA Today\n1985 to 1986: Financial bureau chief, The Baltimore Sun\n1986 to 1992: Money section bureau chief and columnist, USA Today\n1992 to 1995: Reporter and columnist, The New York Times\n1995 to 2013: Columnist, Bloomberg News and Bloomberg View\n2014 to 2017: Columnist, TheStreet.com.\n2017 to date: Reporting Fellow for The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute\n\nIn 1994, she became the focus of controversy when she wrote an article for the New York Times that repeated false rumors suggesting Presstek Inc. CEO Robert Howard was really a convicted felon named Howard Finkelstein. The Times published an apology, and in 2000 Antilla was eventually ordered to pay damages of $480,000 to Howard. The court judgment was reversed in 2002. In 1997, Howard and Presstek were fined $2.9 million by the SEC for distributing false information to investors.\n\nAwards and honors\n\nIn 2017, Antilla won the Excellence in Journalism award from the Society of the Silurians for her columns at TheStreet.com. The Connecticut Press Club gave her its 2017 Communications award for business writing and she took second place in the commentary category in the 2017 National Headliners Awards for her columns at TheStreet. She is a finalist in the 2017 National Society of Newspaper Columnists contest.\n\nIn 2016, Antilla won the “Best in Business” award in the commentary category from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers (SABEW). The judges called her columns “a reality check about the institutional forces working against the interests of small investors.”\n\nThe New York Press Club gave her its award for consumer reporting in 2016 for her stories about problems with online security at the mutual fund company The Vanguard Group – the same stories that the Connecticut Press Club chose for first place in business journalism in 2016 and the National Federation of Press Women chose for its 2016 Communications Award.\n\nFor her columns at TheStreet.com, she also received the 2016 Excellence in Journalism awards from The Society of the Silurians; the 2016 Excellence in Journalism Award from the New York State Society of CPAs; first place for commentary from the American Society of Business Publication Editors (ASBPE); and second place for online commentary In 2016 from the National Society of Newspaper Columnists.\n\nIn 2015, she won first place in the American Society of Business Press Editors (ASBPE) Awards of Excellence for original web commentary for her columns at TheStreet.com. The Society of the Silurians gave her its Excellence in Journalism award for her columns at TheStreet in 2015. She won first prize in the at-large competition in two categories in the National Federation of Press Women's 2015 competition – one for her New York Times article about sex discrimination at Sterling Jewelers, and the other for her columns about financial abuse of the elderly published by TheStreet.\n\nShe received the SABEW “Best in Business” award for online commentary in 2014 for her work at Bloomberg View. Antilla received the “Excellence in Journalism” award for business and financial reporting from The Society of the Silurians in 2014, and first prize in the Personal Opinion category from the Connecticut Press Club.\n\nIn 2013, she was winner in the news agency category in the SABEW \"Best In Business\" competition (Commentary), for her work at Bloomberg View. The award page describes her writing as \"crisp and eviscerating\" and says that she demonstrates \"a shrewd understanding of the financial industry and its unsteady interaction with the federal government.\" In 2013 she also received the \"Excellence in Journalism\" award from The Society of The Silurians, the \"Excellence in Journalism\" award from The New York State Society of CPAs and \"First Prize for Personal Opinion Columns\" from The Connecticut Press Club.\n\nAntilla received the 2012 “Excellence in Journalism” award for online commentary from The Society of the Silurians. The Connecticut Press Club selected her for “Best Book of the Year” in 2002, and as a finalist for column writing in 2012.\n\nNational Federation of Press Women 2003 winner in non-fiction book category for Tales From The Boom-Boom Room.\n\nShe received the “Excellence in Financial Journalism” award from the New York State Society of Certified Public Accountants in 1996, and the “Women’s Leadership Award” from Manhattanville College. She has twice been a finalist for the prestigious Gerald Loeb awards for financial journalism, in 1997 and 1998.\n\nWorks\n\nNotes\n\nExternal links\nOfficial website: susanantilla.com\n\nLiving people\nYear of birth missing (living people)\nNew York University faculty\nAmerican women academics\nNew York University alumni\n21st-century American women"
]
|
[
"Twinkle Khanna",
"Off-screen work",
"Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?",
"Khanna campaigned for her father's election in New Delhi (",
"What other involvement did she have in politics?",
"In 2000, she was part of the judges panel at Femina Miss India.",
"What involvement did she have in publishing?",
"Twinkle Khanna is a popular columnist at Daily News and Analysis after hours and The Times of India.",
"Has she won any awards for her journalism?",
"I don't know."
]
| C_4c6cb10736a34a13b6e06fbbf66c328d_0 | Are there any other interesting aspects about this article? | 5 | Are there any other interesting aspects about this article in addition to Twinkle Khanna's journalism?? | Twinkle Khanna | In 1996, Khanna campaigned for her father's election in New Delhi (Lok Sabha constituency). In 2000, she was part of the judges panel at Femina Miss India. She made her theater debut as the female lead in Feroz Khan's All The Best in February 2001. In 2002, Khanna opened her own interior design store in Crawford Market, Mumbai, called The White Window, in partnership with her longtime friend Gurlein Manchanda. Since then, the store has received the Elle Decor International Design Award. She has opened up another branch of the store elsewhere in Mumbai. She does not hold a professional degree and worked with an architect for two years to learn the procedures. During her pregnancy, she practised maps and designs using CAD. Khanna did the interiors for Rani Mukerji's, Reemma Sen's and Tabu's houses, Kareena Kapoor's Bandra flat in 2008 and Poonam Bajaj's design studio. On the request of one of her clients, she ordered a company to make a golden toilet seat. Khanna has also endorsed for and designed Supertech's ORB project in Noida and another residential project in Pune. However, Khanna filed a case against Supertech for failing to pay Rs1.04 crore (US$160,000) as endorsement fees. She also mentors International Institute of Fashion Designing's Academy of Interiors. Khanna is the co-founder of Grazing Goat Pictures and has co-produced the films Tees Maar Khan (2010) and Patiala House (2011). She also did a cameo appearance in the former film. Khanna has also co-produced Thank You (2011), Khiladi 786 (2012), 72 Miles (2013) and Holiday: A Soldier Is Never Off Duty (2014). She has also been the brand ambassador for the watch brand Movado and endorsed Coca-Cola and Micromax Mobile. In 2014, Khanna and her sister sold their father's house for Rs85 crore (US$13 million). Twinkle Khanna is a popular columnist at Daily News and Analysis after hours and The Times of India. Penguin Random House have announced that Twinkle Khanna's book Mrs Funnybones hit the Nielsen bestseller list at number 2 in its first week of sales. Launched in Mumbai on 18 August, the book has already reached number 1 on the bestseller chart of Crossword's Kemps Corner store and has been receiving praise from readers and press. Khanna's second book The Legend of Lakshmi Prasad, a collection of four short stories, launched in November 2016 sold more than 1,00,000 copies. CANNOTANSWER | Khanna campaigned for her father's election in New Delhi ( | Twinkle Khanna (also known as Tina Jatin Khanna; born on 29 December 1973) is a former film actress.
Early life and family
Twinkle Khanna was born on 29 December 1973 in Mumbai, the first of two daughters of veteran Hindi film actors Dimple Kapadia and Rajesh Khanna, with whom she shared her birthday. Her maternal grandfather, Chunnibhai Kapadia was a Gujarati businessman and her father Rajesh Khanna, born in Punjabi Khatri in Amritsar, Punjab, was from a family of railway contractors. On her mother's side, she was the niece of Simple Kapadia, an actress and costume designer whom she "adored". Her sister Rinke Khanna and cousin Karan Kapadia have also acted in films.
Khanna attended the New Era High School, Panchgani and the Narsee Monjee College of Commerce and Economics. After finishing her Class 12th, she wanted to pursue a career as chartered accountant and gave the entrance examination but joined the film industry instead on the insistence of her parents. Before beginning her film career, Khanna went through an eye surgery.
Career
Acting career
Khanna made her screen debut opposite Bobby Deol in Rajkumar Santoshi's romance Barsaat (1995). She was cast by Dharmendra and before the film's release Khanna signed for two more projects. It performed well at the box office and became the sixth-highest-grossing film of the year, and she received the Filmfare Award for Best Female Debut for her performance. The following year she played lead roles in Raj Kanwar's action film Jaan and Lawrence D'Souza's romance Dil Tera Diwana opposite Ajay Devgn and Saif Ali Khan respectively. Jaan was a box office hit and Dil Tera Deewana failed to do well. K.N. Vijiyan of the New Straits Times wrote that "Khanna does not look like a typical Hindi actress". While reviewing Dil Tera Diwana, Vijiyan wrote about Khanna: "Unlike her previous movies, she looks really good in all her scenes and she can act well." In 1997, two films featuring her; Uff! Yeh Mohabbat and Itihaas were released. Both of these films were poor box office performers. Her only release in 1998 was Jab Pyaar Kisise Hota Hai, which featured her as Salman Khan's love interest and was a box office success. Khanna acted opposite Akshay Kumar in two action films: International Khiladi and Zulmi (both 1999). In the former she played a news reporter who falls in love with a criminal whom she interviews. Both performed poorly at the box office. She was paired with Daggubati Venkatesh in the Telugu film Seenu (1999).
Khanna played the lead role in Baadshah (1999), featuring Shah Rukh Khan as a detective. In the same year, she acted opposite Saif Ali Khan in Yeh Hai Mumbai Meri Jaan, a romantic comedy directed by Mahesh Bhatt. She was paired opposite Aamir Khan in Dharmesh Darshan's Mela (2000). Similar to The Seven Samurai in story, it was an average grosser at the box office. Chal Mere Bhai (2000) featured Khanna in a special appearance beside a leading role in the comedy Joru Ka Ghulam, opposite Govinda. She also acted in the David Dhawan-directed comedy Jodi No.1 (2001). Her acting in the film met with poor reviews. Film director Karan Johar admitted in an interview that Khanna was in his mind for the role of Tina in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, but she refused it, and thus Rani Mukerji was signed. She left the industry after her marriage to Akshay Kumar in 2001, citing that she did not enjoy the acting profession any more. Her last film was Love Ke Liye Kuch Bhi Karega (2001), a remake of the Telugu movie Money (1993). It featured her opposite Fardeen Khan and was an average grosser at the box office.
Off-screen work
In August and October 1999, Khanna performed in the Awesome Foursome concert held at the Shah Alam Outdoor Stadium, Malaysia and the Magnificent Five concert at Birmingham, England. Juhi Chawla, Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan accompanied her in the former while in the latter she performed alongside Aamir Khan, Aishwarya Rai, Akshaye Khanna and Rani Mukherjee. The following year, she was part of the judges panel at Femina Miss India. She made her theatre debut as the female lead in Feroz Khan's All The Best in February 2001. In 2002, Khanna opened her own interior design store in Crawford Market, Mumbai, called The White Window, in partnership with her longtime friend Gurlein Manchanda. Since then, the store has received the Elle Decor International Design Award. She has opened up another branch of the store elsewhere in Mumbai. She does not hold a professional degree and worked with an architect for two years to learn the procedures. During her pregnancy, she practised maps and designs using CAD. Khanna did the interiors for Rani Mukerji's, Reemma Sen's and Tabu's houses, Kareena Kapoor's Bandra flat in 2008 and Poonam Bajaj's design studio. On the request of one of her clients, she ordered a company to make a golden toilet seat. Khanna is the Indian brand ambassador for L'Oréal.
Khanna has also endorsed for and designed Supertech's ORB project in Noida and another residential project in Pune. However, Khanna filed a case against Supertech for failing to pay as endorsement fees. She also mentors International Institute of Fashion Designing's Academy of Interiors. Khanna is the co-founder of Grazing Goat Pictures and has co-produced the films Tees Maar Khan (2010) and Patiala House (2011). She also did a cameo appearance in the former film. Khanna has also co-produced Thank You (2011), Khiladi 786 (2012), 72 Miles (2013) and Holiday: A Soldier Is Never Off Duty (2014). She has also been the brand ambassador for the watch brand Movado and endorsed Coca-Cola and Micromax Mobile. In December 2016, Khanna launched her production house Mrs. Funnybones Movies which eventually co-produced Pad Man. The film went on to win the 2018 National Film Award for Best Film on Other Social Issues.
Khanna is a columnist at Daily News and Analysis after hours and The Times of India. Penguin Random House have announced that Khanna's book Mrs Funnybones hit the Nielsen bestseller list at number 2 in its first week of sales. Launched in Mumbai on 18 August 2015, the book reached number 1 on the bestseller chart of Crossword's Kemps Corner store and received praise from readers and press, eventually making Khanna the highest-selling female author in India for that year. Khanna's second book The Legend of Lakshmi Prasad, a collection of four short stories, launched in November 2016 sold more than copies. Her latest book, Pyjamas Are Forgiving (Juggernaut Books, 2018) was released in September 2018 and has made her the highest-selling female author in India in the year 2018, according to Nielsen BookScan India. The publisher reported that the book debuted at number 1 on the Nielsen Bookscan All-India Bestseller List and sold over 100,000 copies.
Khanna has been actively advocating the cause of menstrual hygiene. She joined hands with Save the Children to promote the right to menstrual hygiene among children and slum communities. She was invited to speak at the University of Oxford in 2018. She was also invited to be a part of an eminent panel at the United Nations, New York and also appeared on BBC world Impact show to talk about menstrual hygiene and sanitation globally. In 2019, Khanna also launched Tweak, a bilingual digital media platform for women.
Life
In 2001, Khanna campaigned for her father's election in New Delhi. She met Akshay Kumar, for the first time during a photo session for Filmfare magazine. They got married on 17 January 2001 and together have a son, Aarav and a daughter, Nitara. Kumar often credits Khanna for his success. In 2009, People magazine listed her as the fourth-best-dressed celebrity in India. In February 2014, she was operated on at the Breach Candy hospital for the removal of a kidney stone.
In 2009, during Lakme Fashion Week, she unbuttoned Akshay Kumar's jeans (only the first button). This incident created a controversy. A social worker wanted to file a complaint against the couple and the event organisers for obscenity. Khanna surrendered at the Vakola police station and was released on bail. She eventually served 30 days in prison for the crime. In July 2013, the Bombay High Court ordered the police to prosecute Khanna and her husband. In 2014, Khanna and her sister sold their father's house for 85 crores. She has maintained a Twitter account since November 2014.
Filmography
As actress
As producer
Awards
Bibliography
References
Further reading
External links
Collected News and commentary at The Times of India
1974 births
20th-century Indian actresses
21st-century Indian actresses
21st-century Indian businesspeople
21st-century Indian businesswomen
21st-century Indian designers
21st-century Indian journalists
21st-century Indian women writers
Actresses from Mumbai
Actresses from Pune
Actresses in Hindi cinema
Businesswomen from Maharashtra
Film producers from Mumbai
Gujarati people
Indian columnists
Indian interior designers
Indian women designers
Indian women film producers
Living people
Punjabi people
Women columnists
Women writers from Maharashtra
Writers from Mumbai
Writers from Pune | false | [
"Přírodní park Třebíčsko (before Oblast klidu Třebíčsko) is a natural park near Třebíč in the Czech Republic. There are many interesting plants. The park was founded in 1983.\n\nKobylinec and Ptáčovský kopeček\n\nKobylinec is a natural monument situated ca 0,5 km from the village of Trnava.\nThe area of this monument is 0,44 ha. Pulsatilla grandis can be found here and in the Ptáčovský kopeček park near Ptáčov near Třebíč. Both monuments are very popular for tourists.\n\nPonds\n\nIn the natural park there are some interesting ponds such as Velký Bor, Malý Bor, Buršík near Přeckov and a brook Březinka. Dams on the brook are examples of European beaver activity.\n\nSyenitové skály near Pocoucov\n\nSyenitové skály (rocks of syenit) near Pocoucov is one of famed locations. There are interesting granite boulders. The area of the reservation is 0,77 ha.\n\nExternal links\nParts of this article or all article was translated from Czech. The original article is :cs:Přírodní park Třebíčsko.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nNature near the village Trnava which is there\n\nTřebíč\nParks in the Czech Republic\nTourist attractions in the Vysočina Region",
"Damn Interesting is an independent website founded by Alan Bellows in 2005. The website presents true stories from science, history, and psychology, primarily as long-form articles, often illustrated with original artwork. Works are written by various authors, and published at irregular intervals. The website openly rejects advertising, relying on reader and listener donations to cover operating costs.\n\nAs of October 2012, each article is also published as a podcast under the same name. In November 2019, a second podcast was launched under the title Damn Interesting Week, featuring unscripted commentary on an assortment of news articles featured on the website's \"Curated Links\" section that week. In mid-2020, a third podcast called Damn Interesting Curio Cabinet began highlighting the website's periodic short-form articles in the same radioplay format as the original podcast.\n\nIn July 2009, Damn Interesting published the print book Alien Hand Syndrome through Workman Publishing. It contains some favorites from the site and some exclusive content.\n\nAwards and recognition \nIn August 2007, PC Magazine named Damn Interesting one of the \"Top 100 Undiscovered Web Sites\".\nThe article \"The Zero-Armed Bandit\" by Alan Bellows won a 2015 Sidney Award from David Brooks in The New York Times.\nThe article \"Ghoulish Acts and Dastardly Deeds\" by Alan Bellows was cited as \"nonfiction journalism from 2017 that will stand the test of time\" by Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic.\nThe article \"Dupes and Duplicity\" by Jennifer Lee Noonan won a 2020 Sidney Award from David Brooks in the New York Times.\n\nAccusing The Dollop of plagiarism \n\nOn July 9, 2015, Bellows posted an open letter accusing The Dollop, a comedy podcast about history, of plagiarism due to their repeated use of verbatim text from Damn Interesting articles without permission or attribution. Dave Anthony, the writer of The Dollop, responded on reddit, admitting to using Damn Interesting content, but claiming that the use was protected by fair use, and that \"historical facts are not copyrightable.\" In an article about the controversy on Plagiarism Today, Jonathan Bailey concluded, \"Any way one looks at it, The Dollop failed its ethical obligations to all of the people, not just those writing for Damn Interesting, who put in the time, energy and expertise into writing the original content upon which their show is based.\"\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n Official website\n\n2005 podcast debuts"
]
|
[
"Fats Domino",
"Recordings after leaving Imperial (1963-1970s)"
]
| C_59e99b9b46e44d24a78bee0859d4058a_1 | What is Fats most famous song? | 1 | What is Fats Domino most famous song? | Fats Domino | Domino moved to ABC-Paramount Records in 1963. The label dictated that he record in Nashville, Tennessee, rather than New Orleans. He was assigned a new producer (Felton Jarvis) and a new arranger (Bill Justis). Domino's long-term collaboration with the producer, arranger, and frequent co-writer Dave Bartholomew, who oversaw virtually all of his Imperial hits, was seemingly at an end. Jarvis and Justis changed the Domino sound somewhat, notably by adding the backing of a countrypolitan-style vocal chorus to most of his new recordings. He released 11 singles for ABC-Paramount, several which hit the Top 100 but just once entering the Top 40 ("Red Sails in the Sunset", 1963). By the end of 1964 the British Invasion had changed the tastes of the record-buying public, and Domino's chart run was over. Despite the lack of chart success, Domino continued to record steadily until about 1970, leaving ABC-Paramount in mid-1965 and recording for Mercury Records, where he delivered a live album and two singles. A studio album was planned but stalled with just four tracks recorded . Dave Bartholomew's small Broadmoor label (reuniting with Bartholomew along the way), featured many contemporary Soul infused sides but an album was released overseas in 1971 to fulfill his Reprise Records contract. He shifted to that label after Broadmoor and had a Top 100 single, a cover of the Beatles' "Lady Madonna". Domino appeared in the Monkees' television special 33 1/3 Revolutions per Monkee in 1969. He continued to be popular as a performer for several decades. He made a cameo appearance in Clint Eastwood's movie Any Which Way You Can, filmed in 1979 and released in 1980 singing the country song "Whiskey Heaven" which later became a minor hit. His life and career were showcased in Joe Lauro's 2015 documentary The Big Beat: Fats Domino and the Birth of Rock 'n' Roll. CANNOTANSWER | 40 ("Red Sails in the Sunset", 1963). | Antoine Dominique Domino Jr. (February 26, 1928 – October 24, 2017), known as Fats Domino, was an American pianist and singer-songwriter. One of the pioneers of rock and roll music, Domino sold more than 65 million records. Born in New Orleans to a French Creole family, Domino signed to Imperial Records in 1949. His first single "The Fat Man" is cited by some historians as the first rock and roll single and the first to sell more than 1 million copies. Domino continued to work with the song's co-writer Dave Bartholomew, contributing his distinctive rolling piano style to Lloyd Price's "Lawdy Miss Clawdy" (1952) and scoring a string of mainstream hits beginning with "Ain't That a Shame" (1955). Between 1955 and 1960, he had eleven Top 10 US pop hits. By 1955, five of his records had sold more than a million copies, being certified gold.
Domino was shy and modest by nature but made a significant contribution to the rock and roll genre. Elvis Presley declared Domino a "huge influence on me when I started out" and described him as "the real king of rock 'n' roll". The artist himself did not define his work as rock and roll, saying of the genre "It wasn't anything but the same rhythm and blues I'd been playing down in New Orleans". Four of Domino's records were named to the Grammy Hall of Fame for their significance: "Blueberry Hill", "Ain't That A Shame", "Walking to New Orleans" and "The Fat Man". He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as part of its first group of inductees in 1986. The Associated Press estimates that during his career, Domino "sold more than 110 million records".
Biography
Early life and education
Antoine Domino Jr. was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana, the youngest of eight children born to Antoine Caliste Domino (1879–1964) and Marie-Donatille Gros (1886–1971). The Domino family was of French Creole background, and Louisiana Creole was his first language. Like most such families, the Dominos were Catholic.
Antoine was born at home with the assistance of his grandmother, a midwife. His name was initially misspelled as Anthony on his birth certificate. His family had recently arrived in the Lower Ninth Ward from Vacherie, Louisiana. His father was a part-time violin player who worked at a racetrack.
He attended the Louis B. Macarty School, leaving to start work as a helper to an ice delivery man. Domino learned to play the piano in about 1938 from his brother-in-law, the jazz guitarist Harrison Verrett.
Early career (1940s)
By age 14, Domino was performing in New Orleans bars. In 1947, Billy Diamond, a New Orleans bandleader, accepted an invitation to hear the young pianist perform at a backyard barbecue. Domino played well enough that Diamond asked him to join his band, the Solid Senders, at the Hideaway Club in New Orleans, where he would earn $3 a week playing the piano. Diamond nicknamed him "Fats", because Domino reminded him of the renowned pianists Fats Waller and Fats Pichon, but also because of his large appetite.
Recordings for Imperial Records (1949–1962)
Domino was signed to the Imperial Records label in 1949 by owner Lew Chudd, to be paid royalties based on sales instead of a fee for each song. He and producer Dave Bartholomew wrote "The Fat Man", a toned down version of a song about drug addicts called "Junker Blues"; the record had sold a million copies by 1951. Featuring a rolling piano and Domino vocalizing "wah-wah" over a strong backbeat, "The Fat Man" is widely considered the first rock-and-roll record to achieve this level of sales. In 2015, the song would enter the Grammy Hall of Fame.
Domino released a series of hit songs with Bartholomew (also the co-writer of many of the songs), the saxophonists Herbert Hardesty and Alvin "Red" Tyler, the bassist Billy Diamond and later Frank Fields, and the drummers Earl Palmer and Smokey Johnson. Other notable and long-standing musicians in Domino's band were the saxophonists Reggie Houston, Lee Allen, and Fred Kemp, Domino's trusted bandleader.
While Domino's own recordings were done for Imperial, he sometimes sat in during that time as a session musician on recordings by other artists for other record labels. Domino's rolling piano triplets provided the memorable instrumental introduction for Lloyd Price's first hit, "Lawdy Miss Clawdy", recorded for Specialty Records on March 13, 1952, at Cosimo Matassa's J&M Studios in New Orleans (where Domino himself had earlier recorded "The Fat Man" and other songs). Dave Bartholomew was producing Price's record, which also featured familiar Domino collaborators Hardesty, Fields and Palmer as sidemen, and he asked Domino to play the piano part, replacing the original session pianist.
Domino crossed into the pop mainstream with "Ain't That a Shame" (mislabeled as "Ain't It a Shame") which reached the Top Ten. This was the first of his records to appear on the Billboard pop singles chart (on July 16, 1955), with the debut at number 14. A milder cover version by Pat Boone reached number 1, having received wider radio airplay in an era of racial segregation. In 1955, Domino was said to be earning $10,000 a week while touring, according to a report in the memoir of artist Chuck Berry. Domino eventually had 37 Top 40 singles, but none made it to number 1 on the Pop chart.
Domino's debut album contained several of his recent hits and earlier blues tracks that had not been released as singles, and was issued on the Imperial label (catalogue number 9009) in November 1955, and was reissued as Rock and Rollin' with Fats Domino. The reissue reached number 17 on the Billboard Pop Albums chart.
His 1956 recording of "Blueberry Hill", a 1940 song by Vincent Rose, Al Lewis and Larry Stock (which had previously been recorded by Gene Autry, Louis Armstrong and others), reached number 2 on the Billboard Juke Box chart for two weeks and was number 1 on the R&B chart for 11 weeks. It was his biggest hit, selling more than 5 million copies worldwide in 1956 and 1957. The song was subsequently recorded by Elvis Presley, Little Richard, and Led Zeppelin. Some 32 years later, the song would enter the
Grammy Hall of Fame.
Domino had further hit singles between 1956 and 1959, including "When My Dreamboat Comes Home" (Pop number 14), "I'm Walkin'" (Pop number 4), "Valley of Tears" (Pop number 8), "It's You I Love" (Pop number 6), "Whole Lotta Lovin'" (Pop number 6), "I Want to Walk You Home" (Pop number 8), and "Be My Guest" (Pop number 8). In 1957, Domino maintained "What they call rock 'n' roll now is rhythm and blues. I've been playing it for 15 years in New Orleans".
Domino appeared in two films released in 1956: Shake, Rattle & Rock! and The Girl Can't Help It. On December 18, 1957, his hit recording of "The Big Beat" was featured on Dick Clark's American Bandstand.
He was also featured in a movie of the same name.
On November 2, 1956, a riot broke out at a Domino concert in Fayetteville, North Carolina. The police used tear gas to break up the unruly crowd. Domino jumped out a window to avoid the melee; he and two members of his band were slightly injured. During his career, four major riots occurred at his concerts, "partly because of integration", according to his biographer Rick Coleman. "But also the fact they had alcohol at these shows. So they were mixing alcohol, plus dancing, plus the races together for the first time in a lot of these places." In November 1957, Domino appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show; no disturbance accompanied this performance.
In the same year, the article "King of Rock 'n' Roll" in Ebony magazine featured Domino who said he was on the road 340 days a year, up to $2,500 per evening, and grossing over $500,000; Domino also told readers that he owned 50 suits, 100 pairs of shoes and a $1,500 diamond horseshoe stick pin.
Domino had a steady series of hits for Imperial through early 1962, including "Walking to New Orleans" (1960, Pop number 6), co-written by Bobby Charles, and "My Girl Josephine" (Pop number 14) in the same year. He toured Europe in 1962 and met the Beatles who would later cite Domino as an inspiration. After returning, he played the first of his many stands in Las Vegas.
Imperial Records was sold in early 1963, and Domino left the label. "I stuck with them until they sold out," he said in 1979. In all, he recorded over 60 singles for Imperial, placing 40 songs in the top 10 on the R&B chart and 11 in the top 10 on the Pop chart, twenty-seven of which were double-sided hits.
Recordings after leaving Imperial (1963–1970s)
Domino moved to ABC-Paramount Records in 1963. The label dictated that he record in Nashville, Tennessee, rather than New Orleans. He was assigned a new producer (Felton Jarvis) and a new arranger (Bill Justis). Domino's long-term collaboration with the producer, arranger, and frequent co-writer Dave Bartholomew, who oversaw virtually all of his Imperial hits, was seemingly at an end. Jarvis and Justis changed the Domino sound somewhat, notably by adding the backing of a countrypolitan-style vocal chorus to most of his new recordings. He released 11 singles for ABC-Paramount, several which hit the Top 100 but just once entering the Top 40 ("Red Sails in the Sunset", 1963). By the end of 1964 the British Invasion had changed the tastes of the record-buying public, and Domino's chart run was over.
Despite the lack of chart success, Domino continued to record steadily until about 1970, leaving ABC-Paramount in mid-1965 and recording for Mercury Records, where he delivered a live album and two singles. A studio album was planned but stalled with just four tracks recorded. Dave Bartholomew's small Broadmoor label (reuniting with Bartholomew along the way), featured many contemporary Soul infused sides and a few single releases but an album was not released overseas until 1971 to fulfill his Reprise Records contract. He shifted to that label after Broadmoor and had a Top 100 single, a cover of the Beatles' "Lady Madonna".
Domino appeared in the Monkees' television special 33⅓ Revolutions per Monkee in 1969. In 1971, he opened for Ike & Tina Turner at Carnegie Hall. He continued to be popular as a performer for several decades. He made a cameo appearance in Clint Eastwood's movie Any Which Way You Can, filmed in 1979 and released in 1980, singing the country song "Whiskey Heaven", which later became a minor hit. His life and career were showcased in Joe Lauro's 2015 documentary The Big Beat: Fats Domino and the Birth of Rock 'n' Roll.
Later career (1980s–2005)
In 1986, Domino was one of the first musicians to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He also received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1987. Domino's last album for a major label, Christmas Is a Special Day, was released in 1993.
Domino lived in a mansion in a predominantly working-class neighborhood in the Lower Ninth Ward, where he was a familiar sight in his bright pink Cadillac automobile. He made yearly appearances at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and other local events.
His last tour was in Europe, for three weeks in 1995. After being ill while on tour, Domino decided he would no longer leave the New Orleans area, having a comfortable income from royalty payments and a dislike of touring and claiming he could not get any food that he liked anywhere else. In the same year, he received the Rhythm & Blues Foundation's Ray Charles Lifetime Achievement Award.
In 1998, President Bill Clinton awarded him the National Medal of Arts. Domino declined an invitation to perform at the White House.
In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him number 25 on its list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time" in an essay written by Dr. John.
Domino and Hurricane Katrina
As Hurricane Katrina approached New Orleans in August 2005, Domino chose to stay at home with his family, partly because his wife, Rosemary, was in poor health. His house was in an area that was heavily flooded.
Domino was rumored to have died, and his home was vandalized when someone spray-painted the message "RIP Fats. You will be missed". On September 1, the talent agent Al Embry announced that he had not heard from Domino since before the hurricane struck. Later that day, CNN reported that Domino had been rescued by a Coast Guard helicopter. Until then, even family members had not heard from him since before the storm. Embry confirmed that Domino and his family had been rescued. The family was then taken to a shelter in Baton Rouge, after which they were picked up by JaMarcus Russell, the starting quarterback of the Louisiana State University football team, and the boyfriend of Domino's granddaughter. He let the family stay in his apartment. The Washington Post reported that on September 2, they had left Russell's apartment after sleeping three nights on the couch. "We've lost everything," Domino said, according to the Post.
By January 2006, work to gut and repair Domino's home and office had begun (see Reconstruction of New Orleans). In the meantime, the Domino family resided in Harvey, Louisiana.
President George W. Bush made a personal visit and replaced the National Medal of Arts that President Bill Clinton had previously awarded Domino. The gold records were replaced by the RIAA and Capitol Records, which owned the Imperial Records catalogue.
Later life
Domino was scheduled to perform at the 2006 Jazz & Heritage Festival in New Orleans. However, he was suffering from anxiety and was forced to cancel the performance, but he did appear to offer the audience an on-stage greeting.
In 2006 Domino's album Alive and Kickin' was released to benefit the Tipitina's Foundation, which supports indigent local musicians and helps preserve the New Orleans sound. The album consists of unreleased recordings from the 1990s and received great critical acclaim.
On January 12, 2007, Domino was honored with OffBeat magazine's Lifetime Achievement Award at the annual Best of the Beat Awards, held at the House of Blues in New Orleans. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin declared the day "Fats Domino Day in New Orleans" and presented him with a signed declaration. Domino returned to stage on May 19, 2007, at Tipitina's at New Orleans, performing to a full house. This was his last public performance. The concert was recorded for a 2008 TV presentation entitled Fats Domino: Walkin' Back to New Orleans. This was a fund-raising concert, featuring a number of artists. Domino donated his fee to the cause. Later that year, a Vanguard record was released, Goin' Home: A Tribute to Fats Domino featuring his songs as recorded by Elton John, Neil Young, Tom Petty, Robert Plant, Willie Nelson, Norah Jones, Lenny Kravitz, and Lucinda Williams. A portion of the proceeds was to be used by the Foundation to help restore Domino's publishing office which had been damaged by the hurricane.
In September 2007, Domino was inducted into the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame.
In May 2009, Domino made an unexpected appearance in the audience for the Domino Effect, a concert featuring Little Richard and other artists, aimed at raising funds to help rebuild schools and playgrounds damaged by Hurricane Katrina.
In October 2012, Domino was featured in season three of the television series Treme, playing himself. On August 21, 2016, Domino was inducted into the National Rhythm and Blues Hall of Fame. The ceremony was held in Detroit, Michigan. The other inductees were Dionne Warwick, Cathy Hughes, Smokey Robinson, Prince, and the Supremes. He had received the Rhythm & Blues Foundation's Ray Charles Lifetime Achievement Award in 1995. His song "The Fat Man" entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2015.
Death
Domino died on October 24, 2017, at his home in Harvey, Louisiana, at the age of 89, from natural causes, according to the coroner's office.
Influence and legacy
Domino was one of the biggest stars of rock and roll in the 1950s, but he was not convinced that this was a new genre. In 1957, Domino said: "What they call rock 'n' roll now is rhythm and blues. I've been playing it for 15 years in New Orleans". According to Rolling Stone, "this is a valid statement ... all Fifties rockers, black and white, country born and city bred, were fundamentally influenced by R&B, the black popular music of the late Forties and early Fifties".
He was among the first R&B artists to gain popularity with white audiences. His biographer Rick Coleman argues that Domino's records and tours with rock-and-roll shows in that decade, bringing together black and white youths in a shared appreciation of his music, was a factor in the breakdown of racial segregation in the United States. The artist himself did not define his work as rock and roll, saying, "It wasn't anything but the same rhythm and blues I'd been playin' down in New Orleans."
Both John Lennon and Paul McCartney recorded Domino songs. According to some reports, McCartney wrote the Beatles song "Lady Madonna" in emulation of Domino's style, combining it with a nod to Humphrey Lyttelton's 1956 hit "Bad Penny Blues". Domino also recorded the song in 1968. Domino returned to the "Hot 100" chart for the last time in 1968, with his recording of "Lady Madonna". That recording, as well as covers of two other songs by the Beatles, appeared on his Reprise album Fats Is Back, produced by Richard Perry and with several hits recorded by a band that included the New Orleans pianist James Booker.
Domino was present in the audience of 2,200 people at Elvis Presley's first concert at the Las Vegas Hilton on July 31, 1969. At a press conference after the show, when a journalist referred to Presley as "The King", Presley gestured toward Domino, who was taking in the scene. "No," Presley said, "that's the real king of rock and roll." Presley made a subsequent comment, "rock 'n' roll was here a long time before I came along. Let's face it: I can't sing like Fats Domino can. I know that" and added that Domino was "a huge influence on me when I started out".
About a photograph made of him and Elvis together, Domino said: "Elvis told me he flopped the first time he came to Las Vegas. I loved his music. He could sing anything ... I'm glad we took this picture." (Fats Domino (2002). "Music Pioneer Fats Domino Talks About Elvis." Retrieved from "USA Today." December 10, 2002.)
Domino received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1987.
John Lennon covered Domino's composition "Ain't That a Shame" on his 1975 album "Rock 'n' Roll," his tribute to the musicians who had influenced him.
American band Cheap Trick recorded "Ain't That a Shame" on their 1978 live album Cheap Trick at Budokan and released it as the second single from the album. It reached 35 of the Billboard Hot 100. Reportedly, this was Domino's favorite cover. It remains a staple of their live performances, including at their 25th Anniversary concert (which was recorded as the album and DVD Silver) and at their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2016.
The Jamaican reggae artist Yellowman covered many songs by Domino, including "Be My Guest" and "Blueberry Hill."
Jah Wobble, a post-punk bassist best known for his work with Johnny Rotten, released a solo recording of "Blueberry Hill".
The Jamaican ska band Justin Hinds and the Dominoes, formed in the 1960s, was named after Domino, Hinds's favorite singer.
In 2007, various artists came together for a tribute to Domino, recording a live session containing only his songs. Musicians performing on the album, Goin' Home: A Tribute to Fats Domino, included Paul McCartney, Norah Jones, Willie Nelson, Neil Young, and Elton John.
According to Richie Unterberger, writing for AllMusic, Domino was one of the most consistent artists of early rock music, the best-selling African-American rock-and-roll star of the 1950s, and the most popular singer of the "classic" New Orleans rhythm and blues style. His million-selling debut single, "The Fat Man" (1949), is one of many that have been cited as the first rock and roll record. Robert Christgau wrote that Domino was "the most widely liked rock and roller of the '50s" and remarked on his influence:
Domino's rhythm, accentuating the offbeat, as in the song "Be My Guest", was an influence on ska music.
Personal life
Domino was married to Rosemary Domino ( Hall) from 1947 until her death in 2008; the couple had eight children: Antoine III (1950-2015), Anatole, Andre (1952-1997), Antonio, Antoinette, Andrea, Anola, and Adonica.
Even after his success he continued to live in his old neighborhood, the Lower Ninth Ward, until after Hurricane Katrina, when he moved to a suburb of New Orleans.
Discography
Fats Domino discography
List of songs recorded by Fats Domino
Studio albums
References
External links
Fats Domino at history-of-rock.com
Fats Domino: Walking to New Orleans special
1928 births
2017 deaths
African-American pianists
African-American rock musicians
American baritones
American blues pianists
American male pianists
American rock pianists
American rhythm and blues singers
American rock singers
Boogie-woogie pianists
Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners
Imperial Records artists
Louisiana Creole people
Rhythm and blues musicians from New Orleans
Rock and roll musicians
Songwriters from Louisiana
Stride pianists
United States National Medal of Arts recipients
Singers from Louisiana
People from Harvey, Louisiana
ABC Records artists
London Records artists
Mercury Records artists
Reprise Records artists
Warner Records artists
Male jazz musicians
African-American male singer-songwriters
African-American Catholics
20th-century African-American male singers
Singer-songwriters from Louisiana | true | [
"The Joint is Jumpin' may refer to:\n\nMusic\n \"The Joint is Jumpin'\", a 1937 song by Fats Waller, co-credited with Andy Razaf and J. C. Johnson\n The Joint is Jumpin''', a 1981 album by Eight to the Bar\n The Joint is Jumpin, a 1998 album by Jake Hanna\n The Joint is Jumpin''', a 1997 album by Ray Kamalay and his Red Hot Peppers\n The Joint is Jumpin, a 1987 album by Stan Mark and his River City StomperZ\n The Joint is Jumpin': the Music of Fats Waller, a 2003 album by Ralph Sutton\n \"The Joint is Jumpin'\", a song on the 2016 album The Boop-A-Doo by Cherry Poppin' Daddies\n \"The Joint is Jumpin'\", a song on the 1987 album Ain't Misbehavin' by Clark Terry\n \"The Joint is Jumpin'\", a song on the 2012 album Dee Does Broadway by Dee Snider\n \"The Joint is Jumpin'\", a song on the 1985 album They Said It Couldn't Be Done by Grandmaster Flash\n \"The Joint is Jumpin'\", a song on the 1979 album Ain't Misbehavin' by Hank Jones\n \"The Joint is Jumpin'\", a song on the 2006 album All Rise: A Joyful Elegy for Fats Waller by Jason Moran \n \"The Joint is Jumpin'\", a song on the 2001 album Downtown Blues'' by Steve Allee\n\nOther uses\n''The Joint is Jumpin''' (film), 1949",
"\"My Girl Josephine\" is a song written by Fats Domino and Dave Bartholomew. Domino recorded the song on Imperial Records (Imperial 5704) in 1960, and it charted #7 on the Billboard R&B charts and #14 on the Billboard pop charts. The song is also listed and recorded as \"Josephine\" and \"Hello Josephine\" in various cover versions.\n\nSee also\nJosephine (Wayne King song), also covered by Bill Black's Combo\n\nReferences\n\n1960 singles\nFats Domino songs\nSongs written by Dave Bartholomew\n1960 songs\nSongs written by Fats Domino\nImperial Records singles"
]
|
[
"Fats Domino",
"Recordings after leaving Imperial (1963-1970s)",
"What is Fats most famous song?",
"40 (\"Red Sails in the Sunset\", 1963)."
]
| C_59e99b9b46e44d24a78bee0859d4058a_1 | What did he leave Imperial? | 2 | What did Fats Domino leave Imperial? | Fats Domino | Domino moved to ABC-Paramount Records in 1963. The label dictated that he record in Nashville, Tennessee, rather than New Orleans. He was assigned a new producer (Felton Jarvis) and a new arranger (Bill Justis). Domino's long-term collaboration with the producer, arranger, and frequent co-writer Dave Bartholomew, who oversaw virtually all of his Imperial hits, was seemingly at an end. Jarvis and Justis changed the Domino sound somewhat, notably by adding the backing of a countrypolitan-style vocal chorus to most of his new recordings. He released 11 singles for ABC-Paramount, several which hit the Top 100 but just once entering the Top 40 ("Red Sails in the Sunset", 1963). By the end of 1964 the British Invasion had changed the tastes of the record-buying public, and Domino's chart run was over. Despite the lack of chart success, Domino continued to record steadily until about 1970, leaving ABC-Paramount in mid-1965 and recording for Mercury Records, where he delivered a live album and two singles. A studio album was planned but stalled with just four tracks recorded . Dave Bartholomew's small Broadmoor label (reuniting with Bartholomew along the way), featured many contemporary Soul infused sides but an album was released overseas in 1971 to fulfill his Reprise Records contract. He shifted to that label after Broadmoor and had a Top 100 single, a cover of the Beatles' "Lady Madonna". Domino appeared in the Monkees' television special 33 1/3 Revolutions per Monkee in 1969. He continued to be popular as a performer for several decades. He made a cameo appearance in Clint Eastwood's movie Any Which Way You Can, filmed in 1979 and released in 1980 singing the country song "Whiskey Heaven" which later became a minor hit. His life and career were showcased in Joe Lauro's 2015 documentary The Big Beat: Fats Domino and the Birth of Rock 'n' Roll. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Antoine Dominique Domino Jr. (February 26, 1928 – October 24, 2017), known as Fats Domino, was an American pianist and singer-songwriter. One of the pioneers of rock and roll music, Domino sold more than 65 million records. Born in New Orleans to a French Creole family, Domino signed to Imperial Records in 1949. His first single "The Fat Man" is cited by some historians as the first rock and roll single and the first to sell more than 1 million copies. Domino continued to work with the song's co-writer Dave Bartholomew, contributing his distinctive rolling piano style to Lloyd Price's "Lawdy Miss Clawdy" (1952) and scoring a string of mainstream hits beginning with "Ain't That a Shame" (1955). Between 1955 and 1960, he had eleven Top 10 US pop hits. By 1955, five of his records had sold more than a million copies, being certified gold.
Domino was shy and modest by nature but made a significant contribution to the rock and roll genre. Elvis Presley declared Domino a "huge influence on me when I started out" and described him as "the real king of rock 'n' roll". The artist himself did not define his work as rock and roll, saying of the genre "It wasn't anything but the same rhythm and blues I'd been playing down in New Orleans". Four of Domino's records were named to the Grammy Hall of Fame for their significance: "Blueberry Hill", "Ain't That A Shame", "Walking to New Orleans" and "The Fat Man". He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as part of its first group of inductees in 1986. The Associated Press estimates that during his career, Domino "sold more than 110 million records".
Biography
Early life and education
Antoine Domino Jr. was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana, the youngest of eight children born to Antoine Caliste Domino (1879–1964) and Marie-Donatille Gros (1886–1971). The Domino family was of French Creole background, and Louisiana Creole was his first language. Like most such families, the Dominos were Catholic.
Antoine was born at home with the assistance of his grandmother, a midwife. His name was initially misspelled as Anthony on his birth certificate. His family had recently arrived in the Lower Ninth Ward from Vacherie, Louisiana. His father was a part-time violin player who worked at a racetrack.
He attended the Louis B. Macarty School, leaving to start work as a helper to an ice delivery man. Domino learned to play the piano in about 1938 from his brother-in-law, the jazz guitarist Harrison Verrett.
Early career (1940s)
By age 14, Domino was performing in New Orleans bars. In 1947, Billy Diamond, a New Orleans bandleader, accepted an invitation to hear the young pianist perform at a backyard barbecue. Domino played well enough that Diamond asked him to join his band, the Solid Senders, at the Hideaway Club in New Orleans, where he would earn $3 a week playing the piano. Diamond nicknamed him "Fats", because Domino reminded him of the renowned pianists Fats Waller and Fats Pichon, but also because of his large appetite.
Recordings for Imperial Records (1949–1962)
Domino was signed to the Imperial Records label in 1949 by owner Lew Chudd, to be paid royalties based on sales instead of a fee for each song. He and producer Dave Bartholomew wrote "The Fat Man", a toned down version of a song about drug addicts called "Junker Blues"; the record had sold a million copies by 1951. Featuring a rolling piano and Domino vocalizing "wah-wah" over a strong backbeat, "The Fat Man" is widely considered the first rock-and-roll record to achieve this level of sales. In 2015, the song would enter the Grammy Hall of Fame.
Domino released a series of hit songs with Bartholomew (also the co-writer of many of the songs), the saxophonists Herbert Hardesty and Alvin "Red" Tyler, the bassist Billy Diamond and later Frank Fields, and the drummers Earl Palmer and Smokey Johnson. Other notable and long-standing musicians in Domino's band were the saxophonists Reggie Houston, Lee Allen, and Fred Kemp, Domino's trusted bandleader.
While Domino's own recordings were done for Imperial, he sometimes sat in during that time as a session musician on recordings by other artists for other record labels. Domino's rolling piano triplets provided the memorable instrumental introduction for Lloyd Price's first hit, "Lawdy Miss Clawdy", recorded for Specialty Records on March 13, 1952, at Cosimo Matassa's J&M Studios in New Orleans (where Domino himself had earlier recorded "The Fat Man" and other songs). Dave Bartholomew was producing Price's record, which also featured familiar Domino collaborators Hardesty, Fields and Palmer as sidemen, and he asked Domino to play the piano part, replacing the original session pianist.
Domino crossed into the pop mainstream with "Ain't That a Shame" (mislabeled as "Ain't It a Shame") which reached the Top Ten. This was the first of his records to appear on the Billboard pop singles chart (on July 16, 1955), with the debut at number 14. A milder cover version by Pat Boone reached number 1, having received wider radio airplay in an era of racial segregation. In 1955, Domino was said to be earning $10,000 a week while touring, according to a report in the memoir of artist Chuck Berry. Domino eventually had 37 Top 40 singles, but none made it to number 1 on the Pop chart.
Domino's debut album contained several of his recent hits and earlier blues tracks that had not been released as singles, and was issued on the Imperial label (catalogue number 9009) in November 1955, and was reissued as Rock and Rollin' with Fats Domino. The reissue reached number 17 on the Billboard Pop Albums chart.
His 1956 recording of "Blueberry Hill", a 1940 song by Vincent Rose, Al Lewis and Larry Stock (which had previously been recorded by Gene Autry, Louis Armstrong and others), reached number 2 on the Billboard Juke Box chart for two weeks and was number 1 on the R&B chart for 11 weeks. It was his biggest hit, selling more than 5 million copies worldwide in 1956 and 1957. The song was subsequently recorded by Elvis Presley, Little Richard, and Led Zeppelin. Some 32 years later, the song would enter the
Grammy Hall of Fame.
Domino had further hit singles between 1956 and 1959, including "When My Dreamboat Comes Home" (Pop number 14), "I'm Walkin'" (Pop number 4), "Valley of Tears" (Pop number 8), "It's You I Love" (Pop number 6), "Whole Lotta Lovin'" (Pop number 6), "I Want to Walk You Home" (Pop number 8), and "Be My Guest" (Pop number 8). In 1957, Domino maintained "What they call rock 'n' roll now is rhythm and blues. I've been playing it for 15 years in New Orleans".
Domino appeared in two films released in 1956: Shake, Rattle & Rock! and The Girl Can't Help It. On December 18, 1957, his hit recording of "The Big Beat" was featured on Dick Clark's American Bandstand.
He was also featured in a movie of the same name.
On November 2, 1956, a riot broke out at a Domino concert in Fayetteville, North Carolina. The police used tear gas to break up the unruly crowd. Domino jumped out a window to avoid the melee; he and two members of his band were slightly injured. During his career, four major riots occurred at his concerts, "partly because of integration", according to his biographer Rick Coleman. "But also the fact they had alcohol at these shows. So they were mixing alcohol, plus dancing, plus the races together for the first time in a lot of these places." In November 1957, Domino appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show; no disturbance accompanied this performance.
In the same year, the article "King of Rock 'n' Roll" in Ebony magazine featured Domino who said he was on the road 340 days a year, up to $2,500 per evening, and grossing over $500,000; Domino also told readers that he owned 50 suits, 100 pairs of shoes and a $1,500 diamond horseshoe stick pin.
Domino had a steady series of hits for Imperial through early 1962, including "Walking to New Orleans" (1960, Pop number 6), co-written by Bobby Charles, and "My Girl Josephine" (Pop number 14) in the same year. He toured Europe in 1962 and met the Beatles who would later cite Domino as an inspiration. After returning, he played the first of his many stands in Las Vegas.
Imperial Records was sold in early 1963, and Domino left the label. "I stuck with them until they sold out," he said in 1979. In all, he recorded over 60 singles for Imperial, placing 40 songs in the top 10 on the R&B chart and 11 in the top 10 on the Pop chart, twenty-seven of which were double-sided hits.
Recordings after leaving Imperial (1963–1970s)
Domino moved to ABC-Paramount Records in 1963. The label dictated that he record in Nashville, Tennessee, rather than New Orleans. He was assigned a new producer (Felton Jarvis) and a new arranger (Bill Justis). Domino's long-term collaboration with the producer, arranger, and frequent co-writer Dave Bartholomew, who oversaw virtually all of his Imperial hits, was seemingly at an end. Jarvis and Justis changed the Domino sound somewhat, notably by adding the backing of a countrypolitan-style vocal chorus to most of his new recordings. He released 11 singles for ABC-Paramount, several which hit the Top 100 but just once entering the Top 40 ("Red Sails in the Sunset", 1963). By the end of 1964 the British Invasion had changed the tastes of the record-buying public, and Domino's chart run was over.
Despite the lack of chart success, Domino continued to record steadily until about 1970, leaving ABC-Paramount in mid-1965 and recording for Mercury Records, where he delivered a live album and two singles. A studio album was planned but stalled with just four tracks recorded. Dave Bartholomew's small Broadmoor label (reuniting with Bartholomew along the way), featured many contemporary Soul infused sides and a few single releases but an album was not released overseas until 1971 to fulfill his Reprise Records contract. He shifted to that label after Broadmoor and had a Top 100 single, a cover of the Beatles' "Lady Madonna".
Domino appeared in the Monkees' television special 33⅓ Revolutions per Monkee in 1969. In 1971, he opened for Ike & Tina Turner at Carnegie Hall. He continued to be popular as a performer for several decades. He made a cameo appearance in Clint Eastwood's movie Any Which Way You Can, filmed in 1979 and released in 1980, singing the country song "Whiskey Heaven", which later became a minor hit. His life and career were showcased in Joe Lauro's 2015 documentary The Big Beat: Fats Domino and the Birth of Rock 'n' Roll.
Later career (1980s–2005)
In 1986, Domino was one of the first musicians to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He also received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1987. Domino's last album for a major label, Christmas Is a Special Day, was released in 1993.
Domino lived in a mansion in a predominantly working-class neighborhood in the Lower Ninth Ward, where he was a familiar sight in his bright pink Cadillac automobile. He made yearly appearances at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and other local events.
His last tour was in Europe, for three weeks in 1995. After being ill while on tour, Domino decided he would no longer leave the New Orleans area, having a comfortable income from royalty payments and a dislike of touring and claiming he could not get any food that he liked anywhere else. In the same year, he received the Rhythm & Blues Foundation's Ray Charles Lifetime Achievement Award.
In 1998, President Bill Clinton awarded him the National Medal of Arts. Domino declined an invitation to perform at the White House.
In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him number 25 on its list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time" in an essay written by Dr. John.
Domino and Hurricane Katrina
As Hurricane Katrina approached New Orleans in August 2005, Domino chose to stay at home with his family, partly because his wife, Rosemary, was in poor health. His house was in an area that was heavily flooded.
Domino was rumored to have died, and his home was vandalized when someone spray-painted the message "RIP Fats. You will be missed". On September 1, the talent agent Al Embry announced that he had not heard from Domino since before the hurricane struck. Later that day, CNN reported that Domino had been rescued by a Coast Guard helicopter. Until then, even family members had not heard from him since before the storm. Embry confirmed that Domino and his family had been rescued. The family was then taken to a shelter in Baton Rouge, after which they were picked up by JaMarcus Russell, the starting quarterback of the Louisiana State University football team, and the boyfriend of Domino's granddaughter. He let the family stay in his apartment. The Washington Post reported that on September 2, they had left Russell's apartment after sleeping three nights on the couch. "We've lost everything," Domino said, according to the Post.
By January 2006, work to gut and repair Domino's home and office had begun (see Reconstruction of New Orleans). In the meantime, the Domino family resided in Harvey, Louisiana.
President George W. Bush made a personal visit and replaced the National Medal of Arts that President Bill Clinton had previously awarded Domino. The gold records were replaced by the RIAA and Capitol Records, which owned the Imperial Records catalogue.
Later life
Domino was scheduled to perform at the 2006 Jazz & Heritage Festival in New Orleans. However, he was suffering from anxiety and was forced to cancel the performance, but he did appear to offer the audience an on-stage greeting.
In 2006 Domino's album Alive and Kickin' was released to benefit the Tipitina's Foundation, which supports indigent local musicians and helps preserve the New Orleans sound. The album consists of unreleased recordings from the 1990s and received great critical acclaim.
On January 12, 2007, Domino was honored with OffBeat magazine's Lifetime Achievement Award at the annual Best of the Beat Awards, held at the House of Blues in New Orleans. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin declared the day "Fats Domino Day in New Orleans" and presented him with a signed declaration. Domino returned to stage on May 19, 2007, at Tipitina's at New Orleans, performing to a full house. This was his last public performance. The concert was recorded for a 2008 TV presentation entitled Fats Domino: Walkin' Back to New Orleans. This was a fund-raising concert, featuring a number of artists. Domino donated his fee to the cause. Later that year, a Vanguard record was released, Goin' Home: A Tribute to Fats Domino featuring his songs as recorded by Elton John, Neil Young, Tom Petty, Robert Plant, Willie Nelson, Norah Jones, Lenny Kravitz, and Lucinda Williams. A portion of the proceeds was to be used by the Foundation to help restore Domino's publishing office which had been damaged by the hurricane.
In September 2007, Domino was inducted into the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame.
In May 2009, Domino made an unexpected appearance in the audience for the Domino Effect, a concert featuring Little Richard and other artists, aimed at raising funds to help rebuild schools and playgrounds damaged by Hurricane Katrina.
In October 2012, Domino was featured in season three of the television series Treme, playing himself. On August 21, 2016, Domino was inducted into the National Rhythm and Blues Hall of Fame. The ceremony was held in Detroit, Michigan. The other inductees were Dionne Warwick, Cathy Hughes, Smokey Robinson, Prince, and the Supremes. He had received the Rhythm & Blues Foundation's Ray Charles Lifetime Achievement Award in 1995. His song "The Fat Man" entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2015.
Death
Domino died on October 24, 2017, at his home in Harvey, Louisiana, at the age of 89, from natural causes, according to the coroner's office.
Influence and legacy
Domino was one of the biggest stars of rock and roll in the 1950s, but he was not convinced that this was a new genre. In 1957, Domino said: "What they call rock 'n' roll now is rhythm and blues. I've been playing it for 15 years in New Orleans". According to Rolling Stone, "this is a valid statement ... all Fifties rockers, black and white, country born and city bred, were fundamentally influenced by R&B, the black popular music of the late Forties and early Fifties".
He was among the first R&B artists to gain popularity with white audiences. His biographer Rick Coleman argues that Domino's records and tours with rock-and-roll shows in that decade, bringing together black and white youths in a shared appreciation of his music, was a factor in the breakdown of racial segregation in the United States. The artist himself did not define his work as rock and roll, saying, "It wasn't anything but the same rhythm and blues I'd been playin' down in New Orleans."
Both John Lennon and Paul McCartney recorded Domino songs. According to some reports, McCartney wrote the Beatles song "Lady Madonna" in emulation of Domino's style, combining it with a nod to Humphrey Lyttelton's 1956 hit "Bad Penny Blues". Domino also recorded the song in 1968. Domino returned to the "Hot 100" chart for the last time in 1968, with his recording of "Lady Madonna". That recording, as well as covers of two other songs by the Beatles, appeared on his Reprise album Fats Is Back, produced by Richard Perry and with several hits recorded by a band that included the New Orleans pianist James Booker.
Domino was present in the audience of 2,200 people at Elvis Presley's first concert at the Las Vegas Hilton on July 31, 1969. At a press conference after the show, when a journalist referred to Presley as "The King", Presley gestured toward Domino, who was taking in the scene. "No," Presley said, "that's the real king of rock and roll." Presley made a subsequent comment, "rock 'n' roll was here a long time before I came along. Let's face it: I can't sing like Fats Domino can. I know that" and added that Domino was "a huge influence on me when I started out".
About a photograph made of him and Elvis together, Domino said: "Elvis told me he flopped the first time he came to Las Vegas. I loved his music. He could sing anything ... I'm glad we took this picture." (Fats Domino (2002). "Music Pioneer Fats Domino Talks About Elvis." Retrieved from "USA Today." December 10, 2002.)
Domino received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1987.
John Lennon covered Domino's composition "Ain't That a Shame" on his 1975 album "Rock 'n' Roll," his tribute to the musicians who had influenced him.
American band Cheap Trick recorded "Ain't That a Shame" on their 1978 live album Cheap Trick at Budokan and released it as the second single from the album. It reached 35 of the Billboard Hot 100. Reportedly, this was Domino's favorite cover. It remains a staple of their live performances, including at their 25th Anniversary concert (which was recorded as the album and DVD Silver) and at their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2016.
The Jamaican reggae artist Yellowman covered many songs by Domino, including "Be My Guest" and "Blueberry Hill."
Jah Wobble, a post-punk bassist best known for his work with Johnny Rotten, released a solo recording of "Blueberry Hill".
The Jamaican ska band Justin Hinds and the Dominoes, formed in the 1960s, was named after Domino, Hinds's favorite singer.
In 2007, various artists came together for a tribute to Domino, recording a live session containing only his songs. Musicians performing on the album, Goin' Home: A Tribute to Fats Domino, included Paul McCartney, Norah Jones, Willie Nelson, Neil Young, and Elton John.
According to Richie Unterberger, writing for AllMusic, Domino was one of the most consistent artists of early rock music, the best-selling African-American rock-and-roll star of the 1950s, and the most popular singer of the "classic" New Orleans rhythm and blues style. His million-selling debut single, "The Fat Man" (1949), is one of many that have been cited as the first rock and roll record. Robert Christgau wrote that Domino was "the most widely liked rock and roller of the '50s" and remarked on his influence:
Domino's rhythm, accentuating the offbeat, as in the song "Be My Guest", was an influence on ska music.
Personal life
Domino was married to Rosemary Domino ( Hall) from 1947 until her death in 2008; the couple had eight children: Antoine III (1950-2015), Anatole, Andre (1952-1997), Antonio, Antoinette, Andrea, Anola, and Adonica.
Even after his success he continued to live in his old neighborhood, the Lower Ninth Ward, until after Hurricane Katrina, when he moved to a suburb of New Orleans.
Discography
Fats Domino discography
List of songs recorded by Fats Domino
Studio albums
References
External links
Fats Domino at history-of-rock.com
Fats Domino: Walking to New Orleans special
1928 births
2017 deaths
African-American pianists
African-American rock musicians
American baritones
American blues pianists
American male pianists
American rock pianists
American rhythm and blues singers
American rock singers
Boogie-woogie pianists
Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners
Imperial Records artists
Louisiana Creole people
Rhythm and blues musicians from New Orleans
Rock and roll musicians
Songwriters from Louisiana
Stride pianists
United States National Medal of Arts recipients
Singers from Louisiana
People from Harvey, Louisiana
ABC Records artists
London Records artists
Mercury Records artists
Reprise Records artists
Warner Records artists
Male jazz musicians
African-American male singer-songwriters
African-American Catholics
20th-century African-American male singers
Singer-songwriters from Louisiana | false | [
"Theatres for Russian tsars appeared as early as the 17th century, but only members of the Imperial family and their immediate circles could attend the performances.\n\nEmpress Elizabeth of Russia issued a Decree dated 30 August 1756, to establish a public Imperial troupe. The decree united in one system several different theatre companies, already existing. The theatre was given a mansion on Vasilievsky island, which housed a troupe headed by Fyodor Volkov. Alexander Sumarokov was appointed the Director of the theatre.\n\nThe troupe covered all theatrical arts: drama, ballet and opera. Every actor did what he could.\n\nIn 1801, the Moscow Imperial troupe appeared.\n\nPrivate theatre companies in Moscow and St. Petersburg were banned until 1882.\n\nThe Imperial troupe lasted until the Russian revolution of 1917.\n\nTheatres used by the St Petersburg Imperial troupe included:\n Home of opera at the edge of Neva (Невская першпектива; 1742–49)\n the Home of opera near the Summer Garden (Летний сад; 1750–63)\n the Theatre Free Russian or the theatre of Karl Knipper (founded in 1777; in 1783 is bought to imperial treasure; then called the Wooden City Theater (ru: Городской Деревянный театр) – on 1797)\n Hermitage Theatre (from 1785)\n the Imperial theater in the Gatchina Palace (to Paul I of Russia, the end of the 18th century)\n Bolshoi Kamenny Theatre (on 1784–1886)\n Imperial theatre of Petergof\n Alexandrinsky Theatre (from 1832; then the theatre became dramatic)\n Mikhaylovsky Theatre (from 1833)\n Mariinsky Theatre (from 1860)\n\nNotes \n\nTheatre in Russia",
"Nikita Mikhailovich Muravyov () ( – ) was an Imperial Guards staff officer and plotter in what led to the Decembrist revolt of 1825.\n\nMuravyov was active in a number of proto-Decembrist organizations. In 1816, he was among the founders of the Union of Salvation, a secret society. In 1820, he spoke out for republican government in the Union of Welfare. After the Union of Welfare's 1821 dissolution, Muravyov joined the supreme duma and was a leader in the Northern Society, and was elected to the Southern Society's directory. He wrote a draft constitution for a Russian state, and a tract \"Curious Conversation\" arguing the need to rise against despotism.\n\nHe was on leave in the country when the Decembrist revolt occurred on 14 December 1825, and did not participate directly in it. But he was complicit, arrested and imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress. He was condemned to death, but the sentence was commuted to 20 years of hard labor. He was assigned to the Nerchinsk Mines, then in 1835 exiled to Irkutsk Province where he died in 1843.\n\nReferences\n\nFurther reading\n\nMazour, Anatole G. (1937). The First Russian Revolution, 1825: The Decembrist Movement, Its Origins, Development, and Significance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press\n\nRussian military personnel of the Napoleonic Wars\n1796 births\n1843 deaths\nPeople from Moscow\nMoscow State University alumni\nDecembrists"
]
|
[
"Fats Domino",
"Recordings after leaving Imperial (1963-1970s)",
"What is Fats most famous song?",
"40 (\"Red Sails in the Sunset\", 1963).",
"What did he leave Imperial?",
"I don't know."
]
| C_59e99b9b46e44d24a78bee0859d4058a_1 | Where did he go after he left Imperial? | 3 | Where did Fats Domino go after he left Imperial? | Fats Domino | Domino moved to ABC-Paramount Records in 1963. The label dictated that he record in Nashville, Tennessee, rather than New Orleans. He was assigned a new producer (Felton Jarvis) and a new arranger (Bill Justis). Domino's long-term collaboration with the producer, arranger, and frequent co-writer Dave Bartholomew, who oversaw virtually all of his Imperial hits, was seemingly at an end. Jarvis and Justis changed the Domino sound somewhat, notably by adding the backing of a countrypolitan-style vocal chorus to most of his new recordings. He released 11 singles for ABC-Paramount, several which hit the Top 100 but just once entering the Top 40 ("Red Sails in the Sunset", 1963). By the end of 1964 the British Invasion had changed the tastes of the record-buying public, and Domino's chart run was over. Despite the lack of chart success, Domino continued to record steadily until about 1970, leaving ABC-Paramount in mid-1965 and recording for Mercury Records, where he delivered a live album and two singles. A studio album was planned but stalled with just four tracks recorded . Dave Bartholomew's small Broadmoor label (reuniting with Bartholomew along the way), featured many contemporary Soul infused sides but an album was released overseas in 1971 to fulfill his Reprise Records contract. He shifted to that label after Broadmoor and had a Top 100 single, a cover of the Beatles' "Lady Madonna". Domino appeared in the Monkees' television special 33 1/3 Revolutions per Monkee in 1969. He continued to be popular as a performer for several decades. He made a cameo appearance in Clint Eastwood's movie Any Which Way You Can, filmed in 1979 and released in 1980 singing the country song "Whiskey Heaven" which later became a minor hit. His life and career were showcased in Joe Lauro's 2015 documentary The Big Beat: Fats Domino and the Birth of Rock 'n' Roll. CANNOTANSWER | 1970, leaving ABC-Paramount in mid-1965 and recording for Mercury Records, | Antoine Dominique Domino Jr. (February 26, 1928 – October 24, 2017), known as Fats Domino, was an American pianist and singer-songwriter. One of the pioneers of rock and roll music, Domino sold more than 65 million records. Born in New Orleans to a French Creole family, Domino signed to Imperial Records in 1949. His first single "The Fat Man" is cited by some historians as the first rock and roll single and the first to sell more than 1 million copies. Domino continued to work with the song's co-writer Dave Bartholomew, contributing his distinctive rolling piano style to Lloyd Price's "Lawdy Miss Clawdy" (1952) and scoring a string of mainstream hits beginning with "Ain't That a Shame" (1955). Between 1955 and 1960, he had eleven Top 10 US pop hits. By 1955, five of his records had sold more than a million copies, being certified gold.
Domino was shy and modest by nature but made a significant contribution to the rock and roll genre. Elvis Presley declared Domino a "huge influence on me when I started out" and described him as "the real king of rock 'n' roll". The artist himself did not define his work as rock and roll, saying of the genre "It wasn't anything but the same rhythm and blues I'd been playing down in New Orleans". Four of Domino's records were named to the Grammy Hall of Fame for their significance: "Blueberry Hill", "Ain't That A Shame", "Walking to New Orleans" and "The Fat Man". He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as part of its first group of inductees in 1986. The Associated Press estimates that during his career, Domino "sold more than 110 million records".
Biography
Early life and education
Antoine Domino Jr. was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana, the youngest of eight children born to Antoine Caliste Domino (1879–1964) and Marie-Donatille Gros (1886–1971). The Domino family was of French Creole background, and Louisiana Creole was his first language. Like most such families, the Dominos were Catholic.
Antoine was born at home with the assistance of his grandmother, a midwife. His name was initially misspelled as Anthony on his birth certificate. His family had recently arrived in the Lower Ninth Ward from Vacherie, Louisiana. His father was a part-time violin player who worked at a racetrack.
He attended the Louis B. Macarty School, leaving to start work as a helper to an ice delivery man. Domino learned to play the piano in about 1938 from his brother-in-law, the jazz guitarist Harrison Verrett.
Early career (1940s)
By age 14, Domino was performing in New Orleans bars. In 1947, Billy Diamond, a New Orleans bandleader, accepted an invitation to hear the young pianist perform at a backyard barbecue. Domino played well enough that Diamond asked him to join his band, the Solid Senders, at the Hideaway Club in New Orleans, where he would earn $3 a week playing the piano. Diamond nicknamed him "Fats", because Domino reminded him of the renowned pianists Fats Waller and Fats Pichon, but also because of his large appetite.
Recordings for Imperial Records (1949–1962)
Domino was signed to the Imperial Records label in 1949 by owner Lew Chudd, to be paid royalties based on sales instead of a fee for each song. He and producer Dave Bartholomew wrote "The Fat Man", a toned down version of a song about drug addicts called "Junker Blues"; the record had sold a million copies by 1951. Featuring a rolling piano and Domino vocalizing "wah-wah" over a strong backbeat, "The Fat Man" is widely considered the first rock-and-roll record to achieve this level of sales. In 2015, the song would enter the Grammy Hall of Fame.
Domino released a series of hit songs with Bartholomew (also the co-writer of many of the songs), the saxophonists Herbert Hardesty and Alvin "Red" Tyler, the bassist Billy Diamond and later Frank Fields, and the drummers Earl Palmer and Smokey Johnson. Other notable and long-standing musicians in Domino's band were the saxophonists Reggie Houston, Lee Allen, and Fred Kemp, Domino's trusted bandleader.
While Domino's own recordings were done for Imperial, he sometimes sat in during that time as a session musician on recordings by other artists for other record labels. Domino's rolling piano triplets provided the memorable instrumental introduction for Lloyd Price's first hit, "Lawdy Miss Clawdy", recorded for Specialty Records on March 13, 1952, at Cosimo Matassa's J&M Studios in New Orleans (where Domino himself had earlier recorded "The Fat Man" and other songs). Dave Bartholomew was producing Price's record, which also featured familiar Domino collaborators Hardesty, Fields and Palmer as sidemen, and he asked Domino to play the piano part, replacing the original session pianist.
Domino crossed into the pop mainstream with "Ain't That a Shame" (mislabeled as "Ain't It a Shame") which reached the Top Ten. This was the first of his records to appear on the Billboard pop singles chart (on July 16, 1955), with the debut at number 14. A milder cover version by Pat Boone reached number 1, having received wider radio airplay in an era of racial segregation. In 1955, Domino was said to be earning $10,000 a week while touring, according to a report in the memoir of artist Chuck Berry. Domino eventually had 37 Top 40 singles, but none made it to number 1 on the Pop chart.
Domino's debut album contained several of his recent hits and earlier blues tracks that had not been released as singles, and was issued on the Imperial label (catalogue number 9009) in November 1955, and was reissued as Rock and Rollin' with Fats Domino. The reissue reached number 17 on the Billboard Pop Albums chart.
His 1956 recording of "Blueberry Hill", a 1940 song by Vincent Rose, Al Lewis and Larry Stock (which had previously been recorded by Gene Autry, Louis Armstrong and others), reached number 2 on the Billboard Juke Box chart for two weeks and was number 1 on the R&B chart for 11 weeks. It was his biggest hit, selling more than 5 million copies worldwide in 1956 and 1957. The song was subsequently recorded by Elvis Presley, Little Richard, and Led Zeppelin. Some 32 years later, the song would enter the
Grammy Hall of Fame.
Domino had further hit singles between 1956 and 1959, including "When My Dreamboat Comes Home" (Pop number 14), "I'm Walkin'" (Pop number 4), "Valley of Tears" (Pop number 8), "It's You I Love" (Pop number 6), "Whole Lotta Lovin'" (Pop number 6), "I Want to Walk You Home" (Pop number 8), and "Be My Guest" (Pop number 8). In 1957, Domino maintained "What they call rock 'n' roll now is rhythm and blues. I've been playing it for 15 years in New Orleans".
Domino appeared in two films released in 1956: Shake, Rattle & Rock! and The Girl Can't Help It. On December 18, 1957, his hit recording of "The Big Beat" was featured on Dick Clark's American Bandstand.
He was also featured in a movie of the same name.
On November 2, 1956, a riot broke out at a Domino concert in Fayetteville, North Carolina. The police used tear gas to break up the unruly crowd. Domino jumped out a window to avoid the melee; he and two members of his band were slightly injured. During his career, four major riots occurred at his concerts, "partly because of integration", according to his biographer Rick Coleman. "But also the fact they had alcohol at these shows. So they were mixing alcohol, plus dancing, plus the races together for the first time in a lot of these places." In November 1957, Domino appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show; no disturbance accompanied this performance.
In the same year, the article "King of Rock 'n' Roll" in Ebony magazine featured Domino who said he was on the road 340 days a year, up to $2,500 per evening, and grossing over $500,000; Domino also told readers that he owned 50 suits, 100 pairs of shoes and a $1,500 diamond horseshoe stick pin.
Domino had a steady series of hits for Imperial through early 1962, including "Walking to New Orleans" (1960, Pop number 6), co-written by Bobby Charles, and "My Girl Josephine" (Pop number 14) in the same year. He toured Europe in 1962 and met the Beatles who would later cite Domino as an inspiration. After returning, he played the first of his many stands in Las Vegas.
Imperial Records was sold in early 1963, and Domino left the label. "I stuck with them until they sold out," he said in 1979. In all, he recorded over 60 singles for Imperial, placing 40 songs in the top 10 on the R&B chart and 11 in the top 10 on the Pop chart, twenty-seven of which were double-sided hits.
Recordings after leaving Imperial (1963–1970s)
Domino moved to ABC-Paramount Records in 1963. The label dictated that he record in Nashville, Tennessee, rather than New Orleans. He was assigned a new producer (Felton Jarvis) and a new arranger (Bill Justis). Domino's long-term collaboration with the producer, arranger, and frequent co-writer Dave Bartholomew, who oversaw virtually all of his Imperial hits, was seemingly at an end. Jarvis and Justis changed the Domino sound somewhat, notably by adding the backing of a countrypolitan-style vocal chorus to most of his new recordings. He released 11 singles for ABC-Paramount, several which hit the Top 100 but just once entering the Top 40 ("Red Sails in the Sunset", 1963). By the end of 1964 the British Invasion had changed the tastes of the record-buying public, and Domino's chart run was over.
Despite the lack of chart success, Domino continued to record steadily until about 1970, leaving ABC-Paramount in mid-1965 and recording for Mercury Records, where he delivered a live album and two singles. A studio album was planned but stalled with just four tracks recorded. Dave Bartholomew's small Broadmoor label (reuniting with Bartholomew along the way), featured many contemporary Soul infused sides and a few single releases but an album was not released overseas until 1971 to fulfill his Reprise Records contract. He shifted to that label after Broadmoor and had a Top 100 single, a cover of the Beatles' "Lady Madonna".
Domino appeared in the Monkees' television special 33⅓ Revolutions per Monkee in 1969. In 1971, he opened for Ike & Tina Turner at Carnegie Hall. He continued to be popular as a performer for several decades. He made a cameo appearance in Clint Eastwood's movie Any Which Way You Can, filmed in 1979 and released in 1980, singing the country song "Whiskey Heaven", which later became a minor hit. His life and career were showcased in Joe Lauro's 2015 documentary The Big Beat: Fats Domino and the Birth of Rock 'n' Roll.
Later career (1980s–2005)
In 1986, Domino was one of the first musicians to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He also received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1987. Domino's last album for a major label, Christmas Is a Special Day, was released in 1993.
Domino lived in a mansion in a predominantly working-class neighborhood in the Lower Ninth Ward, where he was a familiar sight in his bright pink Cadillac automobile. He made yearly appearances at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and other local events.
His last tour was in Europe, for three weeks in 1995. After being ill while on tour, Domino decided he would no longer leave the New Orleans area, having a comfortable income from royalty payments and a dislike of touring and claiming he could not get any food that he liked anywhere else. In the same year, he received the Rhythm & Blues Foundation's Ray Charles Lifetime Achievement Award.
In 1998, President Bill Clinton awarded him the National Medal of Arts. Domino declined an invitation to perform at the White House.
In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him number 25 on its list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time" in an essay written by Dr. John.
Domino and Hurricane Katrina
As Hurricane Katrina approached New Orleans in August 2005, Domino chose to stay at home with his family, partly because his wife, Rosemary, was in poor health. His house was in an area that was heavily flooded.
Domino was rumored to have died, and his home was vandalized when someone spray-painted the message "RIP Fats. You will be missed". On September 1, the talent agent Al Embry announced that he had not heard from Domino since before the hurricane struck. Later that day, CNN reported that Domino had been rescued by a Coast Guard helicopter. Until then, even family members had not heard from him since before the storm. Embry confirmed that Domino and his family had been rescued. The family was then taken to a shelter in Baton Rouge, after which they were picked up by JaMarcus Russell, the starting quarterback of the Louisiana State University football team, and the boyfriend of Domino's granddaughter. He let the family stay in his apartment. The Washington Post reported that on September 2, they had left Russell's apartment after sleeping three nights on the couch. "We've lost everything," Domino said, according to the Post.
By January 2006, work to gut and repair Domino's home and office had begun (see Reconstruction of New Orleans). In the meantime, the Domino family resided in Harvey, Louisiana.
President George W. Bush made a personal visit and replaced the National Medal of Arts that President Bill Clinton had previously awarded Domino. The gold records were replaced by the RIAA and Capitol Records, which owned the Imperial Records catalogue.
Later life
Domino was scheduled to perform at the 2006 Jazz & Heritage Festival in New Orleans. However, he was suffering from anxiety and was forced to cancel the performance, but he did appear to offer the audience an on-stage greeting.
In 2006 Domino's album Alive and Kickin' was released to benefit the Tipitina's Foundation, which supports indigent local musicians and helps preserve the New Orleans sound. The album consists of unreleased recordings from the 1990s and received great critical acclaim.
On January 12, 2007, Domino was honored with OffBeat magazine's Lifetime Achievement Award at the annual Best of the Beat Awards, held at the House of Blues in New Orleans. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin declared the day "Fats Domino Day in New Orleans" and presented him with a signed declaration. Domino returned to stage on May 19, 2007, at Tipitina's at New Orleans, performing to a full house. This was his last public performance. The concert was recorded for a 2008 TV presentation entitled Fats Domino: Walkin' Back to New Orleans. This was a fund-raising concert, featuring a number of artists. Domino donated his fee to the cause. Later that year, a Vanguard record was released, Goin' Home: A Tribute to Fats Domino featuring his songs as recorded by Elton John, Neil Young, Tom Petty, Robert Plant, Willie Nelson, Norah Jones, Lenny Kravitz, and Lucinda Williams. A portion of the proceeds was to be used by the Foundation to help restore Domino's publishing office which had been damaged by the hurricane.
In September 2007, Domino was inducted into the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame.
In May 2009, Domino made an unexpected appearance in the audience for the Domino Effect, a concert featuring Little Richard and other artists, aimed at raising funds to help rebuild schools and playgrounds damaged by Hurricane Katrina.
In October 2012, Domino was featured in season three of the television series Treme, playing himself. On August 21, 2016, Domino was inducted into the National Rhythm and Blues Hall of Fame. The ceremony was held in Detroit, Michigan. The other inductees were Dionne Warwick, Cathy Hughes, Smokey Robinson, Prince, and the Supremes. He had received the Rhythm & Blues Foundation's Ray Charles Lifetime Achievement Award in 1995. His song "The Fat Man" entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2015.
Death
Domino died on October 24, 2017, at his home in Harvey, Louisiana, at the age of 89, from natural causes, according to the coroner's office.
Influence and legacy
Domino was one of the biggest stars of rock and roll in the 1950s, but he was not convinced that this was a new genre. In 1957, Domino said: "What they call rock 'n' roll now is rhythm and blues. I've been playing it for 15 years in New Orleans". According to Rolling Stone, "this is a valid statement ... all Fifties rockers, black and white, country born and city bred, were fundamentally influenced by R&B, the black popular music of the late Forties and early Fifties".
He was among the first R&B artists to gain popularity with white audiences. His biographer Rick Coleman argues that Domino's records and tours with rock-and-roll shows in that decade, bringing together black and white youths in a shared appreciation of his music, was a factor in the breakdown of racial segregation in the United States. The artist himself did not define his work as rock and roll, saying, "It wasn't anything but the same rhythm and blues I'd been playin' down in New Orleans."
Both John Lennon and Paul McCartney recorded Domino songs. According to some reports, McCartney wrote the Beatles song "Lady Madonna" in emulation of Domino's style, combining it with a nod to Humphrey Lyttelton's 1956 hit "Bad Penny Blues". Domino also recorded the song in 1968. Domino returned to the "Hot 100" chart for the last time in 1968, with his recording of "Lady Madonna". That recording, as well as covers of two other songs by the Beatles, appeared on his Reprise album Fats Is Back, produced by Richard Perry and with several hits recorded by a band that included the New Orleans pianist James Booker.
Domino was present in the audience of 2,200 people at Elvis Presley's first concert at the Las Vegas Hilton on July 31, 1969. At a press conference after the show, when a journalist referred to Presley as "The King", Presley gestured toward Domino, who was taking in the scene. "No," Presley said, "that's the real king of rock and roll." Presley made a subsequent comment, "rock 'n' roll was here a long time before I came along. Let's face it: I can't sing like Fats Domino can. I know that" and added that Domino was "a huge influence on me when I started out".
About a photograph made of him and Elvis together, Domino said: "Elvis told me he flopped the first time he came to Las Vegas. I loved his music. He could sing anything ... I'm glad we took this picture." (Fats Domino (2002). "Music Pioneer Fats Domino Talks About Elvis." Retrieved from "USA Today." December 10, 2002.)
Domino received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1987.
John Lennon covered Domino's composition "Ain't That a Shame" on his 1975 album "Rock 'n' Roll," his tribute to the musicians who had influenced him.
American band Cheap Trick recorded "Ain't That a Shame" on their 1978 live album Cheap Trick at Budokan and released it as the second single from the album. It reached 35 of the Billboard Hot 100. Reportedly, this was Domino's favorite cover. It remains a staple of their live performances, including at their 25th Anniversary concert (which was recorded as the album and DVD Silver) and at their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2016.
The Jamaican reggae artist Yellowman covered many songs by Domino, including "Be My Guest" and "Blueberry Hill."
Jah Wobble, a post-punk bassist best known for his work with Johnny Rotten, released a solo recording of "Blueberry Hill".
The Jamaican ska band Justin Hinds and the Dominoes, formed in the 1960s, was named after Domino, Hinds's favorite singer.
In 2007, various artists came together for a tribute to Domino, recording a live session containing only his songs. Musicians performing on the album, Goin' Home: A Tribute to Fats Domino, included Paul McCartney, Norah Jones, Willie Nelson, Neil Young, and Elton John.
According to Richie Unterberger, writing for AllMusic, Domino was one of the most consistent artists of early rock music, the best-selling African-American rock-and-roll star of the 1950s, and the most popular singer of the "classic" New Orleans rhythm and blues style. His million-selling debut single, "The Fat Man" (1949), is one of many that have been cited as the first rock and roll record. Robert Christgau wrote that Domino was "the most widely liked rock and roller of the '50s" and remarked on his influence:
Domino's rhythm, accentuating the offbeat, as in the song "Be My Guest", was an influence on ska music.
Personal life
Domino was married to Rosemary Domino ( Hall) from 1947 until her death in 2008; the couple had eight children: Antoine III (1950-2015), Anatole, Andre (1952-1997), Antonio, Antoinette, Andrea, Anola, and Adonica.
Even after his success he continued to live in his old neighborhood, the Lower Ninth Ward, until after Hurricane Katrina, when he moved to a suburb of New Orleans.
Discography
Fats Domino discography
List of songs recorded by Fats Domino
Studio albums
References
External links
Fats Domino at history-of-rock.com
Fats Domino: Walking to New Orleans special
1928 births
2017 deaths
African-American pianists
African-American rock musicians
American baritones
American blues pianists
American male pianists
American rock pianists
American rhythm and blues singers
American rock singers
Boogie-woogie pianists
Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners
Imperial Records artists
Louisiana Creole people
Rhythm and blues musicians from New Orleans
Rock and roll musicians
Songwriters from Louisiana
Stride pianists
United States National Medal of Arts recipients
Singers from Louisiana
People from Harvey, Louisiana
ABC Records artists
London Records artists
Mercury Records artists
Reprise Records artists
Warner Records artists
Male jazz musicians
African-American male singer-songwriters
African-American Catholics
20th-century African-American male singers
Singer-songwriters from Louisiana | true | [
"was the 91st emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession. His reign spanned the years from 1274 through 1287.\n\nThis 13th-century sovereign was named after the 9th-century Emperor Uda and go- (後), translates literally as \"later\"; and thus, he is sometimes called the \"Later Emperor Uda,\" or in some older sources, may be identified as \"Emperor Uda, the second\" or as \"Emperor Uda II.\"\n\nGenealogy\nBefore his ascension to the Chrysanthemum Throne, his personal name (imina) was Yohito (世仁).\n\nHe was the second son of Emperor Kameyama. They were from the Daikaku-ji line.\n\nConsort: Imperial Princess Reishi (姈子内親王; 1270–1307) later Yūgimon'in (遊義門院), Emperor Go-Fukakusa's daughter\n\nConsort: Horikawa (Minamoto) Motoko (堀河（源）基子) later Nishika'mon-in (西華門院; 1269–1355), Horikawa Tomomori's daughter\nFirst son: Imperial Prince Kuniharu (邦治親王) later Emperor Go-Nijō\n\nLady-in-waiting: Itsutsuji (Fujiwara) Chushi (五辻（藤原）忠子; 1268–1319) later Dantenmon'in (談天門院), Itsutsuji Tadatsugu's daughter\nFirst daughter: Imperial Princess Shōshi (1286–1348) (奨子内親王) later Tatchimon-in (達智門院)\nSecond son: Imperial Prince Takaharu (尊治親王) later Emperor Go-Daigo\nThird son: Imperial Prince Priest Shōen (性円法親王; 1292–1347)\nFourth son: Imperial Prince Priest Shokaku (承覚法親王; b. 1294)\n\nConsort: Princess Mizuko (瑞子女王) later Eikamon'in (永嘉門院; 1272–1329), Prince Munetaka's daughter\n\nConsort: Ichijo-no-Tsubone（一条局）, Hashimoto Sanetoshi's daughter\nFifth Son: Imperial Prince Priest Shosi (性勝法親王; d. 1354)\n\nConsort: Princess Rinshi (掄子女王), Prince Munetaka's daughter\nSecond daughter: Imperial Princess Baishi (禖子内親王) later Sūmeimon-in (崇明門院), married Imperial Prince Kuniyoshi\n\nConsort: Itsutsuji Munechika's daughter\nThird daughter: Imperial Princess Tōshi/Chūshi (愉子内親王)\n\nConsort: Kazan'in Nagamasa’s daughter\nPrincess\n\nConsort: Shinsanmi-no-tsubone (新三位局)\n Prince (b. 1307)\n\nEvents of Go-Uda's life\nYohito-shinnō became crown prince in 1268. According to the terms of the late emperor's will (Go-Saga died in 1272), in 1274, he would become emperor upon the death or abdication of Emperor Kameyama.\n\n 6 March 1274 (Bun'ei 11, 26th day of the 1st month): In the 15th year of Kameyama-tennō 's reign (亀山天皇十五年), the emperor abdicated; and the succession (senso) was received by his cousin.\n 4 May 1274 (Bun'ei 11, 26th day of the 3rd month): Emperor Go-Uda is said to have acceded to the throne (sokui).\n\nThe retired Emperor Kameyama continued to exercise power as cloistered emperor.\n\nDuring his reign, the unsuccessful Mongol invasions of Japan occurred, first in 1274 and again in 1281. Though they established a beachhead at Hakata, Kyushu, they were driven out within a short time.\n\n 23 November 1275 (Kenji 1, 5th day of the 11th month): Hirohito-shinnō was named Crown Prince and heir to his first cousin, the Daikakuji-tō Emperor Go-Uda. This was the result of political maneuvering by Hirohito's father, the Jimyōin-tō Emperor Go-Fukakusa.\n\nIn 1287, retired Emperor Go-Fukakusa, dissatisfied with the fact that his own lineage (the Jimyōin-tō) did not control the throne, while that of his younger brother, the retired Emperor Kameyama (the Daikakuji-tō) did, persuaded both the Bakufu and the imperial court to compel the Emperor to abdicate in favor of Go-Fukakusa's son (Emperor Fushimi).\n\nAfter this time, the struggle between the Jimyōin-tō and the Daikakuji-tō over the imperial throne continued. After Go-Uda's abdication, his Daikakuji-tō controlled the throne from 1301 to 1308 (Emperor Go-Nijō) and again from 1318 until the era of northern and southern courts (begun 1332) when they became the southern court (ending in 1392).\n\nGo-Uda was cloistered emperor during the reign of his own son, Go-Nijō, from 1301 until 1308, and again from 1318, when his second son Go-Daigo took the throne until 1321, when Go-Daigo began direct rule.\n\n 16 July 1324 (Genkō 4, 25th day of the 6th month): Go-Uda died at age 58.\n\nEmperor Go-Uda's Imperial mausoleum is the Rengebuji no misasagi (蓮華峯寺陵) in Ukyō-ku, Kyoto.\n\nKugyō\nKugyō (公卿) is a collective term for the very few most powerful men attached to the court of the Emperor of Japan in pre-Meiji eras. Even during those years in which the court's actual influence outside the palace walls was minimal, the hierarchic organization persisted.\n\nIn general, this elite group included only three to four men at a time. These were hereditary courtiers whose experience and background would have brought them to the pinnacle of a life's career. During Go-Uda's reign, this apex of the Daijō-kan included:\n Sesshō, Kujō Tadaie, 1274\n Sesshō, Ichijō Ietsune, 1274–1275\n Sesshō, Takatsukasa Kanehira,\t1275–1278\n Kampaku, Takatsukasa Kanehira, 1278–1287\n Kampaku, Nijō Morotada, 1287–1289\n Sadaijin Udaijin Nadaijin DainagonEras of Go-Uda's reign\nThe years of Go-Uda's reign are more specifically identified by more than one era name or nengō.\n Bun'ei (1264–1275)\n Kenji (1275–1278)\n Kōan (1278–1288)\n\nNotes\n\nSee also\n Emperor of Japan\n List of Emperors of Japan\n Imperial cult\n\nReferences\n Ponsonby-Fane, Richard Arthur Brabazon. (1959). The Imperial House of Japan. Kyoto: Ponsonby Memorial Society. OCLC 194887\n Titsingh, Isaac. (1834). Nihon Ōdai Ichiran''; ou, Annales des empereurs du Japon. Paris: Royal Asiatic Society, Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland. OCLC 5850691\n Varley, H. Paul. (1980). Jinnō Shōtōki: A Chronicle of Gods and Sovereigns. New York: Columbia University Press. ; OCLC 5914584\n\nExternal links \n Kyoto National Museum – \"Treasures of Daikaku-ji\", including portrait of Go-Uda and the former-emperor's will\n\n \n \n\nJapanese emperors\n1267 births\n1324 deaths\nEmperor Go-Uda\nEmperor Go-Uda\nEmperor Go-Uda\n13th-century Japanese monarchs\n14th-century Japanese people\nJapanese retired emperors",
", also known as , was the 111th emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession.\n\nGo-Sai's reign spanned the years from 1655 through 1663.\n\nThis 17th-century sovereign was named after the 9th-century Emperor Junna and go- (後), translates as later, and thus, he could have been called the \"Later Emperor Junna\". Emperor Go-Sai could not pass the throne onto his descendants. For this reason, he was known as the Go-Saiin emperor, after an alternate name of Emperor Junna, who had confronted and reached an accommodation with similar issues. This emperor was also called . The Japanese word go has also been translated to mean the second one, and thus, this emperor might be identified as \"Junna II\". During the Meiji era, the name became just Go-Sai.\n\nGenealogy\nBefore Go-Sai's accession to the Chrysanthemum Throne, his personal name (imina) was or Yoshihito; and his pre-accession title was or Momozono-no-miya.\n\nHe was the eighth son of Emperor Go-Mizunoo. He was raised as if he were the son of Tōfuku-mon'in; both former Empress Meishō and former Emperor Go-Kōmyō were his older half-siblings.\n\nEmperor Go-Sai's Imperial family lived with him in the Dairi of the Heian Palace. This family included at least 11 sons and 17 daughters, none of whom would ascend to the throne.\n\nNyōgo: Princess Akiko (明子女王; 1638–1680) later Myokichijou’in (妙吉祥院), Imperial Prince Takamatsu-no-miya Yoshihito's daughter\nFirst daughter: Imperial Princess Tomoko (1654–1686; 誠子内親王)\nFirst son: Imperial Prince Hachijō-no-miya Osahito (1655–1675; 八条宮長仁親王) – fourth Hachijō-no-miya, Hachijō-no-miya Yasuhito's adopted son\nLady-in-waiting: Seikanji Tomoko (d.1695; 清閑寺共子), Seikanji Tomotsuna's daughter\nSecond son: Imperial Prince Arisugawa-no-miya Yukihito (1656–1695; 有栖川宮幸仁親王) – 3rd Arisugawa-no-miya\nSecond daughter: Second Princess (Onna-Ni-no-miya, 1657–1658; 女二宮)\nThird daughter: Princess Sōei (1658–1721; 宗栄女王)\nFourth daughter: Princess Sonsyū (1661–1722; 尊秀女王)\nFourth son: Imperial Prince Priest Gien (1662–1706; 義延法親王)\nSixth daughter: Princess Enkōin (1663; 円光院宮)\nFifth son: Imperial Prince Priest Tenshin (1664–1690; 天真法親王)\nSeventh daughter: Princess Kaya (1666–1675; 賀陽宮)\nTenth daughter: Imperial Princess Mashiko (1669–1738; 益子内親王) married Kujo Sukezane\nEleventh daughter: Princess Rihō (1672–1745; 理豊女王)\nThirteenth daughter: Princess Zuikō (1674–1706; 瑞光女王)\nConsort: Iwakura Tomoki's Daughter\nThird son: Imperial Prince Priest Eigo (1659–1676; 永悟法親王)\nConsort: Ukyō-no-Tsubone (右京局), Tominokōji Yorinao's Daughter\nFifth daughter: Princess Tsune (1661–1665; 常宮)\nConsort: Umenokōji Sadako (梅小路定子), Umenokōji Sadanori's adopted daughter and Kōgenji Tomohide's daughter\nEighth daughter: Princess Kaku (1667–1668; 香久宮)\nNinth daughter: Princess Syō'an (1668–1712; 聖安女王)\nSixth son: Imperial Prince Priest Kōben (1669–1716; 公弁法親王)\nSeventh son: Imperial Prince Priest Dōyū (1670–1691; 道祐法親王)\nEighth son: Imperial Prince Hachijō-no-miya Naohito (1671–1689; 八条宮尚仁親王) – fifth Hachijō-no-miya\nTwelfth daughter: Princess Mitsu (1672–1677; 満宮)\nFourteenth daughter: Princess Sonkō (1675–1719; 尊杲女王)\nFifteenth daughter: Princess Sonsyō (1676–1703; 尊勝女王)\nEleventh son: Imperial Prince Priest Ryō'ou (1678–1708; 良応法親王)\nSixteenth daughter: Ryougetsuin (1679; 涼月院) (there is still doubt about birth mother)\nConsort: Azechi-no-tsubone (按察使局, Takatsuji Toyonaga's Daughter\nNinth son: Imperial Prince Priest Sondō (道尊法親王) (1676–1705; Buddhist Priest)\nConsort: Matsuki Atsuko (松木条子), Matsuki Muneatsu's Daughter\nTenth son: Prince Roei’in (槿栄院宮; 1677)\n\nEvents of Go-Sai's life\nNagahito-shinnō became emperor when his emperor-brother died. This death left the throne vacant and the succession (senso) was received by the new monarch. Shortly thereafter, Emperor Go-Sai is considered to have acceded to the throne (sokui). The events during his lifetime shed light on his reign. The years of Go-Sai's reign correspond with a period in which Tokugawa Ietsuna was the leader at the pinnacle of the Tokugawa shogunate.\n\nGo-Sai married the daughter of the first ; and he succeeded as second Takamatsu-no-miya. Then this Imperial prince became the emperor as a temporary measure until his younger brother, could grow older.\n\n January 1, 1638: The birth of an Imperial prince who will become known by the posthumous name of Go-Sai-tennō.\n January 5, 1655: The death of Go-Kōmyō caused the succession (senso) to be passed to his brother; and when the succession (senso) was received, the reign of Emperor Go-Sai was deemed to commence.\n 1655 (Meireki 1): The new ambassador of Korea, arrived in Japan.\n March 2–3, 1657 (Meireki 3, 18–19th days of the 1st month): Great Fire of Meireki: The city of Edo was devastated by a violent fire.\n 1659 (Manji 5): In Edo, construction begins on the Ryōgoku Bridge (ryōgokubashi).\n 1661 (Manji 6): Imperial Palace in Kyoto is burnt to the ground; and the Gekū at Yamada was seriously damaged by fire.\n March 20, 1662 (Kanbun 2, 1st day of the 2nd month): There was a violent earthquake in Kyoto which destroyed the tomb of the Taiko, Toyotomi Hideyoshi.\n 1662 (Kanbun 2): Emperor Gosai ordered Tosa Hiromichi 土佐広通 (1561–1633), a Tosa-school disciple, to adopt the name Sumiyoshi (probably in reference to a 13th-century painter, Sumiyoshi Keinin 住吉慶忍), upon assuming a position as official painter for the Sumiyoshi Taisha 住吉大社).\n March 5, 1663 (Kanbun 3, 26th day of the 1st month): Emperor Go-Sai abdicated, which meant that the Prince Satohito received the succession (senso). Shortly thereafter, Emperor Reigen formally acceded to the throne (sokui).\n\nAfter abdicating, Go-sai put his heart into scholarship and he left behind many books, including the \"Water and Sun Collection\" (Suinichishū, 水日集). He was talented in waka; and he had a profound understanding of the classics.\n\nDuring his reign, because of great fires at the Grand Ise Shrine, Osaka Castle, and the Imperial Palace, among others, the Great Meireki Fire, earthquakes in the region, and because of repeated floods, many people blamed the Emperor, saying he lacked moral virtue.\n\n March 26, 1685 (Jōkyō 2, 22nd day of the 2nd month): Former-Emperor Go-Sai died; and a great comet was observed crossing the night sky.\n\nEmperor Go-Sai is enshrined in the imperial mausoleum, Tsuki no wa no misasagi, at Sennyū-ji in Higashiyama-ku, Kyoto. Also enshrined are Go-Sai's immediate predecessors, Emperor Go-Mizunoo, Empress Meishō and Go-Kōmyō. Go-Sai's immediate Imperial successors, including Reigen, Higashiyama, Nakamikado, Sakuramachi, Momozono, Go-Sakuramachi and Go-Momozono, are enshrined here as well.\n\nAt the Kitano Shrine, a tablet over the Chu-mon entryway reads tenmangu in the calligraphy of Emperor Go-sai.\n\nKugyō\n is a collective term for the very few most powerful men attached to the court of the Emperor of Japan in pre-Meiji eras. Even during those years in which the court's actual influence outside the palace walls was minimal, the hierarchic organization persisted.\n\nIn general, this elite group included only three to four men at a time. These were hereditary courtiers whose experience and background would have brought them to the pinnacle of a life's career. During Go-Sai's reign, this apex of the Daijō-kan included:\n Kampaku, Nijō Mitsuhira, 1653–1663\n Sadaijin Udaijin Naidaijin DainagonEras of Go-Sai-tennō's reign\nThe years of Go-Sai's reign are more specifically identified by more than one era name or nengō.\n Jōō (1652–1655)\n Meireki (1655–1658)\n Manji (1658–1661)\n Kanbun (1661–1673)\n\nAncestry\n\nSee also\n Emperor of Japan\n List of Emperors of Japan\n Imperial cult\n\nReferences\n\n Martin, John H. and Phyllis G. Martin. (2002). Kyoto: A Cultural Guide to Japan's Ancient Imperial City. Tokyo:Tuttle Publishing. ; OCLC 243831939\n Meyer, Eva-Maria. (1999). Japans Kaiserhof in der Edo-Zeit: unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Jahre 1846 bis 1867. Münster: LIT Verlag. ; OCLC 42041594\n Ponsonby-Fane, Richard Arthur Brabazon. (1959). The Imperial House of Japan. Kyoto: Ponsonby Memorial Society. OCLC 194887\n Titsingh, Isaac. (1834). Nihon Ōdai Ichiran''; ou, Annales des empereurs du Japon. Paris: Royal Asiatic Society, Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland. OCLC 5850691\n Varley, H. Paul. (1980). Jinnō Shōtōki: A Chronicle of Gods and Sovereigns. New York: Columbia University Press. ; OCLC 59145842\n\nExternal links\n National Museum of Japanese History – see example of Emperor Go-sai's calligraphy\n\nJapanese emperors\n1638 births\n1685 deaths\nEmperor Go-Sai\nEmperor Go-Sai\nEmperor Go-Sai\n17th-century Japanese monarchs"
]
|
[
"Fats Domino",
"Recordings after leaving Imperial (1963-1970s)",
"What is Fats most famous song?",
"40 (\"Red Sails in the Sunset\", 1963).",
"What did he leave Imperial?",
"I don't know.",
"Where did he go after he left Imperial?",
"1970, leaving ABC-Paramount in mid-1965 and recording for Mercury Records,"
]
| C_59e99b9b46e44d24a78bee0859d4058a_1 | What songs did he release through Mercury? | 4 | What songs did Fats Domino release through Mercury Records? | Fats Domino | Domino moved to ABC-Paramount Records in 1963. The label dictated that he record in Nashville, Tennessee, rather than New Orleans. He was assigned a new producer (Felton Jarvis) and a new arranger (Bill Justis). Domino's long-term collaboration with the producer, arranger, and frequent co-writer Dave Bartholomew, who oversaw virtually all of his Imperial hits, was seemingly at an end. Jarvis and Justis changed the Domino sound somewhat, notably by adding the backing of a countrypolitan-style vocal chorus to most of his new recordings. He released 11 singles for ABC-Paramount, several which hit the Top 100 but just once entering the Top 40 ("Red Sails in the Sunset", 1963). By the end of 1964 the British Invasion had changed the tastes of the record-buying public, and Domino's chart run was over. Despite the lack of chart success, Domino continued to record steadily until about 1970, leaving ABC-Paramount in mid-1965 and recording for Mercury Records, where he delivered a live album and two singles. A studio album was planned but stalled with just four tracks recorded . Dave Bartholomew's small Broadmoor label (reuniting with Bartholomew along the way), featured many contemporary Soul infused sides but an album was released overseas in 1971 to fulfill his Reprise Records contract. He shifted to that label after Broadmoor and had a Top 100 single, a cover of the Beatles' "Lady Madonna". Domino appeared in the Monkees' television special 33 1/3 Revolutions per Monkee in 1969. He continued to be popular as a performer for several decades. He made a cameo appearance in Clint Eastwood's movie Any Which Way You Can, filmed in 1979 and released in 1980 singing the country song "Whiskey Heaven" which later became a minor hit. His life and career were showcased in Joe Lauro's 2015 documentary The Big Beat: Fats Domino and the Birth of Rock 'n' Roll. CANNOTANSWER | had a Top 100 single, a cover of the Beatles' "Lady Madonna". | Antoine Dominique Domino Jr. (February 26, 1928 – October 24, 2017), known as Fats Domino, was an American pianist and singer-songwriter. One of the pioneers of rock and roll music, Domino sold more than 65 million records. Born in New Orleans to a French Creole family, Domino signed to Imperial Records in 1949. His first single "The Fat Man" is cited by some historians as the first rock and roll single and the first to sell more than 1 million copies. Domino continued to work with the song's co-writer Dave Bartholomew, contributing his distinctive rolling piano style to Lloyd Price's "Lawdy Miss Clawdy" (1952) and scoring a string of mainstream hits beginning with "Ain't That a Shame" (1955). Between 1955 and 1960, he had eleven Top 10 US pop hits. By 1955, five of his records had sold more than a million copies, being certified gold.
Domino was shy and modest by nature but made a significant contribution to the rock and roll genre. Elvis Presley declared Domino a "huge influence on me when I started out" and described him as "the real king of rock 'n' roll". The artist himself did not define his work as rock and roll, saying of the genre "It wasn't anything but the same rhythm and blues I'd been playing down in New Orleans". Four of Domino's records were named to the Grammy Hall of Fame for their significance: "Blueberry Hill", "Ain't That A Shame", "Walking to New Orleans" and "The Fat Man". He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as part of its first group of inductees in 1986. The Associated Press estimates that during his career, Domino "sold more than 110 million records".
Biography
Early life and education
Antoine Domino Jr. was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana, the youngest of eight children born to Antoine Caliste Domino (1879–1964) and Marie-Donatille Gros (1886–1971). The Domino family was of French Creole background, and Louisiana Creole was his first language. Like most such families, the Dominos were Catholic.
Antoine was born at home with the assistance of his grandmother, a midwife. His name was initially misspelled as Anthony on his birth certificate. His family had recently arrived in the Lower Ninth Ward from Vacherie, Louisiana. His father was a part-time violin player who worked at a racetrack.
He attended the Louis B. Macarty School, leaving to start work as a helper to an ice delivery man. Domino learned to play the piano in about 1938 from his brother-in-law, the jazz guitarist Harrison Verrett.
Early career (1940s)
By age 14, Domino was performing in New Orleans bars. In 1947, Billy Diamond, a New Orleans bandleader, accepted an invitation to hear the young pianist perform at a backyard barbecue. Domino played well enough that Diamond asked him to join his band, the Solid Senders, at the Hideaway Club in New Orleans, where he would earn $3 a week playing the piano. Diamond nicknamed him "Fats", because Domino reminded him of the renowned pianists Fats Waller and Fats Pichon, but also because of his large appetite.
Recordings for Imperial Records (1949–1962)
Domino was signed to the Imperial Records label in 1949 by owner Lew Chudd, to be paid royalties based on sales instead of a fee for each song. He and producer Dave Bartholomew wrote "The Fat Man", a toned down version of a song about drug addicts called "Junker Blues"; the record had sold a million copies by 1951. Featuring a rolling piano and Domino vocalizing "wah-wah" over a strong backbeat, "The Fat Man" is widely considered the first rock-and-roll record to achieve this level of sales. In 2015, the song would enter the Grammy Hall of Fame.
Domino released a series of hit songs with Bartholomew (also the co-writer of many of the songs), the saxophonists Herbert Hardesty and Alvin "Red" Tyler, the bassist Billy Diamond and later Frank Fields, and the drummers Earl Palmer and Smokey Johnson. Other notable and long-standing musicians in Domino's band were the saxophonists Reggie Houston, Lee Allen, and Fred Kemp, Domino's trusted bandleader.
While Domino's own recordings were done for Imperial, he sometimes sat in during that time as a session musician on recordings by other artists for other record labels. Domino's rolling piano triplets provided the memorable instrumental introduction for Lloyd Price's first hit, "Lawdy Miss Clawdy", recorded for Specialty Records on March 13, 1952, at Cosimo Matassa's J&M Studios in New Orleans (where Domino himself had earlier recorded "The Fat Man" and other songs). Dave Bartholomew was producing Price's record, which also featured familiar Domino collaborators Hardesty, Fields and Palmer as sidemen, and he asked Domino to play the piano part, replacing the original session pianist.
Domino crossed into the pop mainstream with "Ain't That a Shame" (mislabeled as "Ain't It a Shame") which reached the Top Ten. This was the first of his records to appear on the Billboard pop singles chart (on July 16, 1955), with the debut at number 14. A milder cover version by Pat Boone reached number 1, having received wider radio airplay in an era of racial segregation. In 1955, Domino was said to be earning $10,000 a week while touring, according to a report in the memoir of artist Chuck Berry. Domino eventually had 37 Top 40 singles, but none made it to number 1 on the Pop chart.
Domino's debut album contained several of his recent hits and earlier blues tracks that had not been released as singles, and was issued on the Imperial label (catalogue number 9009) in November 1955, and was reissued as Rock and Rollin' with Fats Domino. The reissue reached number 17 on the Billboard Pop Albums chart.
His 1956 recording of "Blueberry Hill", a 1940 song by Vincent Rose, Al Lewis and Larry Stock (which had previously been recorded by Gene Autry, Louis Armstrong and others), reached number 2 on the Billboard Juke Box chart for two weeks and was number 1 on the R&B chart for 11 weeks. It was his biggest hit, selling more than 5 million copies worldwide in 1956 and 1957. The song was subsequently recorded by Elvis Presley, Little Richard, and Led Zeppelin. Some 32 years later, the song would enter the
Grammy Hall of Fame.
Domino had further hit singles between 1956 and 1959, including "When My Dreamboat Comes Home" (Pop number 14), "I'm Walkin'" (Pop number 4), "Valley of Tears" (Pop number 8), "It's You I Love" (Pop number 6), "Whole Lotta Lovin'" (Pop number 6), "I Want to Walk You Home" (Pop number 8), and "Be My Guest" (Pop number 8). In 1957, Domino maintained "What they call rock 'n' roll now is rhythm and blues. I've been playing it for 15 years in New Orleans".
Domino appeared in two films released in 1956: Shake, Rattle & Rock! and The Girl Can't Help It. On December 18, 1957, his hit recording of "The Big Beat" was featured on Dick Clark's American Bandstand.
He was also featured in a movie of the same name.
On November 2, 1956, a riot broke out at a Domino concert in Fayetteville, North Carolina. The police used tear gas to break up the unruly crowd. Domino jumped out a window to avoid the melee; he and two members of his band were slightly injured. During his career, four major riots occurred at his concerts, "partly because of integration", according to his biographer Rick Coleman. "But also the fact they had alcohol at these shows. So they were mixing alcohol, plus dancing, plus the races together for the first time in a lot of these places." In November 1957, Domino appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show; no disturbance accompanied this performance.
In the same year, the article "King of Rock 'n' Roll" in Ebony magazine featured Domino who said he was on the road 340 days a year, up to $2,500 per evening, and grossing over $500,000; Domino also told readers that he owned 50 suits, 100 pairs of shoes and a $1,500 diamond horseshoe stick pin.
Domino had a steady series of hits for Imperial through early 1962, including "Walking to New Orleans" (1960, Pop number 6), co-written by Bobby Charles, and "My Girl Josephine" (Pop number 14) in the same year. He toured Europe in 1962 and met the Beatles who would later cite Domino as an inspiration. After returning, he played the first of his many stands in Las Vegas.
Imperial Records was sold in early 1963, and Domino left the label. "I stuck with them until they sold out," he said in 1979. In all, he recorded over 60 singles for Imperial, placing 40 songs in the top 10 on the R&B chart and 11 in the top 10 on the Pop chart, twenty-seven of which were double-sided hits.
Recordings after leaving Imperial (1963–1970s)
Domino moved to ABC-Paramount Records in 1963. The label dictated that he record in Nashville, Tennessee, rather than New Orleans. He was assigned a new producer (Felton Jarvis) and a new arranger (Bill Justis). Domino's long-term collaboration with the producer, arranger, and frequent co-writer Dave Bartholomew, who oversaw virtually all of his Imperial hits, was seemingly at an end. Jarvis and Justis changed the Domino sound somewhat, notably by adding the backing of a countrypolitan-style vocal chorus to most of his new recordings. He released 11 singles for ABC-Paramount, several which hit the Top 100 but just once entering the Top 40 ("Red Sails in the Sunset", 1963). By the end of 1964 the British Invasion had changed the tastes of the record-buying public, and Domino's chart run was over.
Despite the lack of chart success, Domino continued to record steadily until about 1970, leaving ABC-Paramount in mid-1965 and recording for Mercury Records, where he delivered a live album and two singles. A studio album was planned but stalled with just four tracks recorded. Dave Bartholomew's small Broadmoor label (reuniting with Bartholomew along the way), featured many contemporary Soul infused sides and a few single releases but an album was not released overseas until 1971 to fulfill his Reprise Records contract. He shifted to that label after Broadmoor and had a Top 100 single, a cover of the Beatles' "Lady Madonna".
Domino appeared in the Monkees' television special 33⅓ Revolutions per Monkee in 1969. In 1971, he opened for Ike & Tina Turner at Carnegie Hall. He continued to be popular as a performer for several decades. He made a cameo appearance in Clint Eastwood's movie Any Which Way You Can, filmed in 1979 and released in 1980, singing the country song "Whiskey Heaven", which later became a minor hit. His life and career were showcased in Joe Lauro's 2015 documentary The Big Beat: Fats Domino and the Birth of Rock 'n' Roll.
Later career (1980s–2005)
In 1986, Domino was one of the first musicians to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He also received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1987. Domino's last album for a major label, Christmas Is a Special Day, was released in 1993.
Domino lived in a mansion in a predominantly working-class neighborhood in the Lower Ninth Ward, where he was a familiar sight in his bright pink Cadillac automobile. He made yearly appearances at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and other local events.
His last tour was in Europe, for three weeks in 1995. After being ill while on tour, Domino decided he would no longer leave the New Orleans area, having a comfortable income from royalty payments and a dislike of touring and claiming he could not get any food that he liked anywhere else. In the same year, he received the Rhythm & Blues Foundation's Ray Charles Lifetime Achievement Award.
In 1998, President Bill Clinton awarded him the National Medal of Arts. Domino declined an invitation to perform at the White House.
In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him number 25 on its list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time" in an essay written by Dr. John.
Domino and Hurricane Katrina
As Hurricane Katrina approached New Orleans in August 2005, Domino chose to stay at home with his family, partly because his wife, Rosemary, was in poor health. His house was in an area that was heavily flooded.
Domino was rumored to have died, and his home was vandalized when someone spray-painted the message "RIP Fats. You will be missed". On September 1, the talent agent Al Embry announced that he had not heard from Domino since before the hurricane struck. Later that day, CNN reported that Domino had been rescued by a Coast Guard helicopter. Until then, even family members had not heard from him since before the storm. Embry confirmed that Domino and his family had been rescued. The family was then taken to a shelter in Baton Rouge, after which they were picked up by JaMarcus Russell, the starting quarterback of the Louisiana State University football team, and the boyfriend of Domino's granddaughter. He let the family stay in his apartment. The Washington Post reported that on September 2, they had left Russell's apartment after sleeping three nights on the couch. "We've lost everything," Domino said, according to the Post.
By January 2006, work to gut and repair Domino's home and office had begun (see Reconstruction of New Orleans). In the meantime, the Domino family resided in Harvey, Louisiana.
President George W. Bush made a personal visit and replaced the National Medal of Arts that President Bill Clinton had previously awarded Domino. The gold records were replaced by the RIAA and Capitol Records, which owned the Imperial Records catalogue.
Later life
Domino was scheduled to perform at the 2006 Jazz & Heritage Festival in New Orleans. However, he was suffering from anxiety and was forced to cancel the performance, but he did appear to offer the audience an on-stage greeting.
In 2006 Domino's album Alive and Kickin' was released to benefit the Tipitina's Foundation, which supports indigent local musicians and helps preserve the New Orleans sound. The album consists of unreleased recordings from the 1990s and received great critical acclaim.
On January 12, 2007, Domino was honored with OffBeat magazine's Lifetime Achievement Award at the annual Best of the Beat Awards, held at the House of Blues in New Orleans. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin declared the day "Fats Domino Day in New Orleans" and presented him with a signed declaration. Domino returned to stage on May 19, 2007, at Tipitina's at New Orleans, performing to a full house. This was his last public performance. The concert was recorded for a 2008 TV presentation entitled Fats Domino: Walkin' Back to New Orleans. This was a fund-raising concert, featuring a number of artists. Domino donated his fee to the cause. Later that year, a Vanguard record was released, Goin' Home: A Tribute to Fats Domino featuring his songs as recorded by Elton John, Neil Young, Tom Petty, Robert Plant, Willie Nelson, Norah Jones, Lenny Kravitz, and Lucinda Williams. A portion of the proceeds was to be used by the Foundation to help restore Domino's publishing office which had been damaged by the hurricane.
In September 2007, Domino was inducted into the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame.
In May 2009, Domino made an unexpected appearance in the audience for the Domino Effect, a concert featuring Little Richard and other artists, aimed at raising funds to help rebuild schools and playgrounds damaged by Hurricane Katrina.
In October 2012, Domino was featured in season three of the television series Treme, playing himself. On August 21, 2016, Domino was inducted into the National Rhythm and Blues Hall of Fame. The ceremony was held in Detroit, Michigan. The other inductees were Dionne Warwick, Cathy Hughes, Smokey Robinson, Prince, and the Supremes. He had received the Rhythm & Blues Foundation's Ray Charles Lifetime Achievement Award in 1995. His song "The Fat Man" entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2015.
Death
Domino died on October 24, 2017, at his home in Harvey, Louisiana, at the age of 89, from natural causes, according to the coroner's office.
Influence and legacy
Domino was one of the biggest stars of rock and roll in the 1950s, but he was not convinced that this was a new genre. In 1957, Domino said: "What they call rock 'n' roll now is rhythm and blues. I've been playing it for 15 years in New Orleans". According to Rolling Stone, "this is a valid statement ... all Fifties rockers, black and white, country born and city bred, were fundamentally influenced by R&B, the black popular music of the late Forties and early Fifties".
He was among the first R&B artists to gain popularity with white audiences. His biographer Rick Coleman argues that Domino's records and tours with rock-and-roll shows in that decade, bringing together black and white youths in a shared appreciation of his music, was a factor in the breakdown of racial segregation in the United States. The artist himself did not define his work as rock and roll, saying, "It wasn't anything but the same rhythm and blues I'd been playin' down in New Orleans."
Both John Lennon and Paul McCartney recorded Domino songs. According to some reports, McCartney wrote the Beatles song "Lady Madonna" in emulation of Domino's style, combining it with a nod to Humphrey Lyttelton's 1956 hit "Bad Penny Blues". Domino also recorded the song in 1968. Domino returned to the "Hot 100" chart for the last time in 1968, with his recording of "Lady Madonna". That recording, as well as covers of two other songs by the Beatles, appeared on his Reprise album Fats Is Back, produced by Richard Perry and with several hits recorded by a band that included the New Orleans pianist James Booker.
Domino was present in the audience of 2,200 people at Elvis Presley's first concert at the Las Vegas Hilton on July 31, 1969. At a press conference after the show, when a journalist referred to Presley as "The King", Presley gestured toward Domino, who was taking in the scene. "No," Presley said, "that's the real king of rock and roll." Presley made a subsequent comment, "rock 'n' roll was here a long time before I came along. Let's face it: I can't sing like Fats Domino can. I know that" and added that Domino was "a huge influence on me when I started out".
About a photograph made of him and Elvis together, Domino said: "Elvis told me he flopped the first time he came to Las Vegas. I loved his music. He could sing anything ... I'm glad we took this picture." (Fats Domino (2002). "Music Pioneer Fats Domino Talks About Elvis." Retrieved from "USA Today." December 10, 2002.)
Domino received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1987.
John Lennon covered Domino's composition "Ain't That a Shame" on his 1975 album "Rock 'n' Roll," his tribute to the musicians who had influenced him.
American band Cheap Trick recorded "Ain't That a Shame" on their 1978 live album Cheap Trick at Budokan and released it as the second single from the album. It reached 35 of the Billboard Hot 100. Reportedly, this was Domino's favorite cover. It remains a staple of their live performances, including at their 25th Anniversary concert (which was recorded as the album and DVD Silver) and at their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2016.
The Jamaican reggae artist Yellowman covered many songs by Domino, including "Be My Guest" and "Blueberry Hill."
Jah Wobble, a post-punk bassist best known for his work with Johnny Rotten, released a solo recording of "Blueberry Hill".
The Jamaican ska band Justin Hinds and the Dominoes, formed in the 1960s, was named after Domino, Hinds's favorite singer.
In 2007, various artists came together for a tribute to Domino, recording a live session containing only his songs. Musicians performing on the album, Goin' Home: A Tribute to Fats Domino, included Paul McCartney, Norah Jones, Willie Nelson, Neil Young, and Elton John.
According to Richie Unterberger, writing for AllMusic, Domino was one of the most consistent artists of early rock music, the best-selling African-American rock-and-roll star of the 1950s, and the most popular singer of the "classic" New Orleans rhythm and blues style. His million-selling debut single, "The Fat Man" (1949), is one of many that have been cited as the first rock and roll record. Robert Christgau wrote that Domino was "the most widely liked rock and roller of the '50s" and remarked on his influence:
Domino's rhythm, accentuating the offbeat, as in the song "Be My Guest", was an influence on ska music.
Personal life
Domino was married to Rosemary Domino ( Hall) from 1947 until her death in 2008; the couple had eight children: Antoine III (1950-2015), Anatole, Andre (1952-1997), Antonio, Antoinette, Andrea, Anola, and Adonica.
Even after his success he continued to live in his old neighborhood, the Lower Ninth Ward, until after Hurricane Katrina, when he moved to a suburb of New Orleans.
Discography
Fats Domino discography
List of songs recorded by Fats Domino
Studio albums
References
External links
Fats Domino at history-of-rock.com
Fats Domino: Walking to New Orleans special
1928 births
2017 deaths
African-American pianists
African-American rock musicians
American baritones
American blues pianists
American male pianists
American rock pianists
American rhythm and blues singers
American rock singers
Boogie-woogie pianists
Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners
Imperial Records artists
Louisiana Creole people
Rhythm and blues musicians from New Orleans
Rock and roll musicians
Songwriters from Louisiana
Stride pianists
United States National Medal of Arts recipients
Singers from Louisiana
People from Harvey, Louisiana
ABC Records artists
London Records artists
Mercury Records artists
Reprise Records artists
Warner Records artists
Male jazz musicians
African-American male singer-songwriters
African-American Catholics
20th-century African-American male singers
Singer-songwriters from Louisiana | true | [
"\"I'll See It Through\" is a single by Scottish band Texas and the second to be taken from their seventh studio album Careful What You Wish For. The song was released on 8 December 2003 and charted at #40 in the UK before falling to #57 in its second week then falling out the UK charts at #65. The song was also included in the 2003 film Love Actually as well as being included on the album release of the film's original soundtrack.\n\nTrack listing\n\nCD1 (Enhanced) (9815220) \n\"I'll See It Through\" (Radio Edit) - 3:28\n\"What Do I Get\" - 3:05\n\"I'll Give It All Again\" - 3:47\n\"I'll See It Through\" (Roger Sanchez Remix) - 5:16\n\"I'll See It Through\" (Guy Chambers Remix) - 4:04\n\nCD2 (9815221)\n\"I'll See It Through\" (Radio Edit) - 3:28\n\"Tired of Being Alone\" - 3:17\n\nCharts\n\nReferences\n\n2003 singles\nTexas (band) songs\nSongs written by Johnny McElhone\nSongs written by Sharleen Spiteri\nSongs written by Guy Chambers\n2003 songs\nMercury Records singles\nRock ballads",
"\"I Know What I'm Here For\" is a song by British rock band James. It was the first single released from their eighth studio album, Millionaires, and reached number 22 on the UK Singles Chart.\n\nBackground, release and reception\n\nThe single was released on CD and cassette and reached number 22 in the UK Top 40 chart, spending five weeks on the chart.\n\nA live version and a video appeared on the limited edition two-disc edition of Millionaires.\n\nThe backing to the song was used by Ford in adverts shown during broadcasts of the UEFA Champions League in the 2007/2008 football season.\n\nPeter Buckley, in The Rough Guide to Rock, described it as an \"effortless soaring track\". In contrast, Victoria Segal, reviewing the track for the NME, described it as \"not interesting ... just silly\".\n\nTrack listings\n\nUK CD1 (Mercury JIMCD 22)\n\"I Know What I'm Here For\"\n\"All Good Boys\"\n\"Imagine Ourselves\"\n\nUK CD2 (Mercury JIMDD 22)\n\"I Know What I'm Here For\"\n\"Downstairs\"\n\"Stolen Horse\"\n\nUK cassette single (Mercury JIMMC22)\n\"I Know What I'm Here For\"\n\"All Good Boys\"\n\nEuropean maxi-CD single (Mercury 562 261-2)\n\"I Know What I'm Here For\"\n\"All Good Boys\"\n\"Imagine Ourselves\"\n\"Downstairs\"\n\nCharts\n\nReferences\n\nJames (band) songs\n1999 singles\n1999 songs\nMercury Records singles\nSong recordings produced by Brian Eno"
]
|
[
"Fats Domino",
"Recordings after leaving Imperial (1963-1970s)",
"What is Fats most famous song?",
"40 (\"Red Sails in the Sunset\", 1963).",
"What did he leave Imperial?",
"I don't know.",
"Where did he go after he left Imperial?",
"1970, leaving ABC-Paramount in mid-1965 and recording for Mercury Records,",
"What songs did he release through Mercury?",
"had a Top 100 single, a cover of the Beatles' \"Lady Madonna\"."
]
| C_59e99b9b46e44d24a78bee0859d4058a_1 | Did he win any awards? | 5 | Did Fats Domino win any awards? | Fats Domino | Domino moved to ABC-Paramount Records in 1963. The label dictated that he record in Nashville, Tennessee, rather than New Orleans. He was assigned a new producer (Felton Jarvis) and a new arranger (Bill Justis). Domino's long-term collaboration with the producer, arranger, and frequent co-writer Dave Bartholomew, who oversaw virtually all of his Imperial hits, was seemingly at an end. Jarvis and Justis changed the Domino sound somewhat, notably by adding the backing of a countrypolitan-style vocal chorus to most of his new recordings. He released 11 singles for ABC-Paramount, several which hit the Top 100 but just once entering the Top 40 ("Red Sails in the Sunset", 1963). By the end of 1964 the British Invasion had changed the tastes of the record-buying public, and Domino's chart run was over. Despite the lack of chart success, Domino continued to record steadily until about 1970, leaving ABC-Paramount in mid-1965 and recording for Mercury Records, where he delivered a live album and two singles. A studio album was planned but stalled with just four tracks recorded . Dave Bartholomew's small Broadmoor label (reuniting with Bartholomew along the way), featured many contemporary Soul infused sides but an album was released overseas in 1971 to fulfill his Reprise Records contract. He shifted to that label after Broadmoor and had a Top 100 single, a cover of the Beatles' "Lady Madonna". Domino appeared in the Monkees' television special 33 1/3 Revolutions per Monkee in 1969. He continued to be popular as a performer for several decades. He made a cameo appearance in Clint Eastwood's movie Any Which Way You Can, filmed in 1979 and released in 1980 singing the country song "Whiskey Heaven" which later became a minor hit. His life and career were showcased in Joe Lauro's 2015 documentary The Big Beat: Fats Domino and the Birth of Rock 'n' Roll. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Antoine Dominique Domino Jr. (February 26, 1928 – October 24, 2017), known as Fats Domino, was an American pianist and singer-songwriter. One of the pioneers of rock and roll music, Domino sold more than 65 million records. Born in New Orleans to a French Creole family, Domino signed to Imperial Records in 1949. His first single "The Fat Man" is cited by some historians as the first rock and roll single and the first to sell more than 1 million copies. Domino continued to work with the song's co-writer Dave Bartholomew, contributing his distinctive rolling piano style to Lloyd Price's "Lawdy Miss Clawdy" (1952) and scoring a string of mainstream hits beginning with "Ain't That a Shame" (1955). Between 1955 and 1960, he had eleven Top 10 US pop hits. By 1955, five of his records had sold more than a million copies, being certified gold.
Domino was shy and modest by nature but made a significant contribution to the rock and roll genre. Elvis Presley declared Domino a "huge influence on me when I started out" and described him as "the real king of rock 'n' roll". The artist himself did not define his work as rock and roll, saying of the genre "It wasn't anything but the same rhythm and blues I'd been playing down in New Orleans". Four of Domino's records were named to the Grammy Hall of Fame for their significance: "Blueberry Hill", "Ain't That A Shame", "Walking to New Orleans" and "The Fat Man". He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as part of its first group of inductees in 1986. The Associated Press estimates that during his career, Domino "sold more than 110 million records".
Biography
Early life and education
Antoine Domino Jr. was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana, the youngest of eight children born to Antoine Caliste Domino (1879–1964) and Marie-Donatille Gros (1886–1971). The Domino family was of French Creole background, and Louisiana Creole was his first language. Like most such families, the Dominos were Catholic.
Antoine was born at home with the assistance of his grandmother, a midwife. His name was initially misspelled as Anthony on his birth certificate. His family had recently arrived in the Lower Ninth Ward from Vacherie, Louisiana. His father was a part-time violin player who worked at a racetrack.
He attended the Louis B. Macarty School, leaving to start work as a helper to an ice delivery man. Domino learned to play the piano in about 1938 from his brother-in-law, the jazz guitarist Harrison Verrett.
Early career (1940s)
By age 14, Domino was performing in New Orleans bars. In 1947, Billy Diamond, a New Orleans bandleader, accepted an invitation to hear the young pianist perform at a backyard barbecue. Domino played well enough that Diamond asked him to join his band, the Solid Senders, at the Hideaway Club in New Orleans, where he would earn $3 a week playing the piano. Diamond nicknamed him "Fats", because Domino reminded him of the renowned pianists Fats Waller and Fats Pichon, but also because of his large appetite.
Recordings for Imperial Records (1949–1962)
Domino was signed to the Imperial Records label in 1949 by owner Lew Chudd, to be paid royalties based on sales instead of a fee for each song. He and producer Dave Bartholomew wrote "The Fat Man", a toned down version of a song about drug addicts called "Junker Blues"; the record had sold a million copies by 1951. Featuring a rolling piano and Domino vocalizing "wah-wah" over a strong backbeat, "The Fat Man" is widely considered the first rock-and-roll record to achieve this level of sales. In 2015, the song would enter the Grammy Hall of Fame.
Domino released a series of hit songs with Bartholomew (also the co-writer of many of the songs), the saxophonists Herbert Hardesty and Alvin "Red" Tyler, the bassist Billy Diamond and later Frank Fields, and the drummers Earl Palmer and Smokey Johnson. Other notable and long-standing musicians in Domino's band were the saxophonists Reggie Houston, Lee Allen, and Fred Kemp, Domino's trusted bandleader.
While Domino's own recordings were done for Imperial, he sometimes sat in during that time as a session musician on recordings by other artists for other record labels. Domino's rolling piano triplets provided the memorable instrumental introduction for Lloyd Price's first hit, "Lawdy Miss Clawdy", recorded for Specialty Records on March 13, 1952, at Cosimo Matassa's J&M Studios in New Orleans (where Domino himself had earlier recorded "The Fat Man" and other songs). Dave Bartholomew was producing Price's record, which also featured familiar Domino collaborators Hardesty, Fields and Palmer as sidemen, and he asked Domino to play the piano part, replacing the original session pianist.
Domino crossed into the pop mainstream with "Ain't That a Shame" (mislabeled as "Ain't It a Shame") which reached the Top Ten. This was the first of his records to appear on the Billboard pop singles chart (on July 16, 1955), with the debut at number 14. A milder cover version by Pat Boone reached number 1, having received wider radio airplay in an era of racial segregation. In 1955, Domino was said to be earning $10,000 a week while touring, according to a report in the memoir of artist Chuck Berry. Domino eventually had 37 Top 40 singles, but none made it to number 1 on the Pop chart.
Domino's debut album contained several of his recent hits and earlier blues tracks that had not been released as singles, and was issued on the Imperial label (catalogue number 9009) in November 1955, and was reissued as Rock and Rollin' with Fats Domino. The reissue reached number 17 on the Billboard Pop Albums chart.
His 1956 recording of "Blueberry Hill", a 1940 song by Vincent Rose, Al Lewis and Larry Stock (which had previously been recorded by Gene Autry, Louis Armstrong and others), reached number 2 on the Billboard Juke Box chart for two weeks and was number 1 on the R&B chart for 11 weeks. It was his biggest hit, selling more than 5 million copies worldwide in 1956 and 1957. The song was subsequently recorded by Elvis Presley, Little Richard, and Led Zeppelin. Some 32 years later, the song would enter the
Grammy Hall of Fame.
Domino had further hit singles between 1956 and 1959, including "When My Dreamboat Comes Home" (Pop number 14), "I'm Walkin'" (Pop number 4), "Valley of Tears" (Pop number 8), "It's You I Love" (Pop number 6), "Whole Lotta Lovin'" (Pop number 6), "I Want to Walk You Home" (Pop number 8), and "Be My Guest" (Pop number 8). In 1957, Domino maintained "What they call rock 'n' roll now is rhythm and blues. I've been playing it for 15 years in New Orleans".
Domino appeared in two films released in 1956: Shake, Rattle & Rock! and The Girl Can't Help It. On December 18, 1957, his hit recording of "The Big Beat" was featured on Dick Clark's American Bandstand.
He was also featured in a movie of the same name.
On November 2, 1956, a riot broke out at a Domino concert in Fayetteville, North Carolina. The police used tear gas to break up the unruly crowd. Domino jumped out a window to avoid the melee; he and two members of his band were slightly injured. During his career, four major riots occurred at his concerts, "partly because of integration", according to his biographer Rick Coleman. "But also the fact they had alcohol at these shows. So they were mixing alcohol, plus dancing, plus the races together for the first time in a lot of these places." In November 1957, Domino appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show; no disturbance accompanied this performance.
In the same year, the article "King of Rock 'n' Roll" in Ebony magazine featured Domino who said he was on the road 340 days a year, up to $2,500 per evening, and grossing over $500,000; Domino also told readers that he owned 50 suits, 100 pairs of shoes and a $1,500 diamond horseshoe stick pin.
Domino had a steady series of hits for Imperial through early 1962, including "Walking to New Orleans" (1960, Pop number 6), co-written by Bobby Charles, and "My Girl Josephine" (Pop number 14) in the same year. He toured Europe in 1962 and met the Beatles who would later cite Domino as an inspiration. After returning, he played the first of his many stands in Las Vegas.
Imperial Records was sold in early 1963, and Domino left the label. "I stuck with them until they sold out," he said in 1979. In all, he recorded over 60 singles for Imperial, placing 40 songs in the top 10 on the R&B chart and 11 in the top 10 on the Pop chart, twenty-seven of which were double-sided hits.
Recordings after leaving Imperial (1963–1970s)
Domino moved to ABC-Paramount Records in 1963. The label dictated that he record in Nashville, Tennessee, rather than New Orleans. He was assigned a new producer (Felton Jarvis) and a new arranger (Bill Justis). Domino's long-term collaboration with the producer, arranger, and frequent co-writer Dave Bartholomew, who oversaw virtually all of his Imperial hits, was seemingly at an end. Jarvis and Justis changed the Domino sound somewhat, notably by adding the backing of a countrypolitan-style vocal chorus to most of his new recordings. He released 11 singles for ABC-Paramount, several which hit the Top 100 but just once entering the Top 40 ("Red Sails in the Sunset", 1963). By the end of 1964 the British Invasion had changed the tastes of the record-buying public, and Domino's chart run was over.
Despite the lack of chart success, Domino continued to record steadily until about 1970, leaving ABC-Paramount in mid-1965 and recording for Mercury Records, where he delivered a live album and two singles. A studio album was planned but stalled with just four tracks recorded. Dave Bartholomew's small Broadmoor label (reuniting with Bartholomew along the way), featured many contemporary Soul infused sides and a few single releases but an album was not released overseas until 1971 to fulfill his Reprise Records contract. He shifted to that label after Broadmoor and had a Top 100 single, a cover of the Beatles' "Lady Madonna".
Domino appeared in the Monkees' television special 33⅓ Revolutions per Monkee in 1969. In 1971, he opened for Ike & Tina Turner at Carnegie Hall. He continued to be popular as a performer for several decades. He made a cameo appearance in Clint Eastwood's movie Any Which Way You Can, filmed in 1979 and released in 1980, singing the country song "Whiskey Heaven", which later became a minor hit. His life and career were showcased in Joe Lauro's 2015 documentary The Big Beat: Fats Domino and the Birth of Rock 'n' Roll.
Later career (1980s–2005)
In 1986, Domino was one of the first musicians to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He also received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1987. Domino's last album for a major label, Christmas Is a Special Day, was released in 1993.
Domino lived in a mansion in a predominantly working-class neighborhood in the Lower Ninth Ward, where he was a familiar sight in his bright pink Cadillac automobile. He made yearly appearances at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and other local events.
His last tour was in Europe, for three weeks in 1995. After being ill while on tour, Domino decided he would no longer leave the New Orleans area, having a comfortable income from royalty payments and a dislike of touring and claiming he could not get any food that he liked anywhere else. In the same year, he received the Rhythm & Blues Foundation's Ray Charles Lifetime Achievement Award.
In 1998, President Bill Clinton awarded him the National Medal of Arts. Domino declined an invitation to perform at the White House.
In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him number 25 on its list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time" in an essay written by Dr. John.
Domino and Hurricane Katrina
As Hurricane Katrina approached New Orleans in August 2005, Domino chose to stay at home with his family, partly because his wife, Rosemary, was in poor health. His house was in an area that was heavily flooded.
Domino was rumored to have died, and his home was vandalized when someone spray-painted the message "RIP Fats. You will be missed". On September 1, the talent agent Al Embry announced that he had not heard from Domino since before the hurricane struck. Later that day, CNN reported that Domino had been rescued by a Coast Guard helicopter. Until then, even family members had not heard from him since before the storm. Embry confirmed that Domino and his family had been rescued. The family was then taken to a shelter in Baton Rouge, after which they were picked up by JaMarcus Russell, the starting quarterback of the Louisiana State University football team, and the boyfriend of Domino's granddaughter. He let the family stay in his apartment. The Washington Post reported that on September 2, they had left Russell's apartment after sleeping three nights on the couch. "We've lost everything," Domino said, according to the Post.
By January 2006, work to gut and repair Domino's home and office had begun (see Reconstruction of New Orleans). In the meantime, the Domino family resided in Harvey, Louisiana.
President George W. Bush made a personal visit and replaced the National Medal of Arts that President Bill Clinton had previously awarded Domino. The gold records were replaced by the RIAA and Capitol Records, which owned the Imperial Records catalogue.
Later life
Domino was scheduled to perform at the 2006 Jazz & Heritage Festival in New Orleans. However, he was suffering from anxiety and was forced to cancel the performance, but he did appear to offer the audience an on-stage greeting.
In 2006 Domino's album Alive and Kickin' was released to benefit the Tipitina's Foundation, which supports indigent local musicians and helps preserve the New Orleans sound. The album consists of unreleased recordings from the 1990s and received great critical acclaim.
On January 12, 2007, Domino was honored with OffBeat magazine's Lifetime Achievement Award at the annual Best of the Beat Awards, held at the House of Blues in New Orleans. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin declared the day "Fats Domino Day in New Orleans" and presented him with a signed declaration. Domino returned to stage on May 19, 2007, at Tipitina's at New Orleans, performing to a full house. This was his last public performance. The concert was recorded for a 2008 TV presentation entitled Fats Domino: Walkin' Back to New Orleans. This was a fund-raising concert, featuring a number of artists. Domino donated his fee to the cause. Later that year, a Vanguard record was released, Goin' Home: A Tribute to Fats Domino featuring his songs as recorded by Elton John, Neil Young, Tom Petty, Robert Plant, Willie Nelson, Norah Jones, Lenny Kravitz, and Lucinda Williams. A portion of the proceeds was to be used by the Foundation to help restore Domino's publishing office which had been damaged by the hurricane.
In September 2007, Domino was inducted into the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame.
In May 2009, Domino made an unexpected appearance in the audience for the Domino Effect, a concert featuring Little Richard and other artists, aimed at raising funds to help rebuild schools and playgrounds damaged by Hurricane Katrina.
In October 2012, Domino was featured in season three of the television series Treme, playing himself. On August 21, 2016, Domino was inducted into the National Rhythm and Blues Hall of Fame. The ceremony was held in Detroit, Michigan. The other inductees were Dionne Warwick, Cathy Hughes, Smokey Robinson, Prince, and the Supremes. He had received the Rhythm & Blues Foundation's Ray Charles Lifetime Achievement Award in 1995. His song "The Fat Man" entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2015.
Death
Domino died on October 24, 2017, at his home in Harvey, Louisiana, at the age of 89, from natural causes, according to the coroner's office.
Influence and legacy
Domino was one of the biggest stars of rock and roll in the 1950s, but he was not convinced that this was a new genre. In 1957, Domino said: "What they call rock 'n' roll now is rhythm and blues. I've been playing it for 15 years in New Orleans". According to Rolling Stone, "this is a valid statement ... all Fifties rockers, black and white, country born and city bred, were fundamentally influenced by R&B, the black popular music of the late Forties and early Fifties".
He was among the first R&B artists to gain popularity with white audiences. His biographer Rick Coleman argues that Domino's records and tours with rock-and-roll shows in that decade, bringing together black and white youths in a shared appreciation of his music, was a factor in the breakdown of racial segregation in the United States. The artist himself did not define his work as rock and roll, saying, "It wasn't anything but the same rhythm and blues I'd been playin' down in New Orleans."
Both John Lennon and Paul McCartney recorded Domino songs. According to some reports, McCartney wrote the Beatles song "Lady Madonna" in emulation of Domino's style, combining it with a nod to Humphrey Lyttelton's 1956 hit "Bad Penny Blues". Domino also recorded the song in 1968. Domino returned to the "Hot 100" chart for the last time in 1968, with his recording of "Lady Madonna". That recording, as well as covers of two other songs by the Beatles, appeared on his Reprise album Fats Is Back, produced by Richard Perry and with several hits recorded by a band that included the New Orleans pianist James Booker.
Domino was present in the audience of 2,200 people at Elvis Presley's first concert at the Las Vegas Hilton on July 31, 1969. At a press conference after the show, when a journalist referred to Presley as "The King", Presley gestured toward Domino, who was taking in the scene. "No," Presley said, "that's the real king of rock and roll." Presley made a subsequent comment, "rock 'n' roll was here a long time before I came along. Let's face it: I can't sing like Fats Domino can. I know that" and added that Domino was "a huge influence on me when I started out".
About a photograph made of him and Elvis together, Domino said: "Elvis told me he flopped the first time he came to Las Vegas. I loved his music. He could sing anything ... I'm glad we took this picture." (Fats Domino (2002). "Music Pioneer Fats Domino Talks About Elvis." Retrieved from "USA Today." December 10, 2002.)
Domino received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1987.
John Lennon covered Domino's composition "Ain't That a Shame" on his 1975 album "Rock 'n' Roll," his tribute to the musicians who had influenced him.
American band Cheap Trick recorded "Ain't That a Shame" on their 1978 live album Cheap Trick at Budokan and released it as the second single from the album. It reached 35 of the Billboard Hot 100. Reportedly, this was Domino's favorite cover. It remains a staple of their live performances, including at their 25th Anniversary concert (which was recorded as the album and DVD Silver) and at their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2016.
The Jamaican reggae artist Yellowman covered many songs by Domino, including "Be My Guest" and "Blueberry Hill."
Jah Wobble, a post-punk bassist best known for his work with Johnny Rotten, released a solo recording of "Blueberry Hill".
The Jamaican ska band Justin Hinds and the Dominoes, formed in the 1960s, was named after Domino, Hinds's favorite singer.
In 2007, various artists came together for a tribute to Domino, recording a live session containing only his songs. Musicians performing on the album, Goin' Home: A Tribute to Fats Domino, included Paul McCartney, Norah Jones, Willie Nelson, Neil Young, and Elton John.
According to Richie Unterberger, writing for AllMusic, Domino was one of the most consistent artists of early rock music, the best-selling African-American rock-and-roll star of the 1950s, and the most popular singer of the "classic" New Orleans rhythm and blues style. His million-selling debut single, "The Fat Man" (1949), is one of many that have been cited as the first rock and roll record. Robert Christgau wrote that Domino was "the most widely liked rock and roller of the '50s" and remarked on his influence:
Domino's rhythm, accentuating the offbeat, as in the song "Be My Guest", was an influence on ska music.
Personal life
Domino was married to Rosemary Domino ( Hall) from 1947 until her death in 2008; the couple had eight children: Antoine III (1950-2015), Anatole, Andre (1952-1997), Antonio, Antoinette, Andrea, Anola, and Adonica.
Even after his success he continued to live in his old neighborhood, the Lower Ninth Ward, until after Hurricane Katrina, when he moved to a suburb of New Orleans.
Discography
Fats Domino discography
List of songs recorded by Fats Domino
Studio albums
References
External links
Fats Domino at history-of-rock.com
Fats Domino: Walking to New Orleans special
1928 births
2017 deaths
African-American pianists
African-American rock musicians
American baritones
American blues pianists
American male pianists
American rock pianists
American rhythm and blues singers
American rock singers
Boogie-woogie pianists
Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners
Imperial Records artists
Louisiana Creole people
Rhythm and blues musicians from New Orleans
Rock and roll musicians
Songwriters from Louisiana
Stride pianists
United States National Medal of Arts recipients
Singers from Louisiana
People from Harvey, Louisiana
ABC Records artists
London Records artists
Mercury Records artists
Reprise Records artists
Warner Records artists
Male jazz musicians
African-American male singer-songwriters
African-American Catholics
20th-century African-American male singers
Singer-songwriters from Louisiana | false | [
"Le Cousin is a 1997 French film directed by Alain Corneau.\n\nPlot \nThe film deals with the relationship of the police and an informant in the drug scene.\n\nAwards and nominations\nLe Cousin was nominated for 5 César Awards but did not win in any category.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\n1997 films\n1997 crime films\nFilms about drugs\nFilms directed by Alain Corneau\nFrench crime films\nFrench films\nFrench-language films",
"The 23rd Fangoria Chainsaw Awards is an award ceremony presented for horror films that were released in 2020. The nominees were announced on January 20, 2021. The film The Invisible Man won five of its five nominations, including Best Wide Release, as well as the write-in poll of Best Kill. Color Out Of Space and Possessor each took two awards. His House did not win any of its seven nominations. The ceremony was exclusively livestreamed for the first time on the SHUDDER horror streaming service.\n\nWinners and nominees\n\nReferences\n\nFangoria Chainsaw Awards"
]
|
[
"Fats Domino",
"Recordings after leaving Imperial (1963-1970s)",
"What is Fats most famous song?",
"40 (\"Red Sails in the Sunset\", 1963).",
"What did he leave Imperial?",
"I don't know.",
"Where did he go after he left Imperial?",
"1970, leaving ABC-Paramount in mid-1965 and recording for Mercury Records,",
"What songs did he release through Mercury?",
"had a Top 100 single, a cover of the Beatles' \"Lady Madonna\".",
"Did he win any awards?",
"I don't know."
]
| C_59e99b9b46e44d24a78bee0859d4058a_1 | Was her very famous during this time? | 6 | Was Fats Domino very famous during the 1963-1970s? | Fats Domino | Domino moved to ABC-Paramount Records in 1963. The label dictated that he record in Nashville, Tennessee, rather than New Orleans. He was assigned a new producer (Felton Jarvis) and a new arranger (Bill Justis). Domino's long-term collaboration with the producer, arranger, and frequent co-writer Dave Bartholomew, who oversaw virtually all of his Imperial hits, was seemingly at an end. Jarvis and Justis changed the Domino sound somewhat, notably by adding the backing of a countrypolitan-style vocal chorus to most of his new recordings. He released 11 singles for ABC-Paramount, several which hit the Top 100 but just once entering the Top 40 ("Red Sails in the Sunset", 1963). By the end of 1964 the British Invasion had changed the tastes of the record-buying public, and Domino's chart run was over. Despite the lack of chart success, Domino continued to record steadily until about 1970, leaving ABC-Paramount in mid-1965 and recording for Mercury Records, where he delivered a live album and two singles. A studio album was planned but stalled with just four tracks recorded . Dave Bartholomew's small Broadmoor label (reuniting with Bartholomew along the way), featured many contemporary Soul infused sides but an album was released overseas in 1971 to fulfill his Reprise Records contract. He shifted to that label after Broadmoor and had a Top 100 single, a cover of the Beatles' "Lady Madonna". Domino appeared in the Monkees' television special 33 1/3 Revolutions per Monkee in 1969. He continued to be popular as a performer for several decades. He made a cameo appearance in Clint Eastwood's movie Any Which Way You Can, filmed in 1979 and released in 1980 singing the country song "Whiskey Heaven" which later became a minor hit. His life and career were showcased in Joe Lauro's 2015 documentary The Big Beat: Fats Domino and the Birth of Rock 'n' Roll. CANNOTANSWER | He continued to be popular as a performer for several decades. | Antoine Dominique Domino Jr. (February 26, 1928 – October 24, 2017), known as Fats Domino, was an American pianist and singer-songwriter. One of the pioneers of rock and roll music, Domino sold more than 65 million records. Born in New Orleans to a French Creole family, Domino signed to Imperial Records in 1949. His first single "The Fat Man" is cited by some historians as the first rock and roll single and the first to sell more than 1 million copies. Domino continued to work with the song's co-writer Dave Bartholomew, contributing his distinctive rolling piano style to Lloyd Price's "Lawdy Miss Clawdy" (1952) and scoring a string of mainstream hits beginning with "Ain't That a Shame" (1955). Between 1955 and 1960, he had eleven Top 10 US pop hits. By 1955, five of his records had sold more than a million copies, being certified gold.
Domino was shy and modest by nature but made a significant contribution to the rock and roll genre. Elvis Presley declared Domino a "huge influence on me when I started out" and described him as "the real king of rock 'n' roll". The artist himself did not define his work as rock and roll, saying of the genre "It wasn't anything but the same rhythm and blues I'd been playing down in New Orleans". Four of Domino's records were named to the Grammy Hall of Fame for their significance: "Blueberry Hill", "Ain't That A Shame", "Walking to New Orleans" and "The Fat Man". He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as part of its first group of inductees in 1986. The Associated Press estimates that during his career, Domino "sold more than 110 million records".
Biography
Early life and education
Antoine Domino Jr. was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana, the youngest of eight children born to Antoine Caliste Domino (1879–1964) and Marie-Donatille Gros (1886–1971). The Domino family was of French Creole background, and Louisiana Creole was his first language. Like most such families, the Dominos were Catholic.
Antoine was born at home with the assistance of his grandmother, a midwife. His name was initially misspelled as Anthony on his birth certificate. His family had recently arrived in the Lower Ninth Ward from Vacherie, Louisiana. His father was a part-time violin player who worked at a racetrack.
He attended the Louis B. Macarty School, leaving to start work as a helper to an ice delivery man. Domino learned to play the piano in about 1938 from his brother-in-law, the jazz guitarist Harrison Verrett.
Early career (1940s)
By age 14, Domino was performing in New Orleans bars. In 1947, Billy Diamond, a New Orleans bandleader, accepted an invitation to hear the young pianist perform at a backyard barbecue. Domino played well enough that Diamond asked him to join his band, the Solid Senders, at the Hideaway Club in New Orleans, where he would earn $3 a week playing the piano. Diamond nicknamed him "Fats", because Domino reminded him of the renowned pianists Fats Waller and Fats Pichon, but also because of his large appetite.
Recordings for Imperial Records (1949–1962)
Domino was signed to the Imperial Records label in 1949 by owner Lew Chudd, to be paid royalties based on sales instead of a fee for each song. He and producer Dave Bartholomew wrote "The Fat Man", a toned down version of a song about drug addicts called "Junker Blues"; the record had sold a million copies by 1951. Featuring a rolling piano and Domino vocalizing "wah-wah" over a strong backbeat, "The Fat Man" is widely considered the first rock-and-roll record to achieve this level of sales. In 2015, the song would enter the Grammy Hall of Fame.
Domino released a series of hit songs with Bartholomew (also the co-writer of many of the songs), the saxophonists Herbert Hardesty and Alvin "Red" Tyler, the bassist Billy Diamond and later Frank Fields, and the drummers Earl Palmer and Smokey Johnson. Other notable and long-standing musicians in Domino's band were the saxophonists Reggie Houston, Lee Allen, and Fred Kemp, Domino's trusted bandleader.
While Domino's own recordings were done for Imperial, he sometimes sat in during that time as a session musician on recordings by other artists for other record labels. Domino's rolling piano triplets provided the memorable instrumental introduction for Lloyd Price's first hit, "Lawdy Miss Clawdy", recorded for Specialty Records on March 13, 1952, at Cosimo Matassa's J&M Studios in New Orleans (where Domino himself had earlier recorded "The Fat Man" and other songs). Dave Bartholomew was producing Price's record, which also featured familiar Domino collaborators Hardesty, Fields and Palmer as sidemen, and he asked Domino to play the piano part, replacing the original session pianist.
Domino crossed into the pop mainstream with "Ain't That a Shame" (mislabeled as "Ain't It a Shame") which reached the Top Ten. This was the first of his records to appear on the Billboard pop singles chart (on July 16, 1955), with the debut at number 14. A milder cover version by Pat Boone reached number 1, having received wider radio airplay in an era of racial segregation. In 1955, Domino was said to be earning $10,000 a week while touring, according to a report in the memoir of artist Chuck Berry. Domino eventually had 37 Top 40 singles, but none made it to number 1 on the Pop chart.
Domino's debut album contained several of his recent hits and earlier blues tracks that had not been released as singles, and was issued on the Imperial label (catalogue number 9009) in November 1955, and was reissued as Rock and Rollin' with Fats Domino. The reissue reached number 17 on the Billboard Pop Albums chart.
His 1956 recording of "Blueberry Hill", a 1940 song by Vincent Rose, Al Lewis and Larry Stock (which had previously been recorded by Gene Autry, Louis Armstrong and others), reached number 2 on the Billboard Juke Box chart for two weeks and was number 1 on the R&B chart for 11 weeks. It was his biggest hit, selling more than 5 million copies worldwide in 1956 and 1957. The song was subsequently recorded by Elvis Presley, Little Richard, and Led Zeppelin. Some 32 years later, the song would enter the
Grammy Hall of Fame.
Domino had further hit singles between 1956 and 1959, including "When My Dreamboat Comes Home" (Pop number 14), "I'm Walkin'" (Pop number 4), "Valley of Tears" (Pop number 8), "It's You I Love" (Pop number 6), "Whole Lotta Lovin'" (Pop number 6), "I Want to Walk You Home" (Pop number 8), and "Be My Guest" (Pop number 8). In 1957, Domino maintained "What they call rock 'n' roll now is rhythm and blues. I've been playing it for 15 years in New Orleans".
Domino appeared in two films released in 1956: Shake, Rattle & Rock! and The Girl Can't Help It. On December 18, 1957, his hit recording of "The Big Beat" was featured on Dick Clark's American Bandstand.
He was also featured in a movie of the same name.
On November 2, 1956, a riot broke out at a Domino concert in Fayetteville, North Carolina. The police used tear gas to break up the unruly crowd. Domino jumped out a window to avoid the melee; he and two members of his band were slightly injured. During his career, four major riots occurred at his concerts, "partly because of integration", according to his biographer Rick Coleman. "But also the fact they had alcohol at these shows. So they were mixing alcohol, plus dancing, plus the races together for the first time in a lot of these places." In November 1957, Domino appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show; no disturbance accompanied this performance.
In the same year, the article "King of Rock 'n' Roll" in Ebony magazine featured Domino who said he was on the road 340 days a year, up to $2,500 per evening, and grossing over $500,000; Domino also told readers that he owned 50 suits, 100 pairs of shoes and a $1,500 diamond horseshoe stick pin.
Domino had a steady series of hits for Imperial through early 1962, including "Walking to New Orleans" (1960, Pop number 6), co-written by Bobby Charles, and "My Girl Josephine" (Pop number 14) in the same year. He toured Europe in 1962 and met the Beatles who would later cite Domino as an inspiration. After returning, he played the first of his many stands in Las Vegas.
Imperial Records was sold in early 1963, and Domino left the label. "I stuck with them until they sold out," he said in 1979. In all, he recorded over 60 singles for Imperial, placing 40 songs in the top 10 on the R&B chart and 11 in the top 10 on the Pop chart, twenty-seven of which were double-sided hits.
Recordings after leaving Imperial (1963–1970s)
Domino moved to ABC-Paramount Records in 1963. The label dictated that he record in Nashville, Tennessee, rather than New Orleans. He was assigned a new producer (Felton Jarvis) and a new arranger (Bill Justis). Domino's long-term collaboration with the producer, arranger, and frequent co-writer Dave Bartholomew, who oversaw virtually all of his Imperial hits, was seemingly at an end. Jarvis and Justis changed the Domino sound somewhat, notably by adding the backing of a countrypolitan-style vocal chorus to most of his new recordings. He released 11 singles for ABC-Paramount, several which hit the Top 100 but just once entering the Top 40 ("Red Sails in the Sunset", 1963). By the end of 1964 the British Invasion had changed the tastes of the record-buying public, and Domino's chart run was over.
Despite the lack of chart success, Domino continued to record steadily until about 1970, leaving ABC-Paramount in mid-1965 and recording for Mercury Records, where he delivered a live album and two singles. A studio album was planned but stalled with just four tracks recorded. Dave Bartholomew's small Broadmoor label (reuniting with Bartholomew along the way), featured many contemporary Soul infused sides and a few single releases but an album was not released overseas until 1971 to fulfill his Reprise Records contract. He shifted to that label after Broadmoor and had a Top 100 single, a cover of the Beatles' "Lady Madonna".
Domino appeared in the Monkees' television special 33⅓ Revolutions per Monkee in 1969. In 1971, he opened for Ike & Tina Turner at Carnegie Hall. He continued to be popular as a performer for several decades. He made a cameo appearance in Clint Eastwood's movie Any Which Way You Can, filmed in 1979 and released in 1980, singing the country song "Whiskey Heaven", which later became a minor hit. His life and career were showcased in Joe Lauro's 2015 documentary The Big Beat: Fats Domino and the Birth of Rock 'n' Roll.
Later career (1980s–2005)
In 1986, Domino was one of the first musicians to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He also received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1987. Domino's last album for a major label, Christmas Is a Special Day, was released in 1993.
Domino lived in a mansion in a predominantly working-class neighborhood in the Lower Ninth Ward, where he was a familiar sight in his bright pink Cadillac automobile. He made yearly appearances at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and other local events.
His last tour was in Europe, for three weeks in 1995. After being ill while on tour, Domino decided he would no longer leave the New Orleans area, having a comfortable income from royalty payments and a dislike of touring and claiming he could not get any food that he liked anywhere else. In the same year, he received the Rhythm & Blues Foundation's Ray Charles Lifetime Achievement Award.
In 1998, President Bill Clinton awarded him the National Medal of Arts. Domino declined an invitation to perform at the White House.
In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him number 25 on its list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time" in an essay written by Dr. John.
Domino and Hurricane Katrina
As Hurricane Katrina approached New Orleans in August 2005, Domino chose to stay at home with his family, partly because his wife, Rosemary, was in poor health. His house was in an area that was heavily flooded.
Domino was rumored to have died, and his home was vandalized when someone spray-painted the message "RIP Fats. You will be missed". On September 1, the talent agent Al Embry announced that he had not heard from Domino since before the hurricane struck. Later that day, CNN reported that Domino had been rescued by a Coast Guard helicopter. Until then, even family members had not heard from him since before the storm. Embry confirmed that Domino and his family had been rescued. The family was then taken to a shelter in Baton Rouge, after which they were picked up by JaMarcus Russell, the starting quarterback of the Louisiana State University football team, and the boyfriend of Domino's granddaughter. He let the family stay in his apartment. The Washington Post reported that on September 2, they had left Russell's apartment after sleeping three nights on the couch. "We've lost everything," Domino said, according to the Post.
By January 2006, work to gut and repair Domino's home and office had begun (see Reconstruction of New Orleans). In the meantime, the Domino family resided in Harvey, Louisiana.
President George W. Bush made a personal visit and replaced the National Medal of Arts that President Bill Clinton had previously awarded Domino. The gold records were replaced by the RIAA and Capitol Records, which owned the Imperial Records catalogue.
Later life
Domino was scheduled to perform at the 2006 Jazz & Heritage Festival in New Orleans. However, he was suffering from anxiety and was forced to cancel the performance, but he did appear to offer the audience an on-stage greeting.
In 2006 Domino's album Alive and Kickin' was released to benefit the Tipitina's Foundation, which supports indigent local musicians and helps preserve the New Orleans sound. The album consists of unreleased recordings from the 1990s and received great critical acclaim.
On January 12, 2007, Domino was honored with OffBeat magazine's Lifetime Achievement Award at the annual Best of the Beat Awards, held at the House of Blues in New Orleans. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin declared the day "Fats Domino Day in New Orleans" and presented him with a signed declaration. Domino returned to stage on May 19, 2007, at Tipitina's at New Orleans, performing to a full house. This was his last public performance. The concert was recorded for a 2008 TV presentation entitled Fats Domino: Walkin' Back to New Orleans. This was a fund-raising concert, featuring a number of artists. Domino donated his fee to the cause. Later that year, a Vanguard record was released, Goin' Home: A Tribute to Fats Domino featuring his songs as recorded by Elton John, Neil Young, Tom Petty, Robert Plant, Willie Nelson, Norah Jones, Lenny Kravitz, and Lucinda Williams. A portion of the proceeds was to be used by the Foundation to help restore Domino's publishing office which had been damaged by the hurricane.
In September 2007, Domino was inducted into the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame.
In May 2009, Domino made an unexpected appearance in the audience for the Domino Effect, a concert featuring Little Richard and other artists, aimed at raising funds to help rebuild schools and playgrounds damaged by Hurricane Katrina.
In October 2012, Domino was featured in season three of the television series Treme, playing himself. On August 21, 2016, Domino was inducted into the National Rhythm and Blues Hall of Fame. The ceremony was held in Detroit, Michigan. The other inductees were Dionne Warwick, Cathy Hughes, Smokey Robinson, Prince, and the Supremes. He had received the Rhythm & Blues Foundation's Ray Charles Lifetime Achievement Award in 1995. His song "The Fat Man" entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2015.
Death
Domino died on October 24, 2017, at his home in Harvey, Louisiana, at the age of 89, from natural causes, according to the coroner's office.
Influence and legacy
Domino was one of the biggest stars of rock and roll in the 1950s, but he was not convinced that this was a new genre. In 1957, Domino said: "What they call rock 'n' roll now is rhythm and blues. I've been playing it for 15 years in New Orleans". According to Rolling Stone, "this is a valid statement ... all Fifties rockers, black and white, country born and city bred, were fundamentally influenced by R&B, the black popular music of the late Forties and early Fifties".
He was among the first R&B artists to gain popularity with white audiences. His biographer Rick Coleman argues that Domino's records and tours with rock-and-roll shows in that decade, bringing together black and white youths in a shared appreciation of his music, was a factor in the breakdown of racial segregation in the United States. The artist himself did not define his work as rock and roll, saying, "It wasn't anything but the same rhythm and blues I'd been playin' down in New Orleans."
Both John Lennon and Paul McCartney recorded Domino songs. According to some reports, McCartney wrote the Beatles song "Lady Madonna" in emulation of Domino's style, combining it with a nod to Humphrey Lyttelton's 1956 hit "Bad Penny Blues". Domino also recorded the song in 1968. Domino returned to the "Hot 100" chart for the last time in 1968, with his recording of "Lady Madonna". That recording, as well as covers of two other songs by the Beatles, appeared on his Reprise album Fats Is Back, produced by Richard Perry and with several hits recorded by a band that included the New Orleans pianist James Booker.
Domino was present in the audience of 2,200 people at Elvis Presley's first concert at the Las Vegas Hilton on July 31, 1969. At a press conference after the show, when a journalist referred to Presley as "The King", Presley gestured toward Domino, who was taking in the scene. "No," Presley said, "that's the real king of rock and roll." Presley made a subsequent comment, "rock 'n' roll was here a long time before I came along. Let's face it: I can't sing like Fats Domino can. I know that" and added that Domino was "a huge influence on me when I started out".
About a photograph made of him and Elvis together, Domino said: "Elvis told me he flopped the first time he came to Las Vegas. I loved his music. He could sing anything ... I'm glad we took this picture." (Fats Domino (2002). "Music Pioneer Fats Domino Talks About Elvis." Retrieved from "USA Today." December 10, 2002.)
Domino received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1987.
John Lennon covered Domino's composition "Ain't That a Shame" on his 1975 album "Rock 'n' Roll," his tribute to the musicians who had influenced him.
American band Cheap Trick recorded "Ain't That a Shame" on their 1978 live album Cheap Trick at Budokan and released it as the second single from the album. It reached 35 of the Billboard Hot 100. Reportedly, this was Domino's favorite cover. It remains a staple of their live performances, including at their 25th Anniversary concert (which was recorded as the album and DVD Silver) and at their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2016.
The Jamaican reggae artist Yellowman covered many songs by Domino, including "Be My Guest" and "Blueberry Hill."
Jah Wobble, a post-punk bassist best known for his work with Johnny Rotten, released a solo recording of "Blueberry Hill".
The Jamaican ska band Justin Hinds and the Dominoes, formed in the 1960s, was named after Domino, Hinds's favorite singer.
In 2007, various artists came together for a tribute to Domino, recording a live session containing only his songs. Musicians performing on the album, Goin' Home: A Tribute to Fats Domino, included Paul McCartney, Norah Jones, Willie Nelson, Neil Young, and Elton John.
According to Richie Unterberger, writing for AllMusic, Domino was one of the most consistent artists of early rock music, the best-selling African-American rock-and-roll star of the 1950s, and the most popular singer of the "classic" New Orleans rhythm and blues style. His million-selling debut single, "The Fat Man" (1949), is one of many that have been cited as the first rock and roll record. Robert Christgau wrote that Domino was "the most widely liked rock and roller of the '50s" and remarked on his influence:
Domino's rhythm, accentuating the offbeat, as in the song "Be My Guest", was an influence on ska music.
Personal life
Domino was married to Rosemary Domino ( Hall) from 1947 until her death in 2008; the couple had eight children: Antoine III (1950-2015), Anatole, Andre (1952-1997), Antonio, Antoinette, Andrea, Anola, and Adonica.
Even after his success he continued to live in his old neighborhood, the Lower Ninth Ward, until after Hurricane Katrina, when he moved to a suburb of New Orleans.
Discography
Fats Domino discography
List of songs recorded by Fats Domino
Studio albums
References
External links
Fats Domino at history-of-rock.com
Fats Domino: Walking to New Orleans special
1928 births
2017 deaths
African-American pianists
African-American rock musicians
American baritones
American blues pianists
American male pianists
American rock pianists
American rhythm and blues singers
American rock singers
Boogie-woogie pianists
Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners
Imperial Records artists
Louisiana Creole people
Rhythm and blues musicians from New Orleans
Rock and roll musicians
Songwriters from Louisiana
Stride pianists
United States National Medal of Arts recipients
Singers from Louisiana
People from Harvey, Louisiana
ABC Records artists
London Records artists
Mercury Records artists
Reprise Records artists
Warner Records artists
Male jazz musicians
African-American male singer-songwriters
African-American Catholics
20th-century African-American male singers
Singer-songwriters from Louisiana | true | [
"Jeanne Auzoult, stage name Mademoiselle Baron (1625–1662), was a French stage actress.\n\nShe was the daughter of actors Jean Auzoult and Jeanne de Creve, and married André Boiron (d. 1655) in 1641. She was the mother of the famous actor Michel Baron.\n\nShe was engaged in the Grands Comediens (Comédiens du Roi) at the Hôtel de Bourgogne in 1641–1662. \n\nDuring her career, she was a successful, well known and popular actor, though her popularity has been attributed to her beauty rather than to her artistic abilities. According to Tallemant, Mlle Baron was \"very pretty, not a marvelous actress, but a success thanks to her beauty\".\n\nShe was described as \"an outstanding interpreter of boys' parts\", and was admired by Pierre Corneille.\n\nShe worked until her death and was replaced by the famous Alix Faviot, who was engaged in 1662 to replace her.\n\nReferences \n\n1662 deaths\n1625 births\n17th-century French actresses",
"Naima Akef (, ; 7 October 1929 – 23 April 1966) was a famous Egyptian belly dancer during the Egyptian cinema's golden age and starred in many films of the time. Naima Akef was born in Tanta on the Nile Delta. Her parents were acrobats in the Akef Circus (run by Naima’s grandfather), which was one of the best known circuses at the time. She started performing in the circus at the age of four, and quickly became one of the most popular acts with her acrobatic skills. Her family was based in the Bab el Khalq district of Cairo, but they traveled far and wide in order to perform.\n\nDancing\nThe circus disbanded when Naima was 14, but this was only the beginning of her career. Her grandfather had many connections in the performance world of Cairo and he introduced her to his friends. When Naima’s parents divorced, she formed an acrobatic and clown act that performed in many clubs throughout Cairo. She then got the chance to work in Badia Masabni's famous nightclub, where she became a star and was one of the very few who danced and sang. Her time with Badeia, however, was short-lived, as Badia favored her, which made the other performers jealous. One day they ganged up on her and attempted to beat her up, but she proved to be stronger and more agile and won the fight. This caused her to be fired, so she started performing elsewhere.\n\nA star\nThe Kit Kat club was another famous venue in Cairo, and this is where Naima was introduced to film director Abbas Kemal. His brother Hussein Fawzy, also a film director, was very interested in having Naima star in one of his musical films. The first of such films was “Al-Eïch wal malh” (bread and salt). Her costar was singer Saad Abdel Wahab, the nephew of the legendary singer and composer Mohammed Abdel Wahab. The film premiered on the 17th of January 1949, and was an instant success, bringing recognition also to Nahhas Film studios.\n\nRetirement and death\nNaima quit acting in 1964 to take care of her only child, a son from her second marriage to accountant Salaheldeen Abdel Aleem. She died two years later from cancer, on April 23, 1966, at the age of 36.\n\nFilmography \n Aish Wal Malh (1949).*****\n Lahalibo (1949).*****\n Baladi Wa Khafa (1949).****\n Furigat (1950).****\n Baba Areess (1950).****\n Fataat Al Sirk (1951).*****\n Al Namr (1952).\n Ya Halawaat Al Hubb (1952).****\n A Million Pounds (1953)\n Arbah Banat Wa Zabit (1954).*****\n Aziza (1955).****\n Tamr Henna (1957). with Ahmed Ramzy, Fayza Ahmed and Rushdy Abaza.*****\n Amir El Dahaa (1964).****\n\nExternal links\n\nMany video clips for the Legend Naima Akef\nLibrary of video clips of Naima Akef\n\nReferences\n\nEgyptian film actresses\nEgyptian comedians\nEgyptian female dancers\nBelly dancers\n1929 births\n1966 deaths\nPeople from Tanta\n20th-century Egyptian actresses\n20th-century comedians\nDeaths from cancer in Egypt"
]
|
[
"Fats Domino",
"Recordings after leaving Imperial (1963-1970s)",
"What is Fats most famous song?",
"40 (\"Red Sails in the Sunset\", 1963).",
"What did he leave Imperial?",
"I don't know.",
"Where did he go after he left Imperial?",
"1970, leaving ABC-Paramount in mid-1965 and recording for Mercury Records,",
"What songs did he release through Mercury?",
"had a Top 100 single, a cover of the Beatles' \"Lady Madonna\".",
"Did he win any awards?",
"I don't know.",
"Was her very famous during this time?",
"He continued to be popular as a performer for several decades."
]
| C_59e99b9b46e44d24a78bee0859d4058a_1 | Is there any other interesting information on Fats? | 7 | Besides having a Top 100 single, is there any other interesting information on Fats Domino? | Fats Domino | Domino moved to ABC-Paramount Records in 1963. The label dictated that he record in Nashville, Tennessee, rather than New Orleans. He was assigned a new producer (Felton Jarvis) and a new arranger (Bill Justis). Domino's long-term collaboration with the producer, arranger, and frequent co-writer Dave Bartholomew, who oversaw virtually all of his Imperial hits, was seemingly at an end. Jarvis and Justis changed the Domino sound somewhat, notably by adding the backing of a countrypolitan-style vocal chorus to most of his new recordings. He released 11 singles for ABC-Paramount, several which hit the Top 100 but just once entering the Top 40 ("Red Sails in the Sunset", 1963). By the end of 1964 the British Invasion had changed the tastes of the record-buying public, and Domino's chart run was over. Despite the lack of chart success, Domino continued to record steadily until about 1970, leaving ABC-Paramount in mid-1965 and recording for Mercury Records, where he delivered a live album and two singles. A studio album was planned but stalled with just four tracks recorded . Dave Bartholomew's small Broadmoor label (reuniting with Bartholomew along the way), featured many contemporary Soul infused sides but an album was released overseas in 1971 to fulfill his Reprise Records contract. He shifted to that label after Broadmoor and had a Top 100 single, a cover of the Beatles' "Lady Madonna". Domino appeared in the Monkees' television special 33 1/3 Revolutions per Monkee in 1969. He continued to be popular as a performer for several decades. He made a cameo appearance in Clint Eastwood's movie Any Which Way You Can, filmed in 1979 and released in 1980 singing the country song "Whiskey Heaven" which later became a minor hit. His life and career were showcased in Joe Lauro's 2015 documentary The Big Beat: Fats Domino and the Birth of Rock 'n' Roll. CANNOTANSWER | Domino appeared in the Monkees' television special 33 1/3 Revolutions per Monkee in 1969. | Antoine Dominique Domino Jr. (February 26, 1928 – October 24, 2017), known as Fats Domino, was an American pianist and singer-songwriter. One of the pioneers of rock and roll music, Domino sold more than 65 million records. Born in New Orleans to a French Creole family, Domino signed to Imperial Records in 1949. His first single "The Fat Man" is cited by some historians as the first rock and roll single and the first to sell more than 1 million copies. Domino continued to work with the song's co-writer Dave Bartholomew, contributing his distinctive rolling piano style to Lloyd Price's "Lawdy Miss Clawdy" (1952) and scoring a string of mainstream hits beginning with "Ain't That a Shame" (1955). Between 1955 and 1960, he had eleven Top 10 US pop hits. By 1955, five of his records had sold more than a million copies, being certified gold.
Domino was shy and modest by nature but made a significant contribution to the rock and roll genre. Elvis Presley declared Domino a "huge influence on me when I started out" and described him as "the real king of rock 'n' roll". The artist himself did not define his work as rock and roll, saying of the genre "It wasn't anything but the same rhythm and blues I'd been playing down in New Orleans". Four of Domino's records were named to the Grammy Hall of Fame for their significance: "Blueberry Hill", "Ain't That A Shame", "Walking to New Orleans" and "The Fat Man". He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as part of its first group of inductees in 1986. The Associated Press estimates that during his career, Domino "sold more than 110 million records".
Biography
Early life and education
Antoine Domino Jr. was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana, the youngest of eight children born to Antoine Caliste Domino (1879–1964) and Marie-Donatille Gros (1886–1971). The Domino family was of French Creole background, and Louisiana Creole was his first language. Like most such families, the Dominos were Catholic.
Antoine was born at home with the assistance of his grandmother, a midwife. His name was initially misspelled as Anthony on his birth certificate. His family had recently arrived in the Lower Ninth Ward from Vacherie, Louisiana. His father was a part-time violin player who worked at a racetrack.
He attended the Louis B. Macarty School, leaving to start work as a helper to an ice delivery man. Domino learned to play the piano in about 1938 from his brother-in-law, the jazz guitarist Harrison Verrett.
Early career (1940s)
By age 14, Domino was performing in New Orleans bars. In 1947, Billy Diamond, a New Orleans bandleader, accepted an invitation to hear the young pianist perform at a backyard barbecue. Domino played well enough that Diamond asked him to join his band, the Solid Senders, at the Hideaway Club in New Orleans, where he would earn $3 a week playing the piano. Diamond nicknamed him "Fats", because Domino reminded him of the renowned pianists Fats Waller and Fats Pichon, but also because of his large appetite.
Recordings for Imperial Records (1949–1962)
Domino was signed to the Imperial Records label in 1949 by owner Lew Chudd, to be paid royalties based on sales instead of a fee for each song. He and producer Dave Bartholomew wrote "The Fat Man", a toned down version of a song about drug addicts called "Junker Blues"; the record had sold a million copies by 1951. Featuring a rolling piano and Domino vocalizing "wah-wah" over a strong backbeat, "The Fat Man" is widely considered the first rock-and-roll record to achieve this level of sales. In 2015, the song would enter the Grammy Hall of Fame.
Domino released a series of hit songs with Bartholomew (also the co-writer of many of the songs), the saxophonists Herbert Hardesty and Alvin "Red" Tyler, the bassist Billy Diamond and later Frank Fields, and the drummers Earl Palmer and Smokey Johnson. Other notable and long-standing musicians in Domino's band were the saxophonists Reggie Houston, Lee Allen, and Fred Kemp, Domino's trusted bandleader.
While Domino's own recordings were done for Imperial, he sometimes sat in during that time as a session musician on recordings by other artists for other record labels. Domino's rolling piano triplets provided the memorable instrumental introduction for Lloyd Price's first hit, "Lawdy Miss Clawdy", recorded for Specialty Records on March 13, 1952, at Cosimo Matassa's J&M Studios in New Orleans (where Domino himself had earlier recorded "The Fat Man" and other songs). Dave Bartholomew was producing Price's record, which also featured familiar Domino collaborators Hardesty, Fields and Palmer as sidemen, and he asked Domino to play the piano part, replacing the original session pianist.
Domino crossed into the pop mainstream with "Ain't That a Shame" (mislabeled as "Ain't It a Shame") which reached the Top Ten. This was the first of his records to appear on the Billboard pop singles chart (on July 16, 1955), with the debut at number 14. A milder cover version by Pat Boone reached number 1, having received wider radio airplay in an era of racial segregation. In 1955, Domino was said to be earning $10,000 a week while touring, according to a report in the memoir of artist Chuck Berry. Domino eventually had 37 Top 40 singles, but none made it to number 1 on the Pop chart.
Domino's debut album contained several of his recent hits and earlier blues tracks that had not been released as singles, and was issued on the Imperial label (catalogue number 9009) in November 1955, and was reissued as Rock and Rollin' with Fats Domino. The reissue reached number 17 on the Billboard Pop Albums chart.
His 1956 recording of "Blueberry Hill", a 1940 song by Vincent Rose, Al Lewis and Larry Stock (which had previously been recorded by Gene Autry, Louis Armstrong and others), reached number 2 on the Billboard Juke Box chart for two weeks and was number 1 on the R&B chart for 11 weeks. It was his biggest hit, selling more than 5 million copies worldwide in 1956 and 1957. The song was subsequently recorded by Elvis Presley, Little Richard, and Led Zeppelin. Some 32 years later, the song would enter the
Grammy Hall of Fame.
Domino had further hit singles between 1956 and 1959, including "When My Dreamboat Comes Home" (Pop number 14), "I'm Walkin'" (Pop number 4), "Valley of Tears" (Pop number 8), "It's You I Love" (Pop number 6), "Whole Lotta Lovin'" (Pop number 6), "I Want to Walk You Home" (Pop number 8), and "Be My Guest" (Pop number 8). In 1957, Domino maintained "What they call rock 'n' roll now is rhythm and blues. I've been playing it for 15 years in New Orleans".
Domino appeared in two films released in 1956: Shake, Rattle & Rock! and The Girl Can't Help It. On December 18, 1957, his hit recording of "The Big Beat" was featured on Dick Clark's American Bandstand.
He was also featured in a movie of the same name.
On November 2, 1956, a riot broke out at a Domino concert in Fayetteville, North Carolina. The police used tear gas to break up the unruly crowd. Domino jumped out a window to avoid the melee; he and two members of his band were slightly injured. During his career, four major riots occurred at his concerts, "partly because of integration", according to his biographer Rick Coleman. "But also the fact they had alcohol at these shows. So they were mixing alcohol, plus dancing, plus the races together for the first time in a lot of these places." In November 1957, Domino appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show; no disturbance accompanied this performance.
In the same year, the article "King of Rock 'n' Roll" in Ebony magazine featured Domino who said he was on the road 340 days a year, up to $2,500 per evening, and grossing over $500,000; Domino also told readers that he owned 50 suits, 100 pairs of shoes and a $1,500 diamond horseshoe stick pin.
Domino had a steady series of hits for Imperial through early 1962, including "Walking to New Orleans" (1960, Pop number 6), co-written by Bobby Charles, and "My Girl Josephine" (Pop number 14) in the same year. He toured Europe in 1962 and met the Beatles who would later cite Domino as an inspiration. After returning, he played the first of his many stands in Las Vegas.
Imperial Records was sold in early 1963, and Domino left the label. "I stuck with them until they sold out," he said in 1979. In all, he recorded over 60 singles for Imperial, placing 40 songs in the top 10 on the R&B chart and 11 in the top 10 on the Pop chart, twenty-seven of which were double-sided hits.
Recordings after leaving Imperial (1963–1970s)
Domino moved to ABC-Paramount Records in 1963. The label dictated that he record in Nashville, Tennessee, rather than New Orleans. He was assigned a new producer (Felton Jarvis) and a new arranger (Bill Justis). Domino's long-term collaboration with the producer, arranger, and frequent co-writer Dave Bartholomew, who oversaw virtually all of his Imperial hits, was seemingly at an end. Jarvis and Justis changed the Domino sound somewhat, notably by adding the backing of a countrypolitan-style vocal chorus to most of his new recordings. He released 11 singles for ABC-Paramount, several which hit the Top 100 but just once entering the Top 40 ("Red Sails in the Sunset", 1963). By the end of 1964 the British Invasion had changed the tastes of the record-buying public, and Domino's chart run was over.
Despite the lack of chart success, Domino continued to record steadily until about 1970, leaving ABC-Paramount in mid-1965 and recording for Mercury Records, where he delivered a live album and two singles. A studio album was planned but stalled with just four tracks recorded. Dave Bartholomew's small Broadmoor label (reuniting with Bartholomew along the way), featured many contemporary Soul infused sides and a few single releases but an album was not released overseas until 1971 to fulfill his Reprise Records contract. He shifted to that label after Broadmoor and had a Top 100 single, a cover of the Beatles' "Lady Madonna".
Domino appeared in the Monkees' television special 33⅓ Revolutions per Monkee in 1969. In 1971, he opened for Ike & Tina Turner at Carnegie Hall. He continued to be popular as a performer for several decades. He made a cameo appearance in Clint Eastwood's movie Any Which Way You Can, filmed in 1979 and released in 1980, singing the country song "Whiskey Heaven", which later became a minor hit. His life and career were showcased in Joe Lauro's 2015 documentary The Big Beat: Fats Domino and the Birth of Rock 'n' Roll.
Later career (1980s–2005)
In 1986, Domino was one of the first musicians to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He also received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1987. Domino's last album for a major label, Christmas Is a Special Day, was released in 1993.
Domino lived in a mansion in a predominantly working-class neighborhood in the Lower Ninth Ward, where he was a familiar sight in his bright pink Cadillac automobile. He made yearly appearances at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and other local events.
His last tour was in Europe, for three weeks in 1995. After being ill while on tour, Domino decided he would no longer leave the New Orleans area, having a comfortable income from royalty payments and a dislike of touring and claiming he could not get any food that he liked anywhere else. In the same year, he received the Rhythm & Blues Foundation's Ray Charles Lifetime Achievement Award.
In 1998, President Bill Clinton awarded him the National Medal of Arts. Domino declined an invitation to perform at the White House.
In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him number 25 on its list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time" in an essay written by Dr. John.
Domino and Hurricane Katrina
As Hurricane Katrina approached New Orleans in August 2005, Domino chose to stay at home with his family, partly because his wife, Rosemary, was in poor health. His house was in an area that was heavily flooded.
Domino was rumored to have died, and his home was vandalized when someone spray-painted the message "RIP Fats. You will be missed". On September 1, the talent agent Al Embry announced that he had not heard from Domino since before the hurricane struck. Later that day, CNN reported that Domino had been rescued by a Coast Guard helicopter. Until then, even family members had not heard from him since before the storm. Embry confirmed that Domino and his family had been rescued. The family was then taken to a shelter in Baton Rouge, after which they were picked up by JaMarcus Russell, the starting quarterback of the Louisiana State University football team, and the boyfriend of Domino's granddaughter. He let the family stay in his apartment. The Washington Post reported that on September 2, they had left Russell's apartment after sleeping three nights on the couch. "We've lost everything," Domino said, according to the Post.
By January 2006, work to gut and repair Domino's home and office had begun (see Reconstruction of New Orleans). In the meantime, the Domino family resided in Harvey, Louisiana.
President George W. Bush made a personal visit and replaced the National Medal of Arts that President Bill Clinton had previously awarded Domino. The gold records were replaced by the RIAA and Capitol Records, which owned the Imperial Records catalogue.
Later life
Domino was scheduled to perform at the 2006 Jazz & Heritage Festival in New Orleans. However, he was suffering from anxiety and was forced to cancel the performance, but he did appear to offer the audience an on-stage greeting.
In 2006 Domino's album Alive and Kickin' was released to benefit the Tipitina's Foundation, which supports indigent local musicians and helps preserve the New Orleans sound. The album consists of unreleased recordings from the 1990s and received great critical acclaim.
On January 12, 2007, Domino was honored with OffBeat magazine's Lifetime Achievement Award at the annual Best of the Beat Awards, held at the House of Blues in New Orleans. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin declared the day "Fats Domino Day in New Orleans" and presented him with a signed declaration. Domino returned to stage on May 19, 2007, at Tipitina's at New Orleans, performing to a full house. This was his last public performance. The concert was recorded for a 2008 TV presentation entitled Fats Domino: Walkin' Back to New Orleans. This was a fund-raising concert, featuring a number of artists. Domino donated his fee to the cause. Later that year, a Vanguard record was released, Goin' Home: A Tribute to Fats Domino featuring his songs as recorded by Elton John, Neil Young, Tom Petty, Robert Plant, Willie Nelson, Norah Jones, Lenny Kravitz, and Lucinda Williams. A portion of the proceeds was to be used by the Foundation to help restore Domino's publishing office which had been damaged by the hurricane.
In September 2007, Domino was inducted into the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame.
In May 2009, Domino made an unexpected appearance in the audience for the Domino Effect, a concert featuring Little Richard and other artists, aimed at raising funds to help rebuild schools and playgrounds damaged by Hurricane Katrina.
In October 2012, Domino was featured in season three of the television series Treme, playing himself. On August 21, 2016, Domino was inducted into the National Rhythm and Blues Hall of Fame. The ceremony was held in Detroit, Michigan. The other inductees were Dionne Warwick, Cathy Hughes, Smokey Robinson, Prince, and the Supremes. He had received the Rhythm & Blues Foundation's Ray Charles Lifetime Achievement Award in 1995. His song "The Fat Man" entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2015.
Death
Domino died on October 24, 2017, at his home in Harvey, Louisiana, at the age of 89, from natural causes, according to the coroner's office.
Influence and legacy
Domino was one of the biggest stars of rock and roll in the 1950s, but he was not convinced that this was a new genre. In 1957, Domino said: "What they call rock 'n' roll now is rhythm and blues. I've been playing it for 15 years in New Orleans". According to Rolling Stone, "this is a valid statement ... all Fifties rockers, black and white, country born and city bred, were fundamentally influenced by R&B, the black popular music of the late Forties and early Fifties".
He was among the first R&B artists to gain popularity with white audiences. His biographer Rick Coleman argues that Domino's records and tours with rock-and-roll shows in that decade, bringing together black and white youths in a shared appreciation of his music, was a factor in the breakdown of racial segregation in the United States. The artist himself did not define his work as rock and roll, saying, "It wasn't anything but the same rhythm and blues I'd been playin' down in New Orleans."
Both John Lennon and Paul McCartney recorded Domino songs. According to some reports, McCartney wrote the Beatles song "Lady Madonna" in emulation of Domino's style, combining it with a nod to Humphrey Lyttelton's 1956 hit "Bad Penny Blues". Domino also recorded the song in 1968. Domino returned to the "Hot 100" chart for the last time in 1968, with his recording of "Lady Madonna". That recording, as well as covers of two other songs by the Beatles, appeared on his Reprise album Fats Is Back, produced by Richard Perry and with several hits recorded by a band that included the New Orleans pianist James Booker.
Domino was present in the audience of 2,200 people at Elvis Presley's first concert at the Las Vegas Hilton on July 31, 1969. At a press conference after the show, when a journalist referred to Presley as "The King", Presley gestured toward Domino, who was taking in the scene. "No," Presley said, "that's the real king of rock and roll." Presley made a subsequent comment, "rock 'n' roll was here a long time before I came along. Let's face it: I can't sing like Fats Domino can. I know that" and added that Domino was "a huge influence on me when I started out".
About a photograph made of him and Elvis together, Domino said: "Elvis told me he flopped the first time he came to Las Vegas. I loved his music. He could sing anything ... I'm glad we took this picture." (Fats Domino (2002). "Music Pioneer Fats Domino Talks About Elvis." Retrieved from "USA Today." December 10, 2002.)
Domino received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1987.
John Lennon covered Domino's composition "Ain't That a Shame" on his 1975 album "Rock 'n' Roll," his tribute to the musicians who had influenced him.
American band Cheap Trick recorded "Ain't That a Shame" on their 1978 live album Cheap Trick at Budokan and released it as the second single from the album. It reached 35 of the Billboard Hot 100. Reportedly, this was Domino's favorite cover. It remains a staple of their live performances, including at their 25th Anniversary concert (which was recorded as the album and DVD Silver) and at their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2016.
The Jamaican reggae artist Yellowman covered many songs by Domino, including "Be My Guest" and "Blueberry Hill."
Jah Wobble, a post-punk bassist best known for his work with Johnny Rotten, released a solo recording of "Blueberry Hill".
The Jamaican ska band Justin Hinds and the Dominoes, formed in the 1960s, was named after Domino, Hinds's favorite singer.
In 2007, various artists came together for a tribute to Domino, recording a live session containing only his songs. Musicians performing on the album, Goin' Home: A Tribute to Fats Domino, included Paul McCartney, Norah Jones, Willie Nelson, Neil Young, and Elton John.
According to Richie Unterberger, writing for AllMusic, Domino was one of the most consistent artists of early rock music, the best-selling African-American rock-and-roll star of the 1950s, and the most popular singer of the "classic" New Orleans rhythm and blues style. His million-selling debut single, "The Fat Man" (1949), is one of many that have been cited as the first rock and roll record. Robert Christgau wrote that Domino was "the most widely liked rock and roller of the '50s" and remarked on his influence:
Domino's rhythm, accentuating the offbeat, as in the song "Be My Guest", was an influence on ska music.
Personal life
Domino was married to Rosemary Domino ( Hall) from 1947 until her death in 2008; the couple had eight children: Antoine III (1950-2015), Anatole, Andre (1952-1997), Antonio, Antoinette, Andrea, Anola, and Adonica.
Even after his success he continued to live in his old neighborhood, the Lower Ninth Ward, until after Hurricane Katrina, when he moved to a suburb of New Orleans.
Discography
Fats Domino discography
List of songs recorded by Fats Domino
Studio albums
References
External links
Fats Domino at history-of-rock.com
Fats Domino: Walking to New Orleans special
1928 births
2017 deaths
African-American pianists
African-American rock musicians
American baritones
American blues pianists
American male pianists
American rock pianists
American rhythm and blues singers
American rock singers
Boogie-woogie pianists
Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners
Imperial Records artists
Louisiana Creole people
Rhythm and blues musicians from New Orleans
Rock and roll musicians
Songwriters from Louisiana
Stride pianists
United States National Medal of Arts recipients
Singers from Louisiana
People from Harvey, Louisiana
ABC Records artists
London Records artists
Mercury Records artists
Reprise Records artists
Warner Records artists
Male jazz musicians
African-American male singer-songwriters
African-American Catholics
20th-century African-American male singers
Singer-songwriters from Louisiana | false | [
"\"Viper's Drag\" is a stride piano composition by the jazz pianist, composer, and arranger Thomas \"Fats\" Waller.\n\nHistory/Background\n\n\"Viper's Drag\" was written as a dance tune for a ragtime dance called a slow drag, often shortened to \"drag\" by songwriters of the day.\n\nThe song has been performed by Waller and countless other jazz artists, including Cab Calloway, who recorded a big band swing version of the tune on November 12, 1930 as song 10246-1 on the DOMINO label, album 4686 and Judy Carmichael, who recorded it for her Grammy award-nominated Two-Handed Stride on the Progressive label in 1980.\n\nThere are two versions by New Orleans piano masters Henry Butler and Allen Toussaint. It is the title cut to an album by Henry Butler/Steven Bernstein and the Hot 9, on Impulse (2014)</ref>. It can also be found on \"American Tunes\"—the final recording from New Orleans jazz and R&B pianist Allen Toussaint, released on Nonesuch Records on June 10, 2016.\n\nAppears on\n\n\"Viper's Rag\" appears on the following recordings:\n\n Fats Waller Memorial, Vol. 1, Fats Waller, RCA Victor, 1970, 2:48\n Fats Waller: Legendary Performer, Fats Waller, RCA, 1978\n You Rascal You, Fats Waller Pegasus/Pinnacle, 1986\n The Joint Is Jumpin', Fats Waller RCA Bluebird/BMG, 1987, 2:58\n The Definitive Fats Waller, Vol. 1: His Piano, His Rhythm, Fats Waller, 1990, 2:25\n Turn on the Heat: The Fats Waller Piano Solos, Fats Waller, RCA, 1991, 2:56\n A Handful of Fats: Original 1929-1942 Recordings, Fats Waller, Naxos Jazz/ Pro-Arte Records, 1992, 2:59\n The Cream Series, Fats Waller, Pearl, 1993, 3:01\n 1934-1935 Fats Waller, Fats Waller, 1993,\n The Indispensable Fats Waller, Vols. 1-2: 1926-1935, Fats Waller BMG, 1995,\n Ain't Misbehavin', Fats Waller, ASV/Living Era, 1995, 3:07\n ...Misbehavin', Fats Waller, RCA Camden, 1997, 2:59\n Fats Waller: Members Edition, Fats Waller, Membran, 1997,\n Piano Masterworks, Vol. 2 (1929-1943), Fats Waller EPM, 1997, 2:58\n A Portrait of Boogie Woogie Piano, Various artists, Gallerie, 1998, 2:57\n Masters of Jazz, Fats Waller, Cee-Dee, 1999,\n A Handful of Keys, Fats Waller, Proper / Proper Box, 1999, 3:00\n The Very Best of Fats Waller, Fats Waller, Collectors' Choice Music, 2000, 2:58\n Cradle of Jazz, Various artists, Tokuma, 2001, 2:57\n Fats Waller: Jazz Indispensable, Fats Waller, BMG, 2001,\n Associated Transcription Sessions, 1935-1939, Fats Waller, Jazz Unlimited, 2001, 2:26\n The Quintessence New York - Camden - Los Angeles: 1929-1943, Fats Waller, Frémeaux & Associés, 2002, 2:58\n Portrait, Vol. 1, Fats Waller, Documents Classics / The International Music Co., 2003, 2:58\n Totally Jazz Piano, Various artists, Pastels, 2003, 3:01\n Alligator Crawl, Fats Waller Universal Division Jazz, 2004, 2:58\n Fats Waller Stomp/Fractious Fingering, Fats Waller, Classic Jazz Music, 2004, 2:58\n Honeysuckle Rose ASV/Living Era, 2004, 2:58\n Happy Birthday Fats, Fats Waller, Fuel 2000, 2004, 2:23\n Truckin', Fats Waller, Proper Sales & Dist., 2004, 3:00\n The Best of Fats Waller: Jazz Forever, Fats Waller, Jazz Forever, 2005, 2:57\n Two-Handed Stride, Judy Carmichael, Progressive, 1980\n If You Got to Ask, You Ain't Got It!, Fats Waller, Bluebird/Legacy, 2006, 2:58\n An Introduction to Fats Waller, Fats Waller, Fuel 2000, 2006, 2:23\n Complete Victor Piano Solos, Fats Waller, Definitive Classics, 2006, 2:58\n RCA Original Masters: The Best of Fats Waller, Fats Waller Sony BMG, 2008, 2:58\n Best of Fats Waller (Box Set), Fats Waller, Sony BMG, 2008, 2:58\n Royal Casino, Various artists, Makin Friends, 2008,\n Radio Recordings from 1931 to 1943, Fats Waller Fuel 2000 / Varèse Sarabande, 2010, 2:23\n Fats Waller: 75 Original Great Performances, Fats Waller, Gralin Music, 2010, 2:54\n Fats Waller Anthology, Fats Waller, Jazzland, 2010, 2:57\n Believe in Miracles, Fats Waller, History, 2010, 2:57\n Fats Waller Piano Solos (1929-1941), Fats Waller, Jazz Tribune, 2010,\n Reefer Blues: Vintage Songs About Marijuana, Vol. 2, Various artists, Grammercy Records, 2010, 2:57\n Jazz Piano Masters: 55 Famous Jazz Songs, Various artists, Jazzland, 2010, 2:57\n Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll, Various artists, Delta, 2010, 3:02\n The Ultimate Jazz Archive, Vol. 18, Various artists, 2010, 2:56\n [[The Ultimate Fats Waller Collection, Vol. 4 AP]], Various artists, 2010, 3:08\n Viper's Drag, Henry Butler/Steven Bernstein and the Hot 9, on Impulse (2014) 6:46\n [[American Tunes]], Allen Toussaint, 2016, (Nonesuch) 3:18\n\nReferences\n\nhttps://www.allmusic.com/song/vipers-drag-mt0053154424\n\nPiano compositions by American composers\nCab Calloway songs",
"The Joint is Jumpin' may refer to:\n\nMusic\n \"The Joint is Jumpin'\", a 1937 song by Fats Waller, co-credited with Andy Razaf and J. C. Johnson\n The Joint is Jumpin''', a 1981 album by Eight to the Bar\n The Joint is Jumpin, a 1998 album by Jake Hanna\n The Joint is Jumpin''', a 1997 album by Ray Kamalay and his Red Hot Peppers\n The Joint is Jumpin, a 1987 album by Stan Mark and his River City StomperZ\n The Joint is Jumpin': the Music of Fats Waller, a 2003 album by Ralph Sutton\n \"The Joint is Jumpin'\", a song on the 2016 album The Boop-A-Doo by Cherry Poppin' Daddies\n \"The Joint is Jumpin'\", a song on the 1987 album Ain't Misbehavin' by Clark Terry\n \"The Joint is Jumpin'\", a song on the 2012 album Dee Does Broadway by Dee Snider\n \"The Joint is Jumpin'\", a song on the 1985 album They Said It Couldn't Be Done by Grandmaster Flash\n \"The Joint is Jumpin'\", a song on the 1979 album Ain't Misbehavin' by Hank Jones\n \"The Joint is Jumpin'\", a song on the 2006 album All Rise: A Joyful Elegy for Fats Waller by Jason Moran \n \"The Joint is Jumpin'\", a song on the 2001 album Downtown Blues'' by Steve Allee\n\nOther uses\n''The Joint is Jumpin''' (film), 1949"
]
|
[
"Vincent Price",
"Personal life"
]
| C_9632aada122e45be87f8cc63486a96c7_0 | What was his family life like? | 1 | What was Vincent Price's family life like? | Vincent Price | Price married three times. His first marriage was in 1938 to former actress Edith Barrett; they had one son, Vincent Barrett Price, and divorced in 1948. A year later, in 1949, Price married Mary Grant, and they had a daughter, Victoria Price, on April 27, 1962. She was named Victoria after Price's first major success in the play Victoria Regina. The marriage lasted until 1973. Price's last marriage was in 1974 to Australian actress Coral Browne, who appeared with him (as one of his victims) in Theatre of Blood (1973). The marriage lasted until Browne's death in 1991. One example of his outspoken political action came when he concluded an old-time radio episode of The Saint, entitled "Author of Murder", which aired on NBC Radio on July 30, 1950. He denounced racial and religious prejudice as a form of poison and claimed Americans must actively fight against it because racial and religious prejudice within the United States fuels support for the nation's enemies. Price was later appointed to the Indian Arts and Crafts Board under the Dwight D. Eisenhower Administration; he called the appointment "kind of a surprise, since I am a Democrat." Price was supportive of his daughter, who came out as a lesbian, and was critical of Anita Bryant's anti-gay campaign in the 1970s. He was an honorary board member of PFLAG and among the first celebrities to appear in public service announcements discussing AIDS with the public. His daughter has stated that she is "as close to certain as (she) can be that (Price) had physically intimate relationships with men." although never confirmed by anyone else. CANNOTANSWER | Price married three times. | Vincent Leonard Price Jr. (May 27, 1911 – October 25, 1993) was an American actor best known for his performances in horror films, although his career spanned other genres. He appeared on stage, television, and radio, and in more than 100 films. Price has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for motion pictures and one for television.
Price's first film role was as leading man in the 1938 comedy Service de Luxe. He became well known as a character actor, appearing in films such as The Song of Bernadette (1943), Laura (1944), The Keys of the Kingdom (1944), Leave Her to Heaven (1945), Dragonwyck (1946), and The Ten Commandments (1956). He established himself as a recognizable horror-movie star after his leading role in House of Wax (1953). He subsequently starred in other horror films, including The Fly (1958), House on Haunted Hill (1959), Return of the Fly (1959), The Tingler (1959), The Last Man on Earth (1964), Witchfinder General (1968), The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971), and Theatre of Blood (1973). He was also known for his collaborations with Roger Corman on Edgar Allan Poe adaptations such as House of Usher (1960), The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), and The Masque of the Red Death (1964). Price occasionally appeared on television series, such as in Batman as Egghead.
In his later years, Price voiced the villainous Professor Ratigan in Disney's classic animated film The Great Mouse Detective (1986), then appeared in the drama The Whales of August (1987), which earned him an Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Male nomination, and in Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands (1990), his last theatrical release. For his contributions to cinema, especially to genre films, he has received lifetime achievement or special tribute awards from Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films, Fantasporto, Bram Stoker Awards, and Los Angeles Film Critics Association. Price narrated several animation films, radio dramas and documentaries, as well as the monologue on Michael Jackson's song "Thriller". For his voice work in Great American Speeches (1959), Price was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album.
Price was also an art collector and arts consultant, with a degree in art history, and he lectured and wrote books on the subject. The Vincent Price Art Museum at East Los Angeles College is named in his honor. Price was also a noted gourmet cook.
Early life and career
Vincent Leonard Price Jr. was born on May 27, 1911, in St. Louis, Missouri, the youngest of the four children of Vincent Leonard Price Sr., president of the National Candy Company, and his wife Marguerite Cobb (née Wilcox) Price. His grandfather was Vincent Clarence Price, who invented "Dr. Price's Baking Powder", the first cream of tartar-based baking powder, and it secured the family's fortune. Price was of Welsh and English descent and was a descendant of Peregrine White, the first white child born in colonial Massachusetts, being born on the Mayflower while it was in Provincetown Harbor.
Price attended the St. Louis Country Day School and Milford Academy in Milford, Connecticut. In 1933, he graduated with a degree in English and a minor in art history from Yale University, where he worked on the campus humor magazine The Yale Record. After teaching for a year, he entered the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, intending to study for a master's degree in fine arts. Instead, he was drawn to the theater, first appearing on stage professionally in 1934. His acting career began in London in 1935, performing with Orson Welles's Mercury Theatre.
In 1936, Price appeared as Prince Albert in the American production of Laurence Housman's play Victoria Regina, which starred Helen Hayes in the title role of Queen Victoria.
Introduction to film roles
Price started out in films as a character actor. He made his film debut in Service de Luxe (1938), and established himself in the film Laura (1944), opposite Gene Tierney, directed by Otto Preminger. He played Joseph Smith in the movie Brigham Young (1940) and William Gibbs McAdoo in Wilson (1944), as well as Bernadette's prosecutor, Vital Dutour, in The Song of Bernadette (1943), and as a pretentious priest in The Keys of the Kingdom (1944).
Price's first venture into the horror genre, for which he later became best known, was in the Boris Karloff film Tower of London (1939). The following year, Price portrayed the title character in The Invisible Man Returns (a role he reprised in a voice-only cameo in the closing scene of the horror-comedy spoof Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein released in 1948). He reunited with Tierney in Leave Her to Heaven (1945) and Dragonwyck (1946). He also had many villainous roles in film noir thrillers such as The Web (1947), The Long Night (1947), Rogues' Regiment (1948), and The Bribe (1949), with Robert Taylor, Ava Gardner, and Charles Laughton.
Price's first starring role was as con man James Reavis in the biopic The Baron of Arizona (1950). He did a comedic turn as the tycoon Burnbridge Waters, co-starring with Ronald Colman in Champagne for Caesar (also 1950), one of his favorite film roles.
Price was active in radio, portraying the Robin Hood-inspired crime-fighter Simon Templar in The Saint, which ran from 1947 to 1951. In the 1950s, Price moved into more regular horror-film roles with the leading role in House of Wax (1953) as a homicidal sculptor, the first three-dimensional film to land in the year's top 10 at the North American box-office. His next roles were The Mad Magician (1954), the monster movie The Fly (1958), and its sequel Return of the Fly (1959). That same year, Price starred in two thrillers by producer-director William Castle: House on Haunted Hill as eccentric millionaire Fredrick Loren, and The Tingler as Dr. Warren Chapin, who discovered the titular creature. He appeared in the radio drama Three Skeleton Key, the story of an island lighthouse besieged by an army of rats. He had first performed the work in 1950 on Escape and returned to it in 1956 and 1958 for Suspense.
Outside the horror realm, Price played Baka in The Ten Commandments, released in 1956. About this time, he also appeared in episodes of television shows such as Science Fiction Theatre, Playhouse 90, and General Electric Theater. In the 1955–56 television season, he was cast three times on the religion anthology series Crossroads. In the 1955 episode "Cleanup", Price portrayed the Reverend Robert Russell. In 1956, he was cast as Rabbi Gershom Mendes Seixas in "The Rebel", and as the Rev. Alfred W. Price in "God's Healing".
1960s
In the 1960s, Price achieved a number of low-budget filmmaking successes with Roger Corman and American International Pictures (AIP) starting with the House of Usher (1960), which earned over $2 million at the box office in the United States and led to the subsequent Edgar Allan Poe adaptations of The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), Tales of Terror (1962), The Comedy of Terrors (1963), The Raven (1963), The Masque of the Red Death (1964), and The Tomb of Ligeia (1964). He starred in The Last Man on Earth (1964), the first adaptation of the Richard Matheson novel I Am Legend, and portrayed witch hunter Matthew Hopkins in Witchfinder General (US: The Conqueror Worm, 1968) set during the English Civil War. Price also starred in comedy films such as Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine (1965) and its sequel Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs (1966). In 1968, he played the part of an eccentric artist in the musical Darling of the Day, opposite Patricia Routledge.
In the 1960s, Price began his role as a guest on the television game show Hollywood Squares, becoming a semiregular in the 1970s, including being one of the guest panelists on the finale in 1980.
Price made many guest-star appearances in television shows during the decade, including The Red Skelton Show, Daniel Boone, F Troop, Get Smart, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. He had a recurring role in the Batman TV series as the villain Egghead from 1966 to 1967. In 1964, he provided the narration for the Tombstone Historama in Tombstone, Arizona, which was still in operation as of 2016. He also starred as the host of the Australian TV series If These Walls Could Speak, in which a short history of a historical building (supposedly narrated by the building itself) was covered, and as the narrating voice of the building.
Later career
During the early 1970s, Price hosted and starred in BBC Radio's horror and mystery series The Price of Fear. He accepted a cameo part in the Canadian children's television program The Hilarious House of Frightenstein (1971) in Hamilton, Ontario, on the local television station CHCH-TV. In addition to the opening and closing monologues, his role in the show was to recite poems about various characters, sometimes wearing a cloak or other costumes. He appeared in The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971), its sequel Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1972), and Theatre of Blood (1973), in which he portrayed one of two serial killers. That same year, he appeared as himself in Mooch Goes to Hollywood, a film written by Jim Backus.
Price was an admirer of the works of Edgar Allan Poe, and in 1975 visited the Edgar Allan Poe Museum in Richmond, Virginia, where he had his picture taken with the museum's popular stuffed raven. Price also recorded dramatic readings of Poe's short stories and poems, which were collected together with readings by Basil Rathbone.
In 1975, Price and his wife Coral Browne appeared together in an international stage adaptation of Ardèle, which played in the U.S. and in London at the Queen's Theatre. During this run, Browne and Price starred together in the BBC Radio play Night of the Wolf first airing in 1975. Price greatly reduced his film work from around 1975, as horror itself suffered a slump, and he increased his narrative and voice work, as well as advertising Milton Bradley's Shrunken Head Apple Sculpture.
Price provided a monologue for the Alice Cooper song "Devil's Food" on the Welcome to My Nightmare album in 1975, and he appeared in the corresponding TV special Alice Cooper: The Nightmare. He starred for a year in the early 1970s in the syndicated daily radio program Tales of the Unexplained. He made guest appearances in a 1970 episode of Here's Lucy, showcasing his art expertise, and in a 1972 episode of ABC's The Brady Bunch, in which he played a deranged archaeologist. In October 1976, he appeared as the featured guest in an episode of The Muppet Show.
In 1977, Price began performing as Oscar Wilde in the one-man stage play Diversions and Delights, written by John Gay and directed by Joe Hardy, and set in a Parisian theatre on a night about one year before Wilde's death. The original tour of the play was a success in every city except for New York City. In the summer of 1979, Price performed the role of Wilde at the Tabor Opera House in Leadville, Colorado, on the same stage from which Wilde had spoken to miners about art some 96 years before. He eventually performed the play worldwide. Victoria Price stated in her biography of her father that several members of Price's family and friends thought that this was his best acting performance.
In 1979, Price starred with his wife in the short-lived CBS series Time Express. That same year he hosted the hour-long television special America Screams, riding on several roller coasters and recounting their history. During 1979–1980, he hosted the "Mystery Night" segment of the radio series Sears Radio Theater.
In 1982, Price provided the narrator's voice in Vincent, Tim Burton's six-minute film about a young boy who flashes from reality into a fantasy where he is Vincent Price. He appeared as Sir Despard Murgatroyd in a 1982 television production of Gilbert and Sullivan's Ruddigore (with Keith Michell as Robin Oakapple). In 1982, Price provided the spoken-word sequence to the end of the Michael Jackson song "Thriller". In 1983, he played the Sinister Man in the British spoof horror film Bloodbath at the House of Death. He appeared in House of the Long Shadows with Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, and John Carradine; he had worked with each of those actors at least once in previous decades, but this was the first time that all had teamed up. One of his last major roles, and one of his favorites, was as the voice of Professor Ratigan in Walt Disney Pictures' The Great Mouse Detective in 1986.
From 1981 to 1989, Price hosted the PBS television series Mystery! In 1985, he provided voice talent on the Hanna-Barbera series The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo as the mysterious "Vincent Van Ghoul", who aided Scooby-Doo, Scrappy-Doo, and the gang in recapturing thirteen demons. He was a lifelong fan of roller coasters, and he narrated a 1987 thirty-minute documentary on the history of roller coasters and amusement parks, including Coney Island. During this time (1985–1989), he appeared in horror-themed commercials for Tilex bathroom cleanser.
In 1984, Price appeared in Shelley Duvall's live-action series Faerie Tale Theatre as the Mirror in "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", and the narrator for "The Boy Who Left Home to Find Out About the Shivers". In 1987, he starred with Bette Davis, Lillian Gish, and Ann Sothern in The Whales of August, a story of two sisters living in Maine facing the end of their days. His performance in The Whales of August earned the only award nomination of his career, an Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Male.
In 1989, Price was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame. His last significant film work was as the inventor in Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands (1990).
In 1990, Price recorded the narration as the Phantom for Disneyland Paris's Phantom Manor. After the attraction opened in 1992, though, the narration was shortly removed and replaced with one entirely in French, performed by Gérard Chevalier. Only Price's infamous laughter remained on the soundtrack. In 2018, during Phantom Manor's major renovation, parts of Price's narration were announced to be restored to the soundtrack of the attraction. Since the 2019 reopening, the new tracks are dual-language; Price's original excerpts as well as previously unused material from his 1990 recording comprise the English-speaking portions, while actor Bernard Alane voices the Phantom in French.
Art
Price, who studied art history at Yale, was an art lover and collector. He was a commissioner of the Indian Arts and Crafts Board.
In 1957, impressed by the spirit of the students and the community's need for the opportunity to experience original art works first hand, Vincent and Mary Grant Price donated 90 pieces from their private collection and a large amount of money to establish the Vincent Price Art Museum at East Los Angeles College in Monterey Park, California, which was the first "teaching art collection" owned by a community college in the United States. They ultimately donated some 2,000 pieces; the collection contains over 9,000 pieces and has been valued in excess of $5 million.
Price also spent time working as an art consultant for Sears-Roebuck: From 1962 to 1971, Sears offered the "Vincent Price Collection of Fine Art", selling about 50,000 fine-art prints to the general public. Works which Price selected or commissioned for the collection included some by Rembrandt, Pablo Picasso, and Salvador Dalí. Public access to fine art was important to Price, who according to his daughter Victoria, saw the Sears deal as an "opportunity to put his populist beliefs into practice, to bring art to the American public." In the 1960s, portraits painted by Charles Bird King, of Native Americans were secured for Jacqueline Kennedy's White House Restoration. Through the efforts of Vincent Price these five paintings were paid for and donated to the White House Collection by Sears-Roebuck.
Price amassed his own extensive collection of art, and in 2008, a painting bought for $25 by a couple from Dallas was identified as a piece from Price's collection. Painted by leading Australian modernist Grace Cossington Smith, it was given a modern valuation of AU$45,000.
Cooking
Price was a gourmet cook, and he authored several cookbooks with his second wife, Mary. These include:
A Treasury of Great Recipes (1965)
Mary and Vincent Price present a National Treasury of Cookery (1967)
Mary and Vincent Price's Come into the Kitchen Cook Book: A Collector's Treasury of America's Great Recipes (1969)
Cooking Price-Wise with Vincent Price (1971)
Mary and Vincent Price present a National Treasury of Cookery was a five-volume series, packaged in a boxed set and published by the Heirloom Publishing Company. These five books were combined into a single book two years later and published as Mary and Vincent Price's Come into the Kitchen Cook Book: A Collector's Treasury of America's Great Recipes. Most of the Prices' cookbooks remained in print throughout the 1970s. After being out of print for several decades, two of their books were reprinted; A Treasury of Great Recipes (in August 2015 by Calla Editions) and Mary and Vincent Price's Come into the Kitchen Cook Book (in November 2016 by Calla Editions), both featuring new forewords by their daughter Victoria Price. Cooking Price-Wise with Vincent Price was scheduled to be reprinted by Dover Publishing in October 2017 under the updated title Cooking Price-Wise – The Original Foodie.
In 1971, Price hosted his own cooking program on British television, called Cooking Price-Wise produced for the ITV network by Thames Television, which was broadcast in April and May 1971. This show gave its name to Price's fourth and final cookbook later that year. Price promoted his cookbooks on many talk shows, one of the most famous instances being the November 21, 1975, broadcast of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, when he demonstrated how to poach a fish in a dishwasher.
Price recorded a number of audio cooking tutorials titled International Cooking Course. These were titled Bounty of Paradise, Classical Spanish Cuisine, Cuisina Italiana, Delights from the Sultan's Pantry, Dinner at the Casbah, Dining at Versailles, Exotic Delights from the Far East, Food of the Gods, Foods from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, La Cocina Mejicana, The Bard's Board, and The Wok. In addition to those, he recorded an audio wine course titled Wine Is Elegance. These audio recordings were released on 33⅓ LPs by Nelson Industries in 1977, and were also packaged in a 12-cassette boxed set titled Beverly Hills Cookbook – Cookbook of the Rich and Famous, Your Host Mr. Vincent Price.
In August 1982, he co-hosted A Taste of China for Thames Television over five episodes. He also prepared a fish recipe on Wolfgang Puck's Cooking with Wolfgang Puck VHS, released in October 1987 by Warner Home Video.
Personal life
Price married three times. His first marriage was in 1938 to former actress Edith Barrett; they had one son, poet and columnist Vincent Barrett Price. Edith and Price divorced in 1948. Price married Mary Grant in 1949, and they had a daughter, inspirational speaker Victoria Price, on April 27, 1962, naming her after Price's first major success in the play Victoria Regina. The marriage lasted until 1973. He married Australian actress Coral Browne in 1974; she had appeared as one of his victims in Theatre of Blood (1973). The marriage lasted until her death in 1991.
Victoria Price's biography Vincent Price: A Daughter's Biography (1999) details Price's early antisemitism and initial admiration for Adolf Hitler. According to his daughter: "When he went to Germany and Austria as a young man, he was struck by a lot of things going on during the Weimar Republic and the disillusion of the empire... So when Hitler came into power, instead of seeing him as a dangerous force, he was sort of swept up in this whole idea that Hitler was going to bring German pride back." However, Price became a liberal after becoming friends with New York intellectuals such as Dorothy Parker and Lillian Hellman in the 1930s, so much so that he was "greylisted" under McCarthyism in the 1950s for having been a prewar "premature anti-Nazi", and after being unable to find work for a year, agreed to requests by the FBI that he sign a "secret oath" to save his career. Victoria said that her father became so liberal that "one of my brother's earliest memories is when Franklin Roosevelt's death was announced, my father fell backwards off the sofa sobbing."
Price denounced racial and religious prejudice as a form of poison at the end of an episode of The Saint, which aired on NBC Radio on July 30, 1950,
claiming that Americans must actively fight against it because such prejudices within the United States fuels support for the nation's enemies. He was later appointed to the Indian Arts and Crafts Board under the Dwight D. Eisenhower administration; he called the appointment "kind of a surprise, since I am a Democrat".
Price was supportive of his daughter when she came out as a lesbian, and he was critical of Anita Bryant's anti-gay-rights campaign in the 1970s. In an interview in 2015, Victoria confirmed that her father confided with her of his intimate relationships with men when she came out to him as a lesbian.
Death
Price suffered from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and Parkinson's disease. His symptoms were especially severe during the filming of Edward Scissorhands, making cutting his filming schedule short a necessity. His illness also contributed to his retirement from Mystery! in 1989. He died at age 82 of lung cancer on October 25, 1993, at his home in Los Angeles, California. His remains were cremated and his ashes scattered off Point Dume in Malibu.
Legacy
The A&E Network aired an episode of Biography the night following Price's death, highlighting his horror-film career, but because of its failure to clear copyrights, the show was never aired again. Four years later, A&E produced its updated episode, titled Vincent Price: The Versatile Villain, which aired on October 12, 1997. The script was by Lucy Chase Williams, author of The Complete Films of Vincent Price. In early 1991, Tim Burton was developing a personal documentary with the working title Conversations with Vincent, in which interviews with Price were shot at the Vincent Price Gallery, but the project was never completed and was eventually shelved.
Rhythmeen, the ZZ Top album from 1996, includes a track named "Vincent Price Blues".
Price was an honorary board member and strong supporter of the Witch's Dungeon Classic Movie Museum in Bristol, Connecticut, until his death in 1993. The museum features detailed life-sized wax replicas of characters from some of Price's films, including The Fly, The Abominable Dr. Phibes, and The Masque of the Red Death. A black-box theater at Price's alma mater, Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School, is named after him.
Tim Burton directed a short stop-motion film as a tribute to Vincent Price called Vincent, about a young boy named Vincent Malloy who is obsessed with the grim and macabre; it is narrated by Price. "Vincent Twice, Vincent Twice" was a parody on Sesame Street. He was parodied in an episode of The Simpsons ("Sunday, Cruddy Sunday"). Price had his own Spitting Image puppet, who was always trying to be "sinister" and lure people into his ghoulish traps, only for his victims to point out all the obvious flaws.
Starting in November 2005, featured cast member Bill Hader of the NBC sketch comedy/variety show Saturday Night Live has played Price in a recurring sketch in which Price hosts botched holiday specials filled with celebrities of the 1950s/'60s. Other cast members who played Price on SNL include Dan Aykroyd and Michael McKean (who played Price when he hosted a season-10 episode and again when he was hired as a cast member for the 1994–95 season).
In 1999, a frank and detailed biography about Price written by his daughter, Victoria, was published by St. Martin's Press. In late May 2011, an event was held by the organization Cinema St. Louis to celebrate what would have been Price's 100th birthday. It included a public event with Victoria at the Missouri History Museum and a showcase of ephemeral and historic items at the gallery inside the Sheldon Concert Hall.
In an unusual convergence of widely different generational and cultural backgrounds, the genteel Price was a friend of the English hard rock band Deep Purple and in 1975, he appeared on Roger Glover's live version of The Butterfly Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast as a narrator. Decades later, in 2013, Deep Purple released "Vincent Price", a single the band members dedicated to him. That same year, American director and writer John Waters composed a "heartfelt and appreciative" retrospective on Price for Turner Classic Movies, which recognized the actor as its "Star of the Month" in October 2013 and showcased then a selection of his most popular films. The tribute was repeatedly broadcast on TCM to promote and complement those televised presentations. In sharing with viewers his feelings about Price, Waters at one point describes the actor's screen appeal, especially when he was featured in his darker roles:
Filmography
Radio appearances
Books
Introductions to Works by Others
Peter Haining (ed). The Ghouls. NY: Stein and Day, 1971.
Tom Hutchinson. Horror and Fantasy in the Movies. NY: Crescent Books, 1974.
Audio books
References
External links
Vincent Price Official Website
Vincent Price Gallery
St. Louis Walk of Fame
Vincent Price Papers catalog
Vincent Price at Virtual History
Cooking with Vincent, A Treasury Of Great Recipes
Vincent Price Papers (MS 1625). Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library.
1911 births
1993 deaths
20th Century Fox contract players
20th-century American male actors
20th-century American essayists
Alumni of the Courtauld Institute of Art
American art collectors
American people of English descent
American people of Welsh descent
American art writers
American autobiographers
American cookbook writers
American food writers
American male film actors
American male radio actors
American male stage actors
American male television actors
American male voice actors
Audiobook narrators
Philanthropists from New York (state)
Caedmon Records artists
American television hosts
California Democrats
Deaths from cancer in California
Deaths from emphysema
Deaths from lung cancer
LGBT rights activists from the United States
Male actors from Los Angeles
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American bisexual actors | true | [
"\"O What a Savior\" is a Southern gospel song penned by the Free Will Baptist musician Marvin P. Dalton in 1948.\n\nLyrics\nOnce I was straying in sin's dark valley,\nNo hope within could I see,\nHe searched through Heaven, and found a Savior\nTo save a poor lost soul like me.\n\nO what a Savior, O hallelujah!\nHis heart was broken on Calvary,\nHis hands were nail scarred,\nHis side was riven,\nHe gave His life-blood for even me.\n\nHe left the Father with all His riches,\nWith calmness sweet and serene,\nCame down from Heaven and gave His life-blood,\nTo make the vilest sinner clean.\n\nO what a Savior, O hallelujah!\nHis heart was broken on Calvary,\nHis hands were nail scarred,\nHis side was riven,\nHe gave His life-blood for even me.\n\nDeath's chilly waters I'll soon be crossing,\nHis hand will lead me safe o're,\nI'll join the chorus in that bright city,\nAnd sing up there forever more.\n\nO what a Savior, O hallelujah!\nHis heart was broken on Calvary,\nHis hands were nail scarred,\nHis side was riven,\nHe gave His life-blood for even me.\n\nReferences\n O What a Savior as sung by the Cathedrals\n O What a Savior as sung by Ernie Haase & Signature Sound\n\nSouthern gospel songs",
"Si-cology 1 is an autobiography by American television personality Silas Robertson, co-written by Mark Schlabach. It was first published on September 3, 2013 and has already become a bestseller. In this book Si talks about his life. He talks about what life was like for him as a young boy living in Louisiana, how he went overseas to Vietnam as a soldier during the war, to what his life is like being Uncle Si on A&E show Duck Dynasty.\n\nReferences\n\nRobertson, Si\n2013 non-fiction books"
]
|
[
"Vincent Price",
"Personal life",
"What was his family life like?",
"Price married three times."
]
| C_9632aada122e45be87f8cc63486a96c7_0 | Did he have children? | 2 | Did Vincent Price have children? | Vincent Price | Price married three times. His first marriage was in 1938 to former actress Edith Barrett; they had one son, Vincent Barrett Price, and divorced in 1948. A year later, in 1949, Price married Mary Grant, and they had a daughter, Victoria Price, on April 27, 1962. She was named Victoria after Price's first major success in the play Victoria Regina. The marriage lasted until 1973. Price's last marriage was in 1974 to Australian actress Coral Browne, who appeared with him (as one of his victims) in Theatre of Blood (1973). The marriage lasted until Browne's death in 1991. One example of his outspoken political action came when he concluded an old-time radio episode of The Saint, entitled "Author of Murder", which aired on NBC Radio on July 30, 1950. He denounced racial and religious prejudice as a form of poison and claimed Americans must actively fight against it because racial and religious prejudice within the United States fuels support for the nation's enemies. Price was later appointed to the Indian Arts and Crafts Board under the Dwight D. Eisenhower Administration; he called the appointment "kind of a surprise, since I am a Democrat." Price was supportive of his daughter, who came out as a lesbian, and was critical of Anita Bryant's anti-gay campaign in the 1970s. He was an honorary board member of PFLAG and among the first celebrities to appear in public service announcements discussing AIDS with the public. His daughter has stated that she is "as close to certain as (she) can be that (Price) had physically intimate relationships with men." although never confirmed by anyone else. CANNOTANSWER | they had one son, Vincent Barrett Price, and divorced in 1948. A year later, in 1949, Price married Mary Grant, and they had a daughter, | Vincent Leonard Price Jr. (May 27, 1911 – October 25, 1993) was an American actor best known for his performances in horror films, although his career spanned other genres. He appeared on stage, television, and radio, and in more than 100 films. Price has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for motion pictures and one for television.
Price's first film role was as leading man in the 1938 comedy Service de Luxe. He became well known as a character actor, appearing in films such as The Song of Bernadette (1943), Laura (1944), The Keys of the Kingdom (1944), Leave Her to Heaven (1945), Dragonwyck (1946), and The Ten Commandments (1956). He established himself as a recognizable horror-movie star after his leading role in House of Wax (1953). He subsequently starred in other horror films, including The Fly (1958), House on Haunted Hill (1959), Return of the Fly (1959), The Tingler (1959), The Last Man on Earth (1964), Witchfinder General (1968), The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971), and Theatre of Blood (1973). He was also known for his collaborations with Roger Corman on Edgar Allan Poe adaptations such as House of Usher (1960), The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), and The Masque of the Red Death (1964). Price occasionally appeared on television series, such as in Batman as Egghead.
In his later years, Price voiced the villainous Professor Ratigan in Disney's classic animated film The Great Mouse Detective (1986), then appeared in the drama The Whales of August (1987), which earned him an Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Male nomination, and in Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands (1990), his last theatrical release. For his contributions to cinema, especially to genre films, he has received lifetime achievement or special tribute awards from Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films, Fantasporto, Bram Stoker Awards, and Los Angeles Film Critics Association. Price narrated several animation films, radio dramas and documentaries, as well as the monologue on Michael Jackson's song "Thriller". For his voice work in Great American Speeches (1959), Price was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album.
Price was also an art collector and arts consultant, with a degree in art history, and he lectured and wrote books on the subject. The Vincent Price Art Museum at East Los Angeles College is named in his honor. Price was also a noted gourmet cook.
Early life and career
Vincent Leonard Price Jr. was born on May 27, 1911, in St. Louis, Missouri, the youngest of the four children of Vincent Leonard Price Sr., president of the National Candy Company, and his wife Marguerite Cobb (née Wilcox) Price. His grandfather was Vincent Clarence Price, who invented "Dr. Price's Baking Powder", the first cream of tartar-based baking powder, and it secured the family's fortune. Price was of Welsh and English descent and was a descendant of Peregrine White, the first white child born in colonial Massachusetts, being born on the Mayflower while it was in Provincetown Harbor.
Price attended the St. Louis Country Day School and Milford Academy in Milford, Connecticut. In 1933, he graduated with a degree in English and a minor in art history from Yale University, where he worked on the campus humor magazine The Yale Record. After teaching for a year, he entered the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, intending to study for a master's degree in fine arts. Instead, he was drawn to the theater, first appearing on stage professionally in 1934. His acting career began in London in 1935, performing with Orson Welles's Mercury Theatre.
In 1936, Price appeared as Prince Albert in the American production of Laurence Housman's play Victoria Regina, which starred Helen Hayes in the title role of Queen Victoria.
Introduction to film roles
Price started out in films as a character actor. He made his film debut in Service de Luxe (1938), and established himself in the film Laura (1944), opposite Gene Tierney, directed by Otto Preminger. He played Joseph Smith in the movie Brigham Young (1940) and William Gibbs McAdoo in Wilson (1944), as well as Bernadette's prosecutor, Vital Dutour, in The Song of Bernadette (1943), and as a pretentious priest in The Keys of the Kingdom (1944).
Price's first venture into the horror genre, for which he later became best known, was in the Boris Karloff film Tower of London (1939). The following year, Price portrayed the title character in The Invisible Man Returns (a role he reprised in a voice-only cameo in the closing scene of the horror-comedy spoof Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein released in 1948). He reunited with Tierney in Leave Her to Heaven (1945) and Dragonwyck (1946). He also had many villainous roles in film noir thrillers such as The Web (1947), The Long Night (1947), Rogues' Regiment (1948), and The Bribe (1949), with Robert Taylor, Ava Gardner, and Charles Laughton.
Price's first starring role was as con man James Reavis in the biopic The Baron of Arizona (1950). He did a comedic turn as the tycoon Burnbridge Waters, co-starring with Ronald Colman in Champagne for Caesar (also 1950), one of his favorite film roles.
Price was active in radio, portraying the Robin Hood-inspired crime-fighter Simon Templar in The Saint, which ran from 1947 to 1951. In the 1950s, Price moved into more regular horror-film roles with the leading role in House of Wax (1953) as a homicidal sculptor, the first three-dimensional film to land in the year's top 10 at the North American box-office. His next roles were The Mad Magician (1954), the monster movie The Fly (1958), and its sequel Return of the Fly (1959). That same year, Price starred in two thrillers by producer-director William Castle: House on Haunted Hill as eccentric millionaire Fredrick Loren, and The Tingler as Dr. Warren Chapin, who discovered the titular creature. He appeared in the radio drama Three Skeleton Key, the story of an island lighthouse besieged by an army of rats. He had first performed the work in 1950 on Escape and returned to it in 1956 and 1958 for Suspense.
Outside the horror realm, Price played Baka in The Ten Commandments, released in 1956. About this time, he also appeared in episodes of television shows such as Science Fiction Theatre, Playhouse 90, and General Electric Theater. In the 1955–56 television season, he was cast three times on the religion anthology series Crossroads. In the 1955 episode "Cleanup", Price portrayed the Reverend Robert Russell. In 1956, he was cast as Rabbi Gershom Mendes Seixas in "The Rebel", and as the Rev. Alfred W. Price in "God's Healing".
1960s
In the 1960s, Price achieved a number of low-budget filmmaking successes with Roger Corman and American International Pictures (AIP) starting with the House of Usher (1960), which earned over $2 million at the box office in the United States and led to the subsequent Edgar Allan Poe adaptations of The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), Tales of Terror (1962), The Comedy of Terrors (1963), The Raven (1963), The Masque of the Red Death (1964), and The Tomb of Ligeia (1964). He starred in The Last Man on Earth (1964), the first adaptation of the Richard Matheson novel I Am Legend, and portrayed witch hunter Matthew Hopkins in Witchfinder General (US: The Conqueror Worm, 1968) set during the English Civil War. Price also starred in comedy films such as Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine (1965) and its sequel Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs (1966). In 1968, he played the part of an eccentric artist in the musical Darling of the Day, opposite Patricia Routledge.
In the 1960s, Price began his role as a guest on the television game show Hollywood Squares, becoming a semiregular in the 1970s, including being one of the guest panelists on the finale in 1980.
Price made many guest-star appearances in television shows during the decade, including The Red Skelton Show, Daniel Boone, F Troop, Get Smart, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. He had a recurring role in the Batman TV series as the villain Egghead from 1966 to 1967. In 1964, he provided the narration for the Tombstone Historama in Tombstone, Arizona, which was still in operation as of 2016. He also starred as the host of the Australian TV series If These Walls Could Speak, in which a short history of a historical building (supposedly narrated by the building itself) was covered, and as the narrating voice of the building.
Later career
During the early 1970s, Price hosted and starred in BBC Radio's horror and mystery series The Price of Fear. He accepted a cameo part in the Canadian children's television program The Hilarious House of Frightenstein (1971) in Hamilton, Ontario, on the local television station CHCH-TV. In addition to the opening and closing monologues, his role in the show was to recite poems about various characters, sometimes wearing a cloak or other costumes. He appeared in The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971), its sequel Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1972), and Theatre of Blood (1973), in which he portrayed one of two serial killers. That same year, he appeared as himself in Mooch Goes to Hollywood, a film written by Jim Backus.
Price was an admirer of the works of Edgar Allan Poe, and in 1975 visited the Edgar Allan Poe Museum in Richmond, Virginia, where he had his picture taken with the museum's popular stuffed raven. Price also recorded dramatic readings of Poe's short stories and poems, which were collected together with readings by Basil Rathbone.
In 1975, Price and his wife Coral Browne appeared together in an international stage adaptation of Ardèle, which played in the U.S. and in London at the Queen's Theatre. During this run, Browne and Price starred together in the BBC Radio play Night of the Wolf first airing in 1975. Price greatly reduced his film work from around 1975, as horror itself suffered a slump, and he increased his narrative and voice work, as well as advertising Milton Bradley's Shrunken Head Apple Sculpture.
Price provided a monologue for the Alice Cooper song "Devil's Food" on the Welcome to My Nightmare album in 1975, and he appeared in the corresponding TV special Alice Cooper: The Nightmare. He starred for a year in the early 1970s in the syndicated daily radio program Tales of the Unexplained. He made guest appearances in a 1970 episode of Here's Lucy, showcasing his art expertise, and in a 1972 episode of ABC's The Brady Bunch, in which he played a deranged archaeologist. In October 1976, he appeared as the featured guest in an episode of The Muppet Show.
In 1977, Price began performing as Oscar Wilde in the one-man stage play Diversions and Delights, written by John Gay and directed by Joe Hardy, and set in a Parisian theatre on a night about one year before Wilde's death. The original tour of the play was a success in every city except for New York City. In the summer of 1979, Price performed the role of Wilde at the Tabor Opera House in Leadville, Colorado, on the same stage from which Wilde had spoken to miners about art some 96 years before. He eventually performed the play worldwide. Victoria Price stated in her biography of her father that several members of Price's family and friends thought that this was his best acting performance.
In 1979, Price starred with his wife in the short-lived CBS series Time Express. That same year he hosted the hour-long television special America Screams, riding on several roller coasters and recounting their history. During 1979–1980, he hosted the "Mystery Night" segment of the radio series Sears Radio Theater.
In 1982, Price provided the narrator's voice in Vincent, Tim Burton's six-minute film about a young boy who flashes from reality into a fantasy where he is Vincent Price. He appeared as Sir Despard Murgatroyd in a 1982 television production of Gilbert and Sullivan's Ruddigore (with Keith Michell as Robin Oakapple). In 1982, Price provided the spoken-word sequence to the end of the Michael Jackson song "Thriller". In 1983, he played the Sinister Man in the British spoof horror film Bloodbath at the House of Death. He appeared in House of the Long Shadows with Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, and John Carradine; he had worked with each of those actors at least once in previous decades, but this was the first time that all had teamed up. One of his last major roles, and one of his favorites, was as the voice of Professor Ratigan in Walt Disney Pictures' The Great Mouse Detective in 1986.
From 1981 to 1989, Price hosted the PBS television series Mystery! In 1985, he provided voice talent on the Hanna-Barbera series The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo as the mysterious "Vincent Van Ghoul", who aided Scooby-Doo, Scrappy-Doo, and the gang in recapturing thirteen demons. He was a lifelong fan of roller coasters, and he narrated a 1987 thirty-minute documentary on the history of roller coasters and amusement parks, including Coney Island. During this time (1985–1989), he appeared in horror-themed commercials for Tilex bathroom cleanser.
In 1984, Price appeared in Shelley Duvall's live-action series Faerie Tale Theatre as the Mirror in "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", and the narrator for "The Boy Who Left Home to Find Out About the Shivers". In 1987, he starred with Bette Davis, Lillian Gish, and Ann Sothern in The Whales of August, a story of two sisters living in Maine facing the end of their days. His performance in The Whales of August earned the only award nomination of his career, an Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Male.
In 1989, Price was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame. His last significant film work was as the inventor in Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands (1990).
In 1990, Price recorded the narration as the Phantom for Disneyland Paris's Phantom Manor. After the attraction opened in 1992, though, the narration was shortly removed and replaced with one entirely in French, performed by Gérard Chevalier. Only Price's infamous laughter remained on the soundtrack. In 2018, during Phantom Manor's major renovation, parts of Price's narration were announced to be restored to the soundtrack of the attraction. Since the 2019 reopening, the new tracks are dual-language; Price's original excerpts as well as previously unused material from his 1990 recording comprise the English-speaking portions, while actor Bernard Alane voices the Phantom in French.
Art
Price, who studied art history at Yale, was an art lover and collector. He was a commissioner of the Indian Arts and Crafts Board.
In 1957, impressed by the spirit of the students and the community's need for the opportunity to experience original art works first hand, Vincent and Mary Grant Price donated 90 pieces from their private collection and a large amount of money to establish the Vincent Price Art Museum at East Los Angeles College in Monterey Park, California, which was the first "teaching art collection" owned by a community college in the United States. They ultimately donated some 2,000 pieces; the collection contains over 9,000 pieces and has been valued in excess of $5 million.
Price also spent time working as an art consultant for Sears-Roebuck: From 1962 to 1971, Sears offered the "Vincent Price Collection of Fine Art", selling about 50,000 fine-art prints to the general public. Works which Price selected or commissioned for the collection included some by Rembrandt, Pablo Picasso, and Salvador Dalí. Public access to fine art was important to Price, who according to his daughter Victoria, saw the Sears deal as an "opportunity to put his populist beliefs into practice, to bring art to the American public." In the 1960s, portraits painted by Charles Bird King, of Native Americans were secured for Jacqueline Kennedy's White House Restoration. Through the efforts of Vincent Price these five paintings were paid for and donated to the White House Collection by Sears-Roebuck.
Price amassed his own extensive collection of art, and in 2008, a painting bought for $25 by a couple from Dallas was identified as a piece from Price's collection. Painted by leading Australian modernist Grace Cossington Smith, it was given a modern valuation of AU$45,000.
Cooking
Price was a gourmet cook, and he authored several cookbooks with his second wife, Mary. These include:
A Treasury of Great Recipes (1965)
Mary and Vincent Price present a National Treasury of Cookery (1967)
Mary and Vincent Price's Come into the Kitchen Cook Book: A Collector's Treasury of America's Great Recipes (1969)
Cooking Price-Wise with Vincent Price (1971)
Mary and Vincent Price present a National Treasury of Cookery was a five-volume series, packaged in a boxed set and published by the Heirloom Publishing Company. These five books were combined into a single book two years later and published as Mary and Vincent Price's Come into the Kitchen Cook Book: A Collector's Treasury of America's Great Recipes. Most of the Prices' cookbooks remained in print throughout the 1970s. After being out of print for several decades, two of their books were reprinted; A Treasury of Great Recipes (in August 2015 by Calla Editions) and Mary and Vincent Price's Come into the Kitchen Cook Book (in November 2016 by Calla Editions), both featuring new forewords by their daughter Victoria Price. Cooking Price-Wise with Vincent Price was scheduled to be reprinted by Dover Publishing in October 2017 under the updated title Cooking Price-Wise – The Original Foodie.
In 1971, Price hosted his own cooking program on British television, called Cooking Price-Wise produced for the ITV network by Thames Television, which was broadcast in April and May 1971. This show gave its name to Price's fourth and final cookbook later that year. Price promoted his cookbooks on many talk shows, one of the most famous instances being the November 21, 1975, broadcast of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, when he demonstrated how to poach a fish in a dishwasher.
Price recorded a number of audio cooking tutorials titled International Cooking Course. These were titled Bounty of Paradise, Classical Spanish Cuisine, Cuisina Italiana, Delights from the Sultan's Pantry, Dinner at the Casbah, Dining at Versailles, Exotic Delights from the Far East, Food of the Gods, Foods from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, La Cocina Mejicana, The Bard's Board, and The Wok. In addition to those, he recorded an audio wine course titled Wine Is Elegance. These audio recordings were released on 33⅓ LPs by Nelson Industries in 1977, and were also packaged in a 12-cassette boxed set titled Beverly Hills Cookbook – Cookbook of the Rich and Famous, Your Host Mr. Vincent Price.
In August 1982, he co-hosted A Taste of China for Thames Television over five episodes. He also prepared a fish recipe on Wolfgang Puck's Cooking with Wolfgang Puck VHS, released in October 1987 by Warner Home Video.
Personal life
Price married three times. His first marriage was in 1938 to former actress Edith Barrett; they had one son, poet and columnist Vincent Barrett Price. Edith and Price divorced in 1948. Price married Mary Grant in 1949, and they had a daughter, inspirational speaker Victoria Price, on April 27, 1962, naming her after Price's first major success in the play Victoria Regina. The marriage lasted until 1973. He married Australian actress Coral Browne in 1974; she had appeared as one of his victims in Theatre of Blood (1973). The marriage lasted until her death in 1991.
Victoria Price's biography Vincent Price: A Daughter's Biography (1999) details Price's early antisemitism and initial admiration for Adolf Hitler. According to his daughter: "When he went to Germany and Austria as a young man, he was struck by a lot of things going on during the Weimar Republic and the disillusion of the empire... So when Hitler came into power, instead of seeing him as a dangerous force, he was sort of swept up in this whole idea that Hitler was going to bring German pride back." However, Price became a liberal after becoming friends with New York intellectuals such as Dorothy Parker and Lillian Hellman in the 1930s, so much so that he was "greylisted" under McCarthyism in the 1950s for having been a prewar "premature anti-Nazi", and after being unable to find work for a year, agreed to requests by the FBI that he sign a "secret oath" to save his career. Victoria said that her father became so liberal that "one of my brother's earliest memories is when Franklin Roosevelt's death was announced, my father fell backwards off the sofa sobbing."
Price denounced racial and religious prejudice as a form of poison at the end of an episode of The Saint, which aired on NBC Radio on July 30, 1950,
claiming that Americans must actively fight against it because such prejudices within the United States fuels support for the nation's enemies. He was later appointed to the Indian Arts and Crafts Board under the Dwight D. Eisenhower administration; he called the appointment "kind of a surprise, since I am a Democrat".
Price was supportive of his daughter when she came out as a lesbian, and he was critical of Anita Bryant's anti-gay-rights campaign in the 1970s. In an interview in 2015, Victoria confirmed that her father confided with her of his intimate relationships with men when she came out to him as a lesbian.
Death
Price suffered from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and Parkinson's disease. His symptoms were especially severe during the filming of Edward Scissorhands, making cutting his filming schedule short a necessity. His illness also contributed to his retirement from Mystery! in 1989. He died at age 82 of lung cancer on October 25, 1993, at his home in Los Angeles, California. His remains were cremated and his ashes scattered off Point Dume in Malibu.
Legacy
The A&E Network aired an episode of Biography the night following Price's death, highlighting his horror-film career, but because of its failure to clear copyrights, the show was never aired again. Four years later, A&E produced its updated episode, titled Vincent Price: The Versatile Villain, which aired on October 12, 1997. The script was by Lucy Chase Williams, author of The Complete Films of Vincent Price. In early 1991, Tim Burton was developing a personal documentary with the working title Conversations with Vincent, in which interviews with Price were shot at the Vincent Price Gallery, but the project was never completed and was eventually shelved.
Rhythmeen, the ZZ Top album from 1996, includes a track named "Vincent Price Blues".
Price was an honorary board member and strong supporter of the Witch's Dungeon Classic Movie Museum in Bristol, Connecticut, until his death in 1993. The museum features detailed life-sized wax replicas of characters from some of Price's films, including The Fly, The Abominable Dr. Phibes, and The Masque of the Red Death. A black-box theater at Price's alma mater, Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School, is named after him.
Tim Burton directed a short stop-motion film as a tribute to Vincent Price called Vincent, about a young boy named Vincent Malloy who is obsessed with the grim and macabre; it is narrated by Price. "Vincent Twice, Vincent Twice" was a parody on Sesame Street. He was parodied in an episode of The Simpsons ("Sunday, Cruddy Sunday"). Price had his own Spitting Image puppet, who was always trying to be "sinister" and lure people into his ghoulish traps, only for his victims to point out all the obvious flaws.
Starting in November 2005, featured cast member Bill Hader of the NBC sketch comedy/variety show Saturday Night Live has played Price in a recurring sketch in which Price hosts botched holiday specials filled with celebrities of the 1950s/'60s. Other cast members who played Price on SNL include Dan Aykroyd and Michael McKean (who played Price when he hosted a season-10 episode and again when he was hired as a cast member for the 1994–95 season).
In 1999, a frank and detailed biography about Price written by his daughter, Victoria, was published by St. Martin's Press. In late May 2011, an event was held by the organization Cinema St. Louis to celebrate what would have been Price's 100th birthday. It included a public event with Victoria at the Missouri History Museum and a showcase of ephemeral and historic items at the gallery inside the Sheldon Concert Hall.
In an unusual convergence of widely different generational and cultural backgrounds, the genteel Price was a friend of the English hard rock band Deep Purple and in 1975, he appeared on Roger Glover's live version of The Butterfly Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast as a narrator. Decades later, in 2013, Deep Purple released "Vincent Price", a single the band members dedicated to him. That same year, American director and writer John Waters composed a "heartfelt and appreciative" retrospective on Price for Turner Classic Movies, which recognized the actor as its "Star of the Month" in October 2013 and showcased then a selection of his most popular films. The tribute was repeatedly broadcast on TCM to promote and complement those televised presentations. In sharing with viewers his feelings about Price, Waters at one point describes the actor's screen appeal, especially when he was featured in his darker roles:
Filmography
Radio appearances
Books
Introductions to Works by Others
Peter Haining (ed). The Ghouls. NY: Stein and Day, 1971.
Tom Hutchinson. Horror and Fantasy in the Movies. NY: Crescent Books, 1974.
Audio books
References
External links
Vincent Price Official Website
Vincent Price Gallery
St. Louis Walk of Fame
Vincent Price Papers catalog
Vincent Price at Virtual History
Cooking with Vincent, A Treasury Of Great Recipes
Vincent Price Papers (MS 1625). Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library.
1911 births
1993 deaths
20th Century Fox contract players
20th-century American male actors
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Alumni of the Courtauld Institute of Art
American art collectors
American people of English descent
American people of Welsh descent
American art writers
American autobiographers
American cookbook writers
American food writers
American male film actors
American male radio actors
American male stage actors
American male television actors
American male voice actors
Audiobook narrators
Philanthropists from New York (state)
Caedmon Records artists
American television hosts
California Democrats
Deaths from cancer in California
Deaths from emphysema
Deaths from lung cancer
LGBT rights activists from the United States
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American bisexual actors | false | [
"Antonio Oposa Jr. is a creative litigator, organizer and activist for environmental legislation in the Philippines. Oposa helped to litigate one of the first class-action suits taken by children to oppose environmentally-harmful actions taken by their government: in the 1990s, he represented 43 children from a local village to stop deforestation around the village that had been authorized by the Philippine government, on the basis that the children's rights would be harmed by the deforestation.\n\nThough the case was initially thrown out in lower courts on the basis that the children did not have legal standing, the Philippine Supreme Court overturned these, affirming the children did have standing; between both legal and legislative action, the deforestation activity was halted. The case inspired several other environmental cases around the globe, with children serving as the plaintiffs to fight for these rights.\n\nFor his actions, Oposa won the 2009 non-categorized Ramon Magsaysay Award for his work. He currently leads The Law of Nature Foundation.\n\nIn 2013, Oposa sued seven individual and government officials for violating Philippines environment laws through noise pollution from sound amplifier during regular benefit dance events.\n\nReferences\n\nLiving people\nFilipino environmentalists\nYear of birth missing (living people)\nPlace of birth missing (living people)",
"Matthew 11:17 is the seventeenth verse in the eleventh chapter of the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament.\n\nContent\nIn the original Greek according to Westcott-Hort for this verse is:\nκαὶ λέγουσιν, Ηὐλήσαμεν ὑμῖν, καὶ οὐκ ὠρχήσασθε· ἐθρηνήσαμεν ὑμῖν, καὶ οὐκ ἐκόψασθε. \n\nIn the King James Version of the Bible the text reads:\nAnd saying, We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned unto you, and ye have not lamented.\n\nThe New International Version translates the passage as:\n\"'We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge and you did not mourn.'\n\nAnalysis\nWitham states that Christ here is represented by the children that piped, while St. John by those that mourned, since Christ did not refuse to eat and converse with sinners.\n\nCommentary from the Church Fathers\nSaint Remigius: \" And straightway He answers Himself, saying, It is like unto children sitting in the market-place, crying unto their fellows, and saying, We have played music to you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned, and ye have not lamented.\"\n\nHilary of Poitiers: \" By the children are meant the Prophets, who preached as children in singleness of meaning, and in the midst of the synagogue, that is in the market-place, reprove them, that when they played to those to whom they had devoted the service of their body, they had not obeyed their words, as the movement of the dancers are regulated by the measures of the music. For the Prophets invited them to make confession by song to God, as it is contained in the song of Moses, of Isaiah, or of David.\"\n\nJerome: \" They say therefore, We have flayed music to you, and ye have not danced; i. e. We have called on you to work good works to our songs, and ye would not. We have lamented and called you to repentance, and this ye would not, rejecting both preaching, as well of exhortation to virtue, as of repentance for sin.\"\n\nSaint Remigius: \" What is that He says, To their fellows? Were the unbelieving Jews then fellows of the Prophets? He speaks thus only because they were sprung of one stock.\"\n\nJerome: \" The children are they of whom Isaiah speaks, Behold I, and the children whom the Lord has given me. (Is. 8:18) These children then sit in the market-place, where are many things for sale, and say,\"\n\nChrysostom: \" We have played music to you, and ye have not danced; that is, I have showed you an unrestricted life, and ye are not convinced; We have mourned unto you, and ye have not lamented; that is, John lived a hard life, and ye heeded him not. Yet does not he speak one thing, and I another, but both speak the same thing, because both have one and the same object. For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, He hath a dæmon. The Son of man came &c.\"\n\nSee also\nWeddings and Funerals\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nOther translations of Matthew 11:17 at BibleHub\n\n011:17"
]
|
[
"Vincent Price",
"Personal life",
"What was his family life like?",
"Price married three times.",
"Did he have children?",
"they had one son, Vincent Barrett Price, and divorced in 1948. A year later, in 1949, Price married Mary Grant, and they had a daughter,"
]
| C_9632aada122e45be87f8cc63486a96c7_0 | Who is his most current wife? | 3 | Who is Vincent Price's most current wife? | Vincent Price | Price married three times. His first marriage was in 1938 to former actress Edith Barrett; they had one son, Vincent Barrett Price, and divorced in 1948. A year later, in 1949, Price married Mary Grant, and they had a daughter, Victoria Price, on April 27, 1962. She was named Victoria after Price's first major success in the play Victoria Regina. The marriage lasted until 1973. Price's last marriage was in 1974 to Australian actress Coral Browne, who appeared with him (as one of his victims) in Theatre of Blood (1973). The marriage lasted until Browne's death in 1991. One example of his outspoken political action came when he concluded an old-time radio episode of The Saint, entitled "Author of Murder", which aired on NBC Radio on July 30, 1950. He denounced racial and religious prejudice as a form of poison and claimed Americans must actively fight against it because racial and religious prejudice within the United States fuels support for the nation's enemies. Price was later appointed to the Indian Arts and Crafts Board under the Dwight D. Eisenhower Administration; he called the appointment "kind of a surprise, since I am a Democrat." Price was supportive of his daughter, who came out as a lesbian, and was critical of Anita Bryant's anti-gay campaign in the 1970s. He was an honorary board member of PFLAG and among the first celebrities to appear in public service announcements discussing AIDS with the public. His daughter has stated that she is "as close to certain as (she) can be that (Price) had physically intimate relationships with men." although never confirmed by anyone else. CANNOTANSWER | Price's last marriage was in 1974 to Australian actress Coral Browne, | Vincent Leonard Price Jr. (May 27, 1911 – October 25, 1993) was an American actor best known for his performances in horror films, although his career spanned other genres. He appeared on stage, television, and radio, and in more than 100 films. Price has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for motion pictures and one for television.
Price's first film role was as leading man in the 1938 comedy Service de Luxe. He became well known as a character actor, appearing in films such as The Song of Bernadette (1943), Laura (1944), The Keys of the Kingdom (1944), Leave Her to Heaven (1945), Dragonwyck (1946), and The Ten Commandments (1956). He established himself as a recognizable horror-movie star after his leading role in House of Wax (1953). He subsequently starred in other horror films, including The Fly (1958), House on Haunted Hill (1959), Return of the Fly (1959), The Tingler (1959), The Last Man on Earth (1964), Witchfinder General (1968), The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971), and Theatre of Blood (1973). He was also known for his collaborations with Roger Corman on Edgar Allan Poe adaptations such as House of Usher (1960), The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), and The Masque of the Red Death (1964). Price occasionally appeared on television series, such as in Batman as Egghead.
In his later years, Price voiced the villainous Professor Ratigan in Disney's classic animated film The Great Mouse Detective (1986), then appeared in the drama The Whales of August (1987), which earned him an Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Male nomination, and in Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands (1990), his last theatrical release. For his contributions to cinema, especially to genre films, he has received lifetime achievement or special tribute awards from Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films, Fantasporto, Bram Stoker Awards, and Los Angeles Film Critics Association. Price narrated several animation films, radio dramas and documentaries, as well as the monologue on Michael Jackson's song "Thriller". For his voice work in Great American Speeches (1959), Price was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album.
Price was also an art collector and arts consultant, with a degree in art history, and he lectured and wrote books on the subject. The Vincent Price Art Museum at East Los Angeles College is named in his honor. Price was also a noted gourmet cook.
Early life and career
Vincent Leonard Price Jr. was born on May 27, 1911, in St. Louis, Missouri, the youngest of the four children of Vincent Leonard Price Sr., president of the National Candy Company, and his wife Marguerite Cobb (née Wilcox) Price. His grandfather was Vincent Clarence Price, who invented "Dr. Price's Baking Powder", the first cream of tartar-based baking powder, and it secured the family's fortune. Price was of Welsh and English descent and was a descendant of Peregrine White, the first white child born in colonial Massachusetts, being born on the Mayflower while it was in Provincetown Harbor.
Price attended the St. Louis Country Day School and Milford Academy in Milford, Connecticut. In 1933, he graduated with a degree in English and a minor in art history from Yale University, where he worked on the campus humor magazine The Yale Record. After teaching for a year, he entered the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, intending to study for a master's degree in fine arts. Instead, he was drawn to the theater, first appearing on stage professionally in 1934. His acting career began in London in 1935, performing with Orson Welles's Mercury Theatre.
In 1936, Price appeared as Prince Albert in the American production of Laurence Housman's play Victoria Regina, which starred Helen Hayes in the title role of Queen Victoria.
Introduction to film roles
Price started out in films as a character actor. He made his film debut in Service de Luxe (1938), and established himself in the film Laura (1944), opposite Gene Tierney, directed by Otto Preminger. He played Joseph Smith in the movie Brigham Young (1940) and William Gibbs McAdoo in Wilson (1944), as well as Bernadette's prosecutor, Vital Dutour, in The Song of Bernadette (1943), and as a pretentious priest in The Keys of the Kingdom (1944).
Price's first venture into the horror genre, for which he later became best known, was in the Boris Karloff film Tower of London (1939). The following year, Price portrayed the title character in The Invisible Man Returns (a role he reprised in a voice-only cameo in the closing scene of the horror-comedy spoof Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein released in 1948). He reunited with Tierney in Leave Her to Heaven (1945) and Dragonwyck (1946). He also had many villainous roles in film noir thrillers such as The Web (1947), The Long Night (1947), Rogues' Regiment (1948), and The Bribe (1949), with Robert Taylor, Ava Gardner, and Charles Laughton.
Price's first starring role was as con man James Reavis in the biopic The Baron of Arizona (1950). He did a comedic turn as the tycoon Burnbridge Waters, co-starring with Ronald Colman in Champagne for Caesar (also 1950), one of his favorite film roles.
Price was active in radio, portraying the Robin Hood-inspired crime-fighter Simon Templar in The Saint, which ran from 1947 to 1951. In the 1950s, Price moved into more regular horror-film roles with the leading role in House of Wax (1953) as a homicidal sculptor, the first three-dimensional film to land in the year's top 10 at the North American box-office. His next roles were The Mad Magician (1954), the monster movie The Fly (1958), and its sequel Return of the Fly (1959). That same year, Price starred in two thrillers by producer-director William Castle: House on Haunted Hill as eccentric millionaire Fredrick Loren, and The Tingler as Dr. Warren Chapin, who discovered the titular creature. He appeared in the radio drama Three Skeleton Key, the story of an island lighthouse besieged by an army of rats. He had first performed the work in 1950 on Escape and returned to it in 1956 and 1958 for Suspense.
Outside the horror realm, Price played Baka in The Ten Commandments, released in 1956. About this time, he also appeared in episodes of television shows such as Science Fiction Theatre, Playhouse 90, and General Electric Theater. In the 1955–56 television season, he was cast three times on the religion anthology series Crossroads. In the 1955 episode "Cleanup", Price portrayed the Reverend Robert Russell. In 1956, he was cast as Rabbi Gershom Mendes Seixas in "The Rebel", and as the Rev. Alfred W. Price in "God's Healing".
1960s
In the 1960s, Price achieved a number of low-budget filmmaking successes with Roger Corman and American International Pictures (AIP) starting with the House of Usher (1960), which earned over $2 million at the box office in the United States and led to the subsequent Edgar Allan Poe adaptations of The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), Tales of Terror (1962), The Comedy of Terrors (1963), The Raven (1963), The Masque of the Red Death (1964), and The Tomb of Ligeia (1964). He starred in The Last Man on Earth (1964), the first adaptation of the Richard Matheson novel I Am Legend, and portrayed witch hunter Matthew Hopkins in Witchfinder General (US: The Conqueror Worm, 1968) set during the English Civil War. Price also starred in comedy films such as Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine (1965) and its sequel Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs (1966). In 1968, he played the part of an eccentric artist in the musical Darling of the Day, opposite Patricia Routledge.
In the 1960s, Price began his role as a guest on the television game show Hollywood Squares, becoming a semiregular in the 1970s, including being one of the guest panelists on the finale in 1980.
Price made many guest-star appearances in television shows during the decade, including The Red Skelton Show, Daniel Boone, F Troop, Get Smart, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. He had a recurring role in the Batman TV series as the villain Egghead from 1966 to 1967. In 1964, he provided the narration for the Tombstone Historama in Tombstone, Arizona, which was still in operation as of 2016. He also starred as the host of the Australian TV series If These Walls Could Speak, in which a short history of a historical building (supposedly narrated by the building itself) was covered, and as the narrating voice of the building.
Later career
During the early 1970s, Price hosted and starred in BBC Radio's horror and mystery series The Price of Fear. He accepted a cameo part in the Canadian children's television program The Hilarious House of Frightenstein (1971) in Hamilton, Ontario, on the local television station CHCH-TV. In addition to the opening and closing monologues, his role in the show was to recite poems about various characters, sometimes wearing a cloak or other costumes. He appeared in The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971), its sequel Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1972), and Theatre of Blood (1973), in which he portrayed one of two serial killers. That same year, he appeared as himself in Mooch Goes to Hollywood, a film written by Jim Backus.
Price was an admirer of the works of Edgar Allan Poe, and in 1975 visited the Edgar Allan Poe Museum in Richmond, Virginia, where he had his picture taken with the museum's popular stuffed raven. Price also recorded dramatic readings of Poe's short stories and poems, which were collected together with readings by Basil Rathbone.
In 1975, Price and his wife Coral Browne appeared together in an international stage adaptation of Ardèle, which played in the U.S. and in London at the Queen's Theatre. During this run, Browne and Price starred together in the BBC Radio play Night of the Wolf first airing in 1975. Price greatly reduced his film work from around 1975, as horror itself suffered a slump, and he increased his narrative and voice work, as well as advertising Milton Bradley's Shrunken Head Apple Sculpture.
Price provided a monologue for the Alice Cooper song "Devil's Food" on the Welcome to My Nightmare album in 1975, and he appeared in the corresponding TV special Alice Cooper: The Nightmare. He starred for a year in the early 1970s in the syndicated daily radio program Tales of the Unexplained. He made guest appearances in a 1970 episode of Here's Lucy, showcasing his art expertise, and in a 1972 episode of ABC's The Brady Bunch, in which he played a deranged archaeologist. In October 1976, he appeared as the featured guest in an episode of The Muppet Show.
In 1977, Price began performing as Oscar Wilde in the one-man stage play Diversions and Delights, written by John Gay and directed by Joe Hardy, and set in a Parisian theatre on a night about one year before Wilde's death. The original tour of the play was a success in every city except for New York City. In the summer of 1979, Price performed the role of Wilde at the Tabor Opera House in Leadville, Colorado, on the same stage from which Wilde had spoken to miners about art some 96 years before. He eventually performed the play worldwide. Victoria Price stated in her biography of her father that several members of Price's family and friends thought that this was his best acting performance.
In 1979, Price starred with his wife in the short-lived CBS series Time Express. That same year he hosted the hour-long television special America Screams, riding on several roller coasters and recounting their history. During 1979–1980, he hosted the "Mystery Night" segment of the radio series Sears Radio Theater.
In 1982, Price provided the narrator's voice in Vincent, Tim Burton's six-minute film about a young boy who flashes from reality into a fantasy where he is Vincent Price. He appeared as Sir Despard Murgatroyd in a 1982 television production of Gilbert and Sullivan's Ruddigore (with Keith Michell as Robin Oakapple). In 1982, Price provided the spoken-word sequence to the end of the Michael Jackson song "Thriller". In 1983, he played the Sinister Man in the British spoof horror film Bloodbath at the House of Death. He appeared in House of the Long Shadows with Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, and John Carradine; he had worked with each of those actors at least once in previous decades, but this was the first time that all had teamed up. One of his last major roles, and one of his favorites, was as the voice of Professor Ratigan in Walt Disney Pictures' The Great Mouse Detective in 1986.
From 1981 to 1989, Price hosted the PBS television series Mystery! In 1985, he provided voice talent on the Hanna-Barbera series The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo as the mysterious "Vincent Van Ghoul", who aided Scooby-Doo, Scrappy-Doo, and the gang in recapturing thirteen demons. He was a lifelong fan of roller coasters, and he narrated a 1987 thirty-minute documentary on the history of roller coasters and amusement parks, including Coney Island. During this time (1985–1989), he appeared in horror-themed commercials for Tilex bathroom cleanser.
In 1984, Price appeared in Shelley Duvall's live-action series Faerie Tale Theatre as the Mirror in "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", and the narrator for "The Boy Who Left Home to Find Out About the Shivers". In 1987, he starred with Bette Davis, Lillian Gish, and Ann Sothern in The Whales of August, a story of two sisters living in Maine facing the end of their days. His performance in The Whales of August earned the only award nomination of his career, an Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Male.
In 1989, Price was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame. His last significant film work was as the inventor in Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands (1990).
In 1990, Price recorded the narration as the Phantom for Disneyland Paris's Phantom Manor. After the attraction opened in 1992, though, the narration was shortly removed and replaced with one entirely in French, performed by Gérard Chevalier. Only Price's infamous laughter remained on the soundtrack. In 2018, during Phantom Manor's major renovation, parts of Price's narration were announced to be restored to the soundtrack of the attraction. Since the 2019 reopening, the new tracks are dual-language; Price's original excerpts as well as previously unused material from his 1990 recording comprise the English-speaking portions, while actor Bernard Alane voices the Phantom in French.
Art
Price, who studied art history at Yale, was an art lover and collector. He was a commissioner of the Indian Arts and Crafts Board.
In 1957, impressed by the spirit of the students and the community's need for the opportunity to experience original art works first hand, Vincent and Mary Grant Price donated 90 pieces from their private collection and a large amount of money to establish the Vincent Price Art Museum at East Los Angeles College in Monterey Park, California, which was the first "teaching art collection" owned by a community college in the United States. They ultimately donated some 2,000 pieces; the collection contains over 9,000 pieces and has been valued in excess of $5 million.
Price also spent time working as an art consultant for Sears-Roebuck: From 1962 to 1971, Sears offered the "Vincent Price Collection of Fine Art", selling about 50,000 fine-art prints to the general public. Works which Price selected or commissioned for the collection included some by Rembrandt, Pablo Picasso, and Salvador Dalí. Public access to fine art was important to Price, who according to his daughter Victoria, saw the Sears deal as an "opportunity to put his populist beliefs into practice, to bring art to the American public." In the 1960s, portraits painted by Charles Bird King, of Native Americans were secured for Jacqueline Kennedy's White House Restoration. Through the efforts of Vincent Price these five paintings were paid for and donated to the White House Collection by Sears-Roebuck.
Price amassed his own extensive collection of art, and in 2008, a painting bought for $25 by a couple from Dallas was identified as a piece from Price's collection. Painted by leading Australian modernist Grace Cossington Smith, it was given a modern valuation of AU$45,000.
Cooking
Price was a gourmet cook, and he authored several cookbooks with his second wife, Mary. These include:
A Treasury of Great Recipes (1965)
Mary and Vincent Price present a National Treasury of Cookery (1967)
Mary and Vincent Price's Come into the Kitchen Cook Book: A Collector's Treasury of America's Great Recipes (1969)
Cooking Price-Wise with Vincent Price (1971)
Mary and Vincent Price present a National Treasury of Cookery was a five-volume series, packaged in a boxed set and published by the Heirloom Publishing Company. These five books were combined into a single book two years later and published as Mary and Vincent Price's Come into the Kitchen Cook Book: A Collector's Treasury of America's Great Recipes. Most of the Prices' cookbooks remained in print throughout the 1970s. After being out of print for several decades, two of their books were reprinted; A Treasury of Great Recipes (in August 2015 by Calla Editions) and Mary and Vincent Price's Come into the Kitchen Cook Book (in November 2016 by Calla Editions), both featuring new forewords by their daughter Victoria Price. Cooking Price-Wise with Vincent Price was scheduled to be reprinted by Dover Publishing in October 2017 under the updated title Cooking Price-Wise – The Original Foodie.
In 1971, Price hosted his own cooking program on British television, called Cooking Price-Wise produced for the ITV network by Thames Television, which was broadcast in April and May 1971. This show gave its name to Price's fourth and final cookbook later that year. Price promoted his cookbooks on many talk shows, one of the most famous instances being the November 21, 1975, broadcast of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, when he demonstrated how to poach a fish in a dishwasher.
Price recorded a number of audio cooking tutorials titled International Cooking Course. These were titled Bounty of Paradise, Classical Spanish Cuisine, Cuisina Italiana, Delights from the Sultan's Pantry, Dinner at the Casbah, Dining at Versailles, Exotic Delights from the Far East, Food of the Gods, Foods from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, La Cocina Mejicana, The Bard's Board, and The Wok. In addition to those, he recorded an audio wine course titled Wine Is Elegance. These audio recordings were released on 33⅓ LPs by Nelson Industries in 1977, and were also packaged in a 12-cassette boxed set titled Beverly Hills Cookbook – Cookbook of the Rich and Famous, Your Host Mr. Vincent Price.
In August 1982, he co-hosted A Taste of China for Thames Television over five episodes. He also prepared a fish recipe on Wolfgang Puck's Cooking with Wolfgang Puck VHS, released in October 1987 by Warner Home Video.
Personal life
Price married three times. His first marriage was in 1938 to former actress Edith Barrett; they had one son, poet and columnist Vincent Barrett Price. Edith and Price divorced in 1948. Price married Mary Grant in 1949, and they had a daughter, inspirational speaker Victoria Price, on April 27, 1962, naming her after Price's first major success in the play Victoria Regina. The marriage lasted until 1973. He married Australian actress Coral Browne in 1974; she had appeared as one of his victims in Theatre of Blood (1973). The marriage lasted until her death in 1991.
Victoria Price's biography Vincent Price: A Daughter's Biography (1999) details Price's early antisemitism and initial admiration for Adolf Hitler. According to his daughter: "When he went to Germany and Austria as a young man, he was struck by a lot of things going on during the Weimar Republic and the disillusion of the empire... So when Hitler came into power, instead of seeing him as a dangerous force, he was sort of swept up in this whole idea that Hitler was going to bring German pride back." However, Price became a liberal after becoming friends with New York intellectuals such as Dorothy Parker and Lillian Hellman in the 1930s, so much so that he was "greylisted" under McCarthyism in the 1950s for having been a prewar "premature anti-Nazi", and after being unable to find work for a year, agreed to requests by the FBI that he sign a "secret oath" to save his career. Victoria said that her father became so liberal that "one of my brother's earliest memories is when Franklin Roosevelt's death was announced, my father fell backwards off the sofa sobbing."
Price denounced racial and religious prejudice as a form of poison at the end of an episode of The Saint, which aired on NBC Radio on July 30, 1950,
claiming that Americans must actively fight against it because such prejudices within the United States fuels support for the nation's enemies. He was later appointed to the Indian Arts and Crafts Board under the Dwight D. Eisenhower administration; he called the appointment "kind of a surprise, since I am a Democrat".
Price was supportive of his daughter when she came out as a lesbian, and he was critical of Anita Bryant's anti-gay-rights campaign in the 1970s. In an interview in 2015, Victoria confirmed that her father confided with her of his intimate relationships with men when she came out to him as a lesbian.
Death
Price suffered from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and Parkinson's disease. His symptoms were especially severe during the filming of Edward Scissorhands, making cutting his filming schedule short a necessity. His illness also contributed to his retirement from Mystery! in 1989. He died at age 82 of lung cancer on October 25, 1993, at his home in Los Angeles, California. His remains were cremated and his ashes scattered off Point Dume in Malibu.
Legacy
The A&E Network aired an episode of Biography the night following Price's death, highlighting his horror-film career, but because of its failure to clear copyrights, the show was never aired again. Four years later, A&E produced its updated episode, titled Vincent Price: The Versatile Villain, which aired on October 12, 1997. The script was by Lucy Chase Williams, author of The Complete Films of Vincent Price. In early 1991, Tim Burton was developing a personal documentary with the working title Conversations with Vincent, in which interviews with Price were shot at the Vincent Price Gallery, but the project was never completed and was eventually shelved.
Rhythmeen, the ZZ Top album from 1996, includes a track named "Vincent Price Blues".
Price was an honorary board member and strong supporter of the Witch's Dungeon Classic Movie Museum in Bristol, Connecticut, until his death in 1993. The museum features detailed life-sized wax replicas of characters from some of Price's films, including The Fly, The Abominable Dr. Phibes, and The Masque of the Red Death. A black-box theater at Price's alma mater, Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School, is named after him.
Tim Burton directed a short stop-motion film as a tribute to Vincent Price called Vincent, about a young boy named Vincent Malloy who is obsessed with the grim and macabre; it is narrated by Price. "Vincent Twice, Vincent Twice" was a parody on Sesame Street. He was parodied in an episode of The Simpsons ("Sunday, Cruddy Sunday"). Price had his own Spitting Image puppet, who was always trying to be "sinister" and lure people into his ghoulish traps, only for his victims to point out all the obvious flaws.
Starting in November 2005, featured cast member Bill Hader of the NBC sketch comedy/variety show Saturday Night Live has played Price in a recurring sketch in which Price hosts botched holiday specials filled with celebrities of the 1950s/'60s. Other cast members who played Price on SNL include Dan Aykroyd and Michael McKean (who played Price when he hosted a season-10 episode and again when he was hired as a cast member for the 1994–95 season).
In 1999, a frank and detailed biography about Price written by his daughter, Victoria, was published by St. Martin's Press. In late May 2011, an event was held by the organization Cinema St. Louis to celebrate what would have been Price's 100th birthday. It included a public event with Victoria at the Missouri History Museum and a showcase of ephemeral and historic items at the gallery inside the Sheldon Concert Hall.
In an unusual convergence of widely different generational and cultural backgrounds, the genteel Price was a friend of the English hard rock band Deep Purple and in 1975, he appeared on Roger Glover's live version of The Butterfly Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast as a narrator. Decades later, in 2013, Deep Purple released "Vincent Price", a single the band members dedicated to him. That same year, American director and writer John Waters composed a "heartfelt and appreciative" retrospective on Price for Turner Classic Movies, which recognized the actor as its "Star of the Month" in October 2013 and showcased then a selection of his most popular films. The tribute was repeatedly broadcast on TCM to promote and complement those televised presentations. In sharing with viewers his feelings about Price, Waters at one point describes the actor's screen appeal, especially when he was featured in his darker roles:
Filmography
Radio appearances
Books
Introductions to Works by Others
Peter Haining (ed). The Ghouls. NY: Stein and Day, 1971.
Tom Hutchinson. Horror and Fantasy in the Movies. NY: Crescent Books, 1974.
Audio books
References
External links
Vincent Price Official Website
Vincent Price Gallery
St. Louis Walk of Fame
Vincent Price Papers catalog
Vincent Price at Virtual History
Cooking with Vincent, A Treasury Of Great Recipes
Vincent Price Papers (MS 1625). Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library.
1911 births
1993 deaths
20th Century Fox contract players
20th-century American male actors
20th-century American essayists
Alumni of the Courtauld Institute of Art
American art collectors
American people of English descent
American people of Welsh descent
American art writers
American autobiographers
American cookbook writers
American food writers
American male film actors
American male radio actors
American male stage actors
American male television actors
American male voice actors
Audiobook narrators
Philanthropists from New York (state)
Caedmon Records artists
American television hosts
California Democrats
Deaths from cancer in California
Deaths from emphysema
Deaths from lung cancer
LGBT rights activists from the United States
Male actors from Los Angeles
Male actors from St. Louis
Missouri Democrats
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The Yale Record alumni
Writers from Los Angeles
Writers from Missouri
20th-century American businesspeople
20th-century American male writers
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American bisexual actors | false | [
"Argaw Bedaso (born 5 April 1934) is a longtime Ethiopian traditional singer who has won praise for his Gurage songs. His most popular song is titled \"Alem Bire\". He has been performing since 1957 and despite his age still performs and is active in the Ethiopian music scene.\n\nIn his early days, Argaw Bedaso was a deacon of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, related to Coptic Christianity.\n\nHe claims his resiliency and good health is due to his interest in exercising, and he promotes running for health.\n\nArgaw Bedaso has had eighteen children, ten of them from one mother. Four of his children have died. Argaw's first wife died only after a year of marriage and he has been with his current wife for forty five years.\n\nExternal links\n Appearance by Argaw Bedaso as Guest Host on Radio Fana\n\n20th-century Ethiopian male singers\n1934 births\nLiving people\nAmharic-language singers",
", known for his stage name is a Japanese radio personality, film critic, and film commentator who is represented by the talent agency Horipro. He is nicknamed . His wife is television caster Izumi Maruoka.\n\nEarly life\nArimura was born in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in 1976. His father is the Vice President of Choice Hotels and served as a tourist journalist for Fujimura Nobe Sakana, and his mother was chanson singer Mariko Murasakikura.\n\nArimura got a degree Tamagawa University Faculty of Arts Theater Department, and graduated from the Tokyo Announcement Seminars.\n\nCareer\nHe is mainly a radio personality, and is also a film commentator in magazines and television programs. Arimura was part of Bakademi Kyōkai which they are critics for B-movies. In recent years he is named Sid Arimura.\n\nArimura also appeared in many variety shows.\n\nFilmography\n\nTV series\n\nCurrent\n\nPast\n\nDrama\n\nDrama\n\nRadio\n\nCurrent\n\nPast\n\nCurrent\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \n \n Official profile \n Interview at Tarento Data Bank \n\nJapanese radio personalities\nJapanese film critics\n1976 births\nLiving people\nPeople from Kuala Lumpur"
]
|
[
"Vincent Price",
"Personal life",
"What was his family life like?",
"Price married three times.",
"Did he have children?",
"they had one son, Vincent Barrett Price, and divorced in 1948. A year later, in 1949, Price married Mary Grant, and they had a daughter,",
"Who is his most current wife?",
"Price's last marriage was in 1974 to Australian actress Coral Browne,"
]
| C_9632aada122e45be87f8cc63486a96c7_0 | How was his life growing up? | 4 | How was Vincent Price's life growing up? | Vincent Price | Price married three times. His first marriage was in 1938 to former actress Edith Barrett; they had one son, Vincent Barrett Price, and divorced in 1948. A year later, in 1949, Price married Mary Grant, and they had a daughter, Victoria Price, on April 27, 1962. She was named Victoria after Price's first major success in the play Victoria Regina. The marriage lasted until 1973. Price's last marriage was in 1974 to Australian actress Coral Browne, who appeared with him (as one of his victims) in Theatre of Blood (1973). The marriage lasted until Browne's death in 1991. One example of his outspoken political action came when he concluded an old-time radio episode of The Saint, entitled "Author of Murder", which aired on NBC Radio on July 30, 1950. He denounced racial and religious prejudice as a form of poison and claimed Americans must actively fight against it because racial and religious prejudice within the United States fuels support for the nation's enemies. Price was later appointed to the Indian Arts and Crafts Board under the Dwight D. Eisenhower Administration; he called the appointment "kind of a surprise, since I am a Democrat." Price was supportive of his daughter, who came out as a lesbian, and was critical of Anita Bryant's anti-gay campaign in the 1970s. He was an honorary board member of PFLAG and among the first celebrities to appear in public service announcements discussing AIDS with the public. His daughter has stated that she is "as close to certain as (she) can be that (Price) had physically intimate relationships with men." although never confirmed by anyone else. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Vincent Leonard Price Jr. (May 27, 1911 – October 25, 1993) was an American actor best known for his performances in horror films, although his career spanned other genres. He appeared on stage, television, and radio, and in more than 100 films. Price has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for motion pictures and one for television.
Price's first film role was as leading man in the 1938 comedy Service de Luxe. He became well known as a character actor, appearing in films such as The Song of Bernadette (1943), Laura (1944), The Keys of the Kingdom (1944), Leave Her to Heaven (1945), Dragonwyck (1946), and The Ten Commandments (1956). He established himself as a recognizable horror-movie star after his leading role in House of Wax (1953). He subsequently starred in other horror films, including The Fly (1958), House on Haunted Hill (1959), Return of the Fly (1959), The Tingler (1959), The Last Man on Earth (1964), Witchfinder General (1968), The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971), and Theatre of Blood (1973). He was also known for his collaborations with Roger Corman on Edgar Allan Poe adaptations such as House of Usher (1960), The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), and The Masque of the Red Death (1964). Price occasionally appeared on television series, such as in Batman as Egghead.
In his later years, Price voiced the villainous Professor Ratigan in Disney's classic animated film The Great Mouse Detective (1986), then appeared in the drama The Whales of August (1987), which earned him an Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Male nomination, and in Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands (1990), his last theatrical release. For his contributions to cinema, especially to genre films, he has received lifetime achievement or special tribute awards from Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films, Fantasporto, Bram Stoker Awards, and Los Angeles Film Critics Association. Price narrated several animation films, radio dramas and documentaries, as well as the monologue on Michael Jackson's song "Thriller". For his voice work in Great American Speeches (1959), Price was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album.
Price was also an art collector and arts consultant, with a degree in art history, and he lectured and wrote books on the subject. The Vincent Price Art Museum at East Los Angeles College is named in his honor. Price was also a noted gourmet cook.
Early life and career
Vincent Leonard Price Jr. was born on May 27, 1911, in St. Louis, Missouri, the youngest of the four children of Vincent Leonard Price Sr., president of the National Candy Company, and his wife Marguerite Cobb (née Wilcox) Price. His grandfather was Vincent Clarence Price, who invented "Dr. Price's Baking Powder", the first cream of tartar-based baking powder, and it secured the family's fortune. Price was of Welsh and English descent and was a descendant of Peregrine White, the first white child born in colonial Massachusetts, being born on the Mayflower while it was in Provincetown Harbor.
Price attended the St. Louis Country Day School and Milford Academy in Milford, Connecticut. In 1933, he graduated with a degree in English and a minor in art history from Yale University, where he worked on the campus humor magazine The Yale Record. After teaching for a year, he entered the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, intending to study for a master's degree in fine arts. Instead, he was drawn to the theater, first appearing on stage professionally in 1934. His acting career began in London in 1935, performing with Orson Welles's Mercury Theatre.
In 1936, Price appeared as Prince Albert in the American production of Laurence Housman's play Victoria Regina, which starred Helen Hayes in the title role of Queen Victoria.
Introduction to film roles
Price started out in films as a character actor. He made his film debut in Service de Luxe (1938), and established himself in the film Laura (1944), opposite Gene Tierney, directed by Otto Preminger. He played Joseph Smith in the movie Brigham Young (1940) and William Gibbs McAdoo in Wilson (1944), as well as Bernadette's prosecutor, Vital Dutour, in The Song of Bernadette (1943), and as a pretentious priest in The Keys of the Kingdom (1944).
Price's first venture into the horror genre, for which he later became best known, was in the Boris Karloff film Tower of London (1939). The following year, Price portrayed the title character in The Invisible Man Returns (a role he reprised in a voice-only cameo in the closing scene of the horror-comedy spoof Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein released in 1948). He reunited with Tierney in Leave Her to Heaven (1945) and Dragonwyck (1946). He also had many villainous roles in film noir thrillers such as The Web (1947), The Long Night (1947), Rogues' Regiment (1948), and The Bribe (1949), with Robert Taylor, Ava Gardner, and Charles Laughton.
Price's first starring role was as con man James Reavis in the biopic The Baron of Arizona (1950). He did a comedic turn as the tycoon Burnbridge Waters, co-starring with Ronald Colman in Champagne for Caesar (also 1950), one of his favorite film roles.
Price was active in radio, portraying the Robin Hood-inspired crime-fighter Simon Templar in The Saint, which ran from 1947 to 1951. In the 1950s, Price moved into more regular horror-film roles with the leading role in House of Wax (1953) as a homicidal sculptor, the first three-dimensional film to land in the year's top 10 at the North American box-office. His next roles were The Mad Magician (1954), the monster movie The Fly (1958), and its sequel Return of the Fly (1959). That same year, Price starred in two thrillers by producer-director William Castle: House on Haunted Hill as eccentric millionaire Fredrick Loren, and The Tingler as Dr. Warren Chapin, who discovered the titular creature. He appeared in the radio drama Three Skeleton Key, the story of an island lighthouse besieged by an army of rats. He had first performed the work in 1950 on Escape and returned to it in 1956 and 1958 for Suspense.
Outside the horror realm, Price played Baka in The Ten Commandments, released in 1956. About this time, he also appeared in episodes of television shows such as Science Fiction Theatre, Playhouse 90, and General Electric Theater. In the 1955–56 television season, he was cast three times on the religion anthology series Crossroads. In the 1955 episode "Cleanup", Price portrayed the Reverend Robert Russell. In 1956, he was cast as Rabbi Gershom Mendes Seixas in "The Rebel", and as the Rev. Alfred W. Price in "God's Healing".
1960s
In the 1960s, Price achieved a number of low-budget filmmaking successes with Roger Corman and American International Pictures (AIP) starting with the House of Usher (1960), which earned over $2 million at the box office in the United States and led to the subsequent Edgar Allan Poe adaptations of The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), Tales of Terror (1962), The Comedy of Terrors (1963), The Raven (1963), The Masque of the Red Death (1964), and The Tomb of Ligeia (1964). He starred in The Last Man on Earth (1964), the first adaptation of the Richard Matheson novel I Am Legend, and portrayed witch hunter Matthew Hopkins in Witchfinder General (US: The Conqueror Worm, 1968) set during the English Civil War. Price also starred in comedy films such as Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine (1965) and its sequel Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs (1966). In 1968, he played the part of an eccentric artist in the musical Darling of the Day, opposite Patricia Routledge.
In the 1960s, Price began his role as a guest on the television game show Hollywood Squares, becoming a semiregular in the 1970s, including being one of the guest panelists on the finale in 1980.
Price made many guest-star appearances in television shows during the decade, including The Red Skelton Show, Daniel Boone, F Troop, Get Smart, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. He had a recurring role in the Batman TV series as the villain Egghead from 1966 to 1967. In 1964, he provided the narration for the Tombstone Historama in Tombstone, Arizona, which was still in operation as of 2016. He also starred as the host of the Australian TV series If These Walls Could Speak, in which a short history of a historical building (supposedly narrated by the building itself) was covered, and as the narrating voice of the building.
Later career
During the early 1970s, Price hosted and starred in BBC Radio's horror and mystery series The Price of Fear. He accepted a cameo part in the Canadian children's television program The Hilarious House of Frightenstein (1971) in Hamilton, Ontario, on the local television station CHCH-TV. In addition to the opening and closing monologues, his role in the show was to recite poems about various characters, sometimes wearing a cloak or other costumes. He appeared in The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971), its sequel Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1972), and Theatre of Blood (1973), in which he portrayed one of two serial killers. That same year, he appeared as himself in Mooch Goes to Hollywood, a film written by Jim Backus.
Price was an admirer of the works of Edgar Allan Poe, and in 1975 visited the Edgar Allan Poe Museum in Richmond, Virginia, where he had his picture taken with the museum's popular stuffed raven. Price also recorded dramatic readings of Poe's short stories and poems, which were collected together with readings by Basil Rathbone.
In 1975, Price and his wife Coral Browne appeared together in an international stage adaptation of Ardèle, which played in the U.S. and in London at the Queen's Theatre. During this run, Browne and Price starred together in the BBC Radio play Night of the Wolf first airing in 1975. Price greatly reduced his film work from around 1975, as horror itself suffered a slump, and he increased his narrative and voice work, as well as advertising Milton Bradley's Shrunken Head Apple Sculpture.
Price provided a monologue for the Alice Cooper song "Devil's Food" on the Welcome to My Nightmare album in 1975, and he appeared in the corresponding TV special Alice Cooper: The Nightmare. He starred for a year in the early 1970s in the syndicated daily radio program Tales of the Unexplained. He made guest appearances in a 1970 episode of Here's Lucy, showcasing his art expertise, and in a 1972 episode of ABC's The Brady Bunch, in which he played a deranged archaeologist. In October 1976, he appeared as the featured guest in an episode of The Muppet Show.
In 1977, Price began performing as Oscar Wilde in the one-man stage play Diversions and Delights, written by John Gay and directed by Joe Hardy, and set in a Parisian theatre on a night about one year before Wilde's death. The original tour of the play was a success in every city except for New York City. In the summer of 1979, Price performed the role of Wilde at the Tabor Opera House in Leadville, Colorado, on the same stage from which Wilde had spoken to miners about art some 96 years before. He eventually performed the play worldwide. Victoria Price stated in her biography of her father that several members of Price's family and friends thought that this was his best acting performance.
In 1979, Price starred with his wife in the short-lived CBS series Time Express. That same year he hosted the hour-long television special America Screams, riding on several roller coasters and recounting their history. During 1979–1980, he hosted the "Mystery Night" segment of the radio series Sears Radio Theater.
In 1982, Price provided the narrator's voice in Vincent, Tim Burton's six-minute film about a young boy who flashes from reality into a fantasy where he is Vincent Price. He appeared as Sir Despard Murgatroyd in a 1982 television production of Gilbert and Sullivan's Ruddigore (with Keith Michell as Robin Oakapple). In 1982, Price provided the spoken-word sequence to the end of the Michael Jackson song "Thriller". In 1983, he played the Sinister Man in the British spoof horror film Bloodbath at the House of Death. He appeared in House of the Long Shadows with Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, and John Carradine; he had worked with each of those actors at least once in previous decades, but this was the first time that all had teamed up. One of his last major roles, and one of his favorites, was as the voice of Professor Ratigan in Walt Disney Pictures' The Great Mouse Detective in 1986.
From 1981 to 1989, Price hosted the PBS television series Mystery! In 1985, he provided voice talent on the Hanna-Barbera series The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo as the mysterious "Vincent Van Ghoul", who aided Scooby-Doo, Scrappy-Doo, and the gang in recapturing thirteen demons. He was a lifelong fan of roller coasters, and he narrated a 1987 thirty-minute documentary on the history of roller coasters and amusement parks, including Coney Island. During this time (1985–1989), he appeared in horror-themed commercials for Tilex bathroom cleanser.
In 1984, Price appeared in Shelley Duvall's live-action series Faerie Tale Theatre as the Mirror in "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", and the narrator for "The Boy Who Left Home to Find Out About the Shivers". In 1987, he starred with Bette Davis, Lillian Gish, and Ann Sothern in The Whales of August, a story of two sisters living in Maine facing the end of their days. His performance in The Whales of August earned the only award nomination of his career, an Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Male.
In 1989, Price was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame. His last significant film work was as the inventor in Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands (1990).
In 1990, Price recorded the narration as the Phantom for Disneyland Paris's Phantom Manor. After the attraction opened in 1992, though, the narration was shortly removed and replaced with one entirely in French, performed by Gérard Chevalier. Only Price's infamous laughter remained on the soundtrack. In 2018, during Phantom Manor's major renovation, parts of Price's narration were announced to be restored to the soundtrack of the attraction. Since the 2019 reopening, the new tracks are dual-language; Price's original excerpts as well as previously unused material from his 1990 recording comprise the English-speaking portions, while actor Bernard Alane voices the Phantom in French.
Art
Price, who studied art history at Yale, was an art lover and collector. He was a commissioner of the Indian Arts and Crafts Board.
In 1957, impressed by the spirit of the students and the community's need for the opportunity to experience original art works first hand, Vincent and Mary Grant Price donated 90 pieces from their private collection and a large amount of money to establish the Vincent Price Art Museum at East Los Angeles College in Monterey Park, California, which was the first "teaching art collection" owned by a community college in the United States. They ultimately donated some 2,000 pieces; the collection contains over 9,000 pieces and has been valued in excess of $5 million.
Price also spent time working as an art consultant for Sears-Roebuck: From 1962 to 1971, Sears offered the "Vincent Price Collection of Fine Art", selling about 50,000 fine-art prints to the general public. Works which Price selected or commissioned for the collection included some by Rembrandt, Pablo Picasso, and Salvador Dalí. Public access to fine art was important to Price, who according to his daughter Victoria, saw the Sears deal as an "opportunity to put his populist beliefs into practice, to bring art to the American public." In the 1960s, portraits painted by Charles Bird King, of Native Americans were secured for Jacqueline Kennedy's White House Restoration. Through the efforts of Vincent Price these five paintings were paid for and donated to the White House Collection by Sears-Roebuck.
Price amassed his own extensive collection of art, and in 2008, a painting bought for $25 by a couple from Dallas was identified as a piece from Price's collection. Painted by leading Australian modernist Grace Cossington Smith, it was given a modern valuation of AU$45,000.
Cooking
Price was a gourmet cook, and he authored several cookbooks with his second wife, Mary. These include:
A Treasury of Great Recipes (1965)
Mary and Vincent Price present a National Treasury of Cookery (1967)
Mary and Vincent Price's Come into the Kitchen Cook Book: A Collector's Treasury of America's Great Recipes (1969)
Cooking Price-Wise with Vincent Price (1971)
Mary and Vincent Price present a National Treasury of Cookery was a five-volume series, packaged in a boxed set and published by the Heirloom Publishing Company. These five books were combined into a single book two years later and published as Mary and Vincent Price's Come into the Kitchen Cook Book: A Collector's Treasury of America's Great Recipes. Most of the Prices' cookbooks remained in print throughout the 1970s. After being out of print for several decades, two of their books were reprinted; A Treasury of Great Recipes (in August 2015 by Calla Editions) and Mary and Vincent Price's Come into the Kitchen Cook Book (in November 2016 by Calla Editions), both featuring new forewords by their daughter Victoria Price. Cooking Price-Wise with Vincent Price was scheduled to be reprinted by Dover Publishing in October 2017 under the updated title Cooking Price-Wise – The Original Foodie.
In 1971, Price hosted his own cooking program on British television, called Cooking Price-Wise produced for the ITV network by Thames Television, which was broadcast in April and May 1971. This show gave its name to Price's fourth and final cookbook later that year. Price promoted his cookbooks on many talk shows, one of the most famous instances being the November 21, 1975, broadcast of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, when he demonstrated how to poach a fish in a dishwasher.
Price recorded a number of audio cooking tutorials titled International Cooking Course. These were titled Bounty of Paradise, Classical Spanish Cuisine, Cuisina Italiana, Delights from the Sultan's Pantry, Dinner at the Casbah, Dining at Versailles, Exotic Delights from the Far East, Food of the Gods, Foods from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, La Cocina Mejicana, The Bard's Board, and The Wok. In addition to those, he recorded an audio wine course titled Wine Is Elegance. These audio recordings were released on 33⅓ LPs by Nelson Industries in 1977, and were also packaged in a 12-cassette boxed set titled Beverly Hills Cookbook – Cookbook of the Rich and Famous, Your Host Mr. Vincent Price.
In August 1982, he co-hosted A Taste of China for Thames Television over five episodes. He also prepared a fish recipe on Wolfgang Puck's Cooking with Wolfgang Puck VHS, released in October 1987 by Warner Home Video.
Personal life
Price married three times. His first marriage was in 1938 to former actress Edith Barrett; they had one son, poet and columnist Vincent Barrett Price. Edith and Price divorced in 1948. Price married Mary Grant in 1949, and they had a daughter, inspirational speaker Victoria Price, on April 27, 1962, naming her after Price's first major success in the play Victoria Regina. The marriage lasted until 1973. He married Australian actress Coral Browne in 1974; she had appeared as one of his victims in Theatre of Blood (1973). The marriage lasted until her death in 1991.
Victoria Price's biography Vincent Price: A Daughter's Biography (1999) details Price's early antisemitism and initial admiration for Adolf Hitler. According to his daughter: "When he went to Germany and Austria as a young man, he was struck by a lot of things going on during the Weimar Republic and the disillusion of the empire... So when Hitler came into power, instead of seeing him as a dangerous force, he was sort of swept up in this whole idea that Hitler was going to bring German pride back." However, Price became a liberal after becoming friends with New York intellectuals such as Dorothy Parker and Lillian Hellman in the 1930s, so much so that he was "greylisted" under McCarthyism in the 1950s for having been a prewar "premature anti-Nazi", and after being unable to find work for a year, agreed to requests by the FBI that he sign a "secret oath" to save his career. Victoria said that her father became so liberal that "one of my brother's earliest memories is when Franklin Roosevelt's death was announced, my father fell backwards off the sofa sobbing."
Price denounced racial and religious prejudice as a form of poison at the end of an episode of The Saint, which aired on NBC Radio on July 30, 1950,
claiming that Americans must actively fight against it because such prejudices within the United States fuels support for the nation's enemies. He was later appointed to the Indian Arts and Crafts Board under the Dwight D. Eisenhower administration; he called the appointment "kind of a surprise, since I am a Democrat".
Price was supportive of his daughter when she came out as a lesbian, and he was critical of Anita Bryant's anti-gay-rights campaign in the 1970s. In an interview in 2015, Victoria confirmed that her father confided with her of his intimate relationships with men when she came out to him as a lesbian.
Death
Price suffered from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and Parkinson's disease. His symptoms were especially severe during the filming of Edward Scissorhands, making cutting his filming schedule short a necessity. His illness also contributed to his retirement from Mystery! in 1989. He died at age 82 of lung cancer on October 25, 1993, at his home in Los Angeles, California. His remains were cremated and his ashes scattered off Point Dume in Malibu.
Legacy
The A&E Network aired an episode of Biography the night following Price's death, highlighting his horror-film career, but because of its failure to clear copyrights, the show was never aired again. Four years later, A&E produced its updated episode, titled Vincent Price: The Versatile Villain, which aired on October 12, 1997. The script was by Lucy Chase Williams, author of The Complete Films of Vincent Price. In early 1991, Tim Burton was developing a personal documentary with the working title Conversations with Vincent, in which interviews with Price were shot at the Vincent Price Gallery, but the project was never completed and was eventually shelved.
Rhythmeen, the ZZ Top album from 1996, includes a track named "Vincent Price Blues".
Price was an honorary board member and strong supporter of the Witch's Dungeon Classic Movie Museum in Bristol, Connecticut, until his death in 1993. The museum features detailed life-sized wax replicas of characters from some of Price's films, including The Fly, The Abominable Dr. Phibes, and The Masque of the Red Death. A black-box theater at Price's alma mater, Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School, is named after him.
Tim Burton directed a short stop-motion film as a tribute to Vincent Price called Vincent, about a young boy named Vincent Malloy who is obsessed with the grim and macabre; it is narrated by Price. "Vincent Twice, Vincent Twice" was a parody on Sesame Street. He was parodied in an episode of The Simpsons ("Sunday, Cruddy Sunday"). Price had his own Spitting Image puppet, who was always trying to be "sinister" and lure people into his ghoulish traps, only for his victims to point out all the obvious flaws.
Starting in November 2005, featured cast member Bill Hader of the NBC sketch comedy/variety show Saturday Night Live has played Price in a recurring sketch in which Price hosts botched holiday specials filled with celebrities of the 1950s/'60s. Other cast members who played Price on SNL include Dan Aykroyd and Michael McKean (who played Price when he hosted a season-10 episode and again when he was hired as a cast member for the 1994–95 season).
In 1999, a frank and detailed biography about Price written by his daughter, Victoria, was published by St. Martin's Press. In late May 2011, an event was held by the organization Cinema St. Louis to celebrate what would have been Price's 100th birthday. It included a public event with Victoria at the Missouri History Museum and a showcase of ephemeral and historic items at the gallery inside the Sheldon Concert Hall.
In an unusual convergence of widely different generational and cultural backgrounds, the genteel Price was a friend of the English hard rock band Deep Purple and in 1975, he appeared on Roger Glover's live version of The Butterfly Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast as a narrator. Decades later, in 2013, Deep Purple released "Vincent Price", a single the band members dedicated to him. That same year, American director and writer John Waters composed a "heartfelt and appreciative" retrospective on Price for Turner Classic Movies, which recognized the actor as its "Star of the Month" in October 2013 and showcased then a selection of his most popular films. The tribute was repeatedly broadcast on TCM to promote and complement those televised presentations. In sharing with viewers his feelings about Price, Waters at one point describes the actor's screen appeal, especially when he was featured in his darker roles:
Filmography
Radio appearances
Books
Introductions to Works by Others
Peter Haining (ed). The Ghouls. NY: Stein and Day, 1971.
Tom Hutchinson. Horror and Fantasy in the Movies. NY: Crescent Books, 1974.
Audio books
References
External links
Vincent Price Official Website
Vincent Price Gallery
St. Louis Walk of Fame
Vincent Price Papers catalog
Vincent Price at Virtual History
Cooking with Vincent, A Treasury Of Great Recipes
Vincent Price Papers (MS 1625). Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library.
1911 births
1993 deaths
20th Century Fox contract players
20th-century American male actors
20th-century American essayists
Alumni of the Courtauld Institute of Art
American art collectors
American people of English descent
American people of Welsh descent
American art writers
American autobiographers
American cookbook writers
American food writers
American male film actors
American male radio actors
American male stage actors
American male television actors
American male voice actors
Audiobook narrators
Philanthropists from New York (state)
Caedmon Records artists
American television hosts
California Democrats
Deaths from cancer in California
Deaths from emphysema
Deaths from lung cancer
LGBT rights activists from the United States
Male actors from Los Angeles
Male actors from St. Louis
Missouri Democrats
People with Parkinson's disease
The Yale Record alumni
Writers from Los Angeles
Writers from Missouri
20th-century American businesspeople
20th-century American male writers
American male non-fiction writers
Articles containing video clips
LGBT writers from the United States
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American bisexual actors | false | [
"Look Who It Is! is the autobiography of British comedian and television presenter Alan Carr. It details his life from growing up in Weymouth to presenting The Friday Night Project. In the book, Carr recounts how he grew up in the shadow of his father, Graham Carr, and was therefore expected to grow up to be a great football player, despite his childhood \"puppy fat\". The book laments on his schooldays - he was picked last for the football team when the other students found out his lack of talent and his father forcing him to refuse to communicate with a friend because he was apparently \"gaying him up\". Carr also tells the story of how puberty left him with \"big teeth\" and a camp voice. \n\n\"Puberty had been unkind. Whereas it had come in the night and left the other boys with chiselled, stubbly chins and deep masculine voices, I'd been left with a huge pair of knockers and the voice of a pensioner.\"\n\nShow business memoirs\nBritish autobiographies",
"Steve Grand OBE (born 12 February 1958) is a British computer scientist and roboticist. He was the creator and lead programmer of the Creatures artificial life simulation, which he discussed in his first book Creation: Life and How to Make It, a finalist for the 2001 Aventis Prize for Science Books. He is also an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, which he received in 2000.\n\nGrand's project from 2001 to 2006 was the building of an artificial robot baby orangutan, with the intention of having it learn as a human baby would. This is documented in his book Growing up with Lucy.\n\nProjects\nCreatures\nOne of the best known projects created by Steve Grand is Creatures, an artificial life simulation, which his company Cyberlife released in 1996.\n\nLucy, the Android\nHis project from 2001 to 2005 was Lucy, a mechanical baby orangutan. Lucy was an attempt at simulating the mind of a human baby.\n\nSim-biosis\nGrand worked on Sim-biosis, a computer simulation game in which complete artificial creatures could be built from functional, structural units. It is available on SourceForge under the name Simergy.\n\nGrandroids\nIn February 2011, Grand announced a new project, Grandroids, described as \"real 'alien' life forms who can live in a virtual world on your computer\".\n\nBibliography\n\n Creation: Life and How to Make It (2001) \n Growing Up with Lucy (2004) \n What is the Secret of Consciousness? (2014) TEDxOporto presentation\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \n Transcript of Steve's keynote speech, \"Machines Like Us,\" given at the Applied Knowledge Research Institute's 2002 Biennial Seminar\n Steve Grand at the Creatures Wiki\n Feature article on Steve Grand's anthropoid orangutan, Lucy\n Steve Grand quotes\n Steve Grand's discussion with Johnjoe McFadden\n Cyberlife Research Limited\n Steve Grand's Machines Like Us interview\n Grandroids: Real artificial life on your PC a project by Steve Grand\n\nCreatures (video game series)\n1958 births\nLiving people\nOfficers of the Order of the British Empire\nBritish roboticists\nArtificial intelligence researchers\nEnglish computer scientists\nResearchers of artificial life"
]
|
[
"Vincent Price",
"Personal life",
"What was his family life like?",
"Price married three times.",
"Did he have children?",
"they had one son, Vincent Barrett Price, and divorced in 1948. A year later, in 1949, Price married Mary Grant, and they had a daughter,",
"Who is his most current wife?",
"Price's last marriage was in 1974 to Australian actress Coral Browne,",
"How was his life growing up?",
"I don't know."
]
| C_9632aada122e45be87f8cc63486a96c7_0 | Are there any other interesting aspects about this article? | 5 | Other than family, are there any other interesting aspects about the article on Vincent Price? | Vincent Price | Price married three times. His first marriage was in 1938 to former actress Edith Barrett; they had one son, Vincent Barrett Price, and divorced in 1948. A year later, in 1949, Price married Mary Grant, and they had a daughter, Victoria Price, on April 27, 1962. She was named Victoria after Price's first major success in the play Victoria Regina. The marriage lasted until 1973. Price's last marriage was in 1974 to Australian actress Coral Browne, who appeared with him (as one of his victims) in Theatre of Blood (1973). The marriage lasted until Browne's death in 1991. One example of his outspoken political action came when he concluded an old-time radio episode of The Saint, entitled "Author of Murder", which aired on NBC Radio on July 30, 1950. He denounced racial and religious prejudice as a form of poison and claimed Americans must actively fight against it because racial and religious prejudice within the United States fuels support for the nation's enemies. Price was later appointed to the Indian Arts and Crafts Board under the Dwight D. Eisenhower Administration; he called the appointment "kind of a surprise, since I am a Democrat." Price was supportive of his daughter, who came out as a lesbian, and was critical of Anita Bryant's anti-gay campaign in the 1970s. He was an honorary board member of PFLAG and among the first celebrities to appear in public service announcements discussing AIDS with the public. His daughter has stated that she is "as close to certain as (she) can be that (Price) had physically intimate relationships with men." although never confirmed by anyone else. CANNOTANSWER | His daughter has stated that she is "as close to certain as (she) can be that (Price) had physically intimate relationships with men." | Vincent Leonard Price Jr. (May 27, 1911 – October 25, 1993) was an American actor best known for his performances in horror films, although his career spanned other genres. He appeared on stage, television, and radio, and in more than 100 films. Price has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for motion pictures and one for television.
Price's first film role was as leading man in the 1938 comedy Service de Luxe. He became well known as a character actor, appearing in films such as The Song of Bernadette (1943), Laura (1944), The Keys of the Kingdom (1944), Leave Her to Heaven (1945), Dragonwyck (1946), and The Ten Commandments (1956). He established himself as a recognizable horror-movie star after his leading role in House of Wax (1953). He subsequently starred in other horror films, including The Fly (1958), House on Haunted Hill (1959), Return of the Fly (1959), The Tingler (1959), The Last Man on Earth (1964), Witchfinder General (1968), The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971), and Theatre of Blood (1973). He was also known for his collaborations with Roger Corman on Edgar Allan Poe adaptations such as House of Usher (1960), The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), and The Masque of the Red Death (1964). Price occasionally appeared on television series, such as in Batman as Egghead.
In his later years, Price voiced the villainous Professor Ratigan in Disney's classic animated film The Great Mouse Detective (1986), then appeared in the drama The Whales of August (1987), which earned him an Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Male nomination, and in Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands (1990), his last theatrical release. For his contributions to cinema, especially to genre films, he has received lifetime achievement or special tribute awards from Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films, Fantasporto, Bram Stoker Awards, and Los Angeles Film Critics Association. Price narrated several animation films, radio dramas and documentaries, as well as the monologue on Michael Jackson's song "Thriller". For his voice work in Great American Speeches (1959), Price was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album.
Price was also an art collector and arts consultant, with a degree in art history, and he lectured and wrote books on the subject. The Vincent Price Art Museum at East Los Angeles College is named in his honor. Price was also a noted gourmet cook.
Early life and career
Vincent Leonard Price Jr. was born on May 27, 1911, in St. Louis, Missouri, the youngest of the four children of Vincent Leonard Price Sr., president of the National Candy Company, and his wife Marguerite Cobb (née Wilcox) Price. His grandfather was Vincent Clarence Price, who invented "Dr. Price's Baking Powder", the first cream of tartar-based baking powder, and it secured the family's fortune. Price was of Welsh and English descent and was a descendant of Peregrine White, the first white child born in colonial Massachusetts, being born on the Mayflower while it was in Provincetown Harbor.
Price attended the St. Louis Country Day School and Milford Academy in Milford, Connecticut. In 1933, he graduated with a degree in English and a minor in art history from Yale University, where he worked on the campus humor magazine The Yale Record. After teaching for a year, he entered the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, intending to study for a master's degree in fine arts. Instead, he was drawn to the theater, first appearing on stage professionally in 1934. His acting career began in London in 1935, performing with Orson Welles's Mercury Theatre.
In 1936, Price appeared as Prince Albert in the American production of Laurence Housman's play Victoria Regina, which starred Helen Hayes in the title role of Queen Victoria.
Introduction to film roles
Price started out in films as a character actor. He made his film debut in Service de Luxe (1938), and established himself in the film Laura (1944), opposite Gene Tierney, directed by Otto Preminger. He played Joseph Smith in the movie Brigham Young (1940) and William Gibbs McAdoo in Wilson (1944), as well as Bernadette's prosecutor, Vital Dutour, in The Song of Bernadette (1943), and as a pretentious priest in The Keys of the Kingdom (1944).
Price's first venture into the horror genre, for which he later became best known, was in the Boris Karloff film Tower of London (1939). The following year, Price portrayed the title character in The Invisible Man Returns (a role he reprised in a voice-only cameo in the closing scene of the horror-comedy spoof Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein released in 1948). He reunited with Tierney in Leave Her to Heaven (1945) and Dragonwyck (1946). He also had many villainous roles in film noir thrillers such as The Web (1947), The Long Night (1947), Rogues' Regiment (1948), and The Bribe (1949), with Robert Taylor, Ava Gardner, and Charles Laughton.
Price's first starring role was as con man James Reavis in the biopic The Baron of Arizona (1950). He did a comedic turn as the tycoon Burnbridge Waters, co-starring with Ronald Colman in Champagne for Caesar (also 1950), one of his favorite film roles.
Price was active in radio, portraying the Robin Hood-inspired crime-fighter Simon Templar in The Saint, which ran from 1947 to 1951. In the 1950s, Price moved into more regular horror-film roles with the leading role in House of Wax (1953) as a homicidal sculptor, the first three-dimensional film to land in the year's top 10 at the North American box-office. His next roles were The Mad Magician (1954), the monster movie The Fly (1958), and its sequel Return of the Fly (1959). That same year, Price starred in two thrillers by producer-director William Castle: House on Haunted Hill as eccentric millionaire Fredrick Loren, and The Tingler as Dr. Warren Chapin, who discovered the titular creature. He appeared in the radio drama Three Skeleton Key, the story of an island lighthouse besieged by an army of rats. He had first performed the work in 1950 on Escape and returned to it in 1956 and 1958 for Suspense.
Outside the horror realm, Price played Baka in The Ten Commandments, released in 1956. About this time, he also appeared in episodes of television shows such as Science Fiction Theatre, Playhouse 90, and General Electric Theater. In the 1955–56 television season, he was cast three times on the religion anthology series Crossroads. In the 1955 episode "Cleanup", Price portrayed the Reverend Robert Russell. In 1956, he was cast as Rabbi Gershom Mendes Seixas in "The Rebel", and as the Rev. Alfred W. Price in "God's Healing".
1960s
In the 1960s, Price achieved a number of low-budget filmmaking successes with Roger Corman and American International Pictures (AIP) starting with the House of Usher (1960), which earned over $2 million at the box office in the United States and led to the subsequent Edgar Allan Poe adaptations of The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), Tales of Terror (1962), The Comedy of Terrors (1963), The Raven (1963), The Masque of the Red Death (1964), and The Tomb of Ligeia (1964). He starred in The Last Man on Earth (1964), the first adaptation of the Richard Matheson novel I Am Legend, and portrayed witch hunter Matthew Hopkins in Witchfinder General (US: The Conqueror Worm, 1968) set during the English Civil War. Price also starred in comedy films such as Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine (1965) and its sequel Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs (1966). In 1968, he played the part of an eccentric artist in the musical Darling of the Day, opposite Patricia Routledge.
In the 1960s, Price began his role as a guest on the television game show Hollywood Squares, becoming a semiregular in the 1970s, including being one of the guest panelists on the finale in 1980.
Price made many guest-star appearances in television shows during the decade, including The Red Skelton Show, Daniel Boone, F Troop, Get Smart, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. He had a recurring role in the Batman TV series as the villain Egghead from 1966 to 1967. In 1964, he provided the narration for the Tombstone Historama in Tombstone, Arizona, which was still in operation as of 2016. He also starred as the host of the Australian TV series If These Walls Could Speak, in which a short history of a historical building (supposedly narrated by the building itself) was covered, and as the narrating voice of the building.
Later career
During the early 1970s, Price hosted and starred in BBC Radio's horror and mystery series The Price of Fear. He accepted a cameo part in the Canadian children's television program The Hilarious House of Frightenstein (1971) in Hamilton, Ontario, on the local television station CHCH-TV. In addition to the opening and closing monologues, his role in the show was to recite poems about various characters, sometimes wearing a cloak or other costumes. He appeared in The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971), its sequel Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1972), and Theatre of Blood (1973), in which he portrayed one of two serial killers. That same year, he appeared as himself in Mooch Goes to Hollywood, a film written by Jim Backus.
Price was an admirer of the works of Edgar Allan Poe, and in 1975 visited the Edgar Allan Poe Museum in Richmond, Virginia, where he had his picture taken with the museum's popular stuffed raven. Price also recorded dramatic readings of Poe's short stories and poems, which were collected together with readings by Basil Rathbone.
In 1975, Price and his wife Coral Browne appeared together in an international stage adaptation of Ardèle, which played in the U.S. and in London at the Queen's Theatre. During this run, Browne and Price starred together in the BBC Radio play Night of the Wolf first airing in 1975. Price greatly reduced his film work from around 1975, as horror itself suffered a slump, and he increased his narrative and voice work, as well as advertising Milton Bradley's Shrunken Head Apple Sculpture.
Price provided a monologue for the Alice Cooper song "Devil's Food" on the Welcome to My Nightmare album in 1975, and he appeared in the corresponding TV special Alice Cooper: The Nightmare. He starred for a year in the early 1970s in the syndicated daily radio program Tales of the Unexplained. He made guest appearances in a 1970 episode of Here's Lucy, showcasing his art expertise, and in a 1972 episode of ABC's The Brady Bunch, in which he played a deranged archaeologist. In October 1976, he appeared as the featured guest in an episode of The Muppet Show.
In 1977, Price began performing as Oscar Wilde in the one-man stage play Diversions and Delights, written by John Gay and directed by Joe Hardy, and set in a Parisian theatre on a night about one year before Wilde's death. The original tour of the play was a success in every city except for New York City. In the summer of 1979, Price performed the role of Wilde at the Tabor Opera House in Leadville, Colorado, on the same stage from which Wilde had spoken to miners about art some 96 years before. He eventually performed the play worldwide. Victoria Price stated in her biography of her father that several members of Price's family and friends thought that this was his best acting performance.
In 1979, Price starred with his wife in the short-lived CBS series Time Express. That same year he hosted the hour-long television special America Screams, riding on several roller coasters and recounting their history. During 1979–1980, he hosted the "Mystery Night" segment of the radio series Sears Radio Theater.
In 1982, Price provided the narrator's voice in Vincent, Tim Burton's six-minute film about a young boy who flashes from reality into a fantasy where he is Vincent Price. He appeared as Sir Despard Murgatroyd in a 1982 television production of Gilbert and Sullivan's Ruddigore (with Keith Michell as Robin Oakapple). In 1982, Price provided the spoken-word sequence to the end of the Michael Jackson song "Thriller". In 1983, he played the Sinister Man in the British spoof horror film Bloodbath at the House of Death. He appeared in House of the Long Shadows with Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, and John Carradine; he had worked with each of those actors at least once in previous decades, but this was the first time that all had teamed up. One of his last major roles, and one of his favorites, was as the voice of Professor Ratigan in Walt Disney Pictures' The Great Mouse Detective in 1986.
From 1981 to 1989, Price hosted the PBS television series Mystery! In 1985, he provided voice talent on the Hanna-Barbera series The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo as the mysterious "Vincent Van Ghoul", who aided Scooby-Doo, Scrappy-Doo, and the gang in recapturing thirteen demons. He was a lifelong fan of roller coasters, and he narrated a 1987 thirty-minute documentary on the history of roller coasters and amusement parks, including Coney Island. During this time (1985–1989), he appeared in horror-themed commercials for Tilex bathroom cleanser.
In 1984, Price appeared in Shelley Duvall's live-action series Faerie Tale Theatre as the Mirror in "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", and the narrator for "The Boy Who Left Home to Find Out About the Shivers". In 1987, he starred with Bette Davis, Lillian Gish, and Ann Sothern in The Whales of August, a story of two sisters living in Maine facing the end of their days. His performance in The Whales of August earned the only award nomination of his career, an Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Male.
In 1989, Price was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame. His last significant film work was as the inventor in Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands (1990).
In 1990, Price recorded the narration as the Phantom for Disneyland Paris's Phantom Manor. After the attraction opened in 1992, though, the narration was shortly removed and replaced with one entirely in French, performed by Gérard Chevalier. Only Price's infamous laughter remained on the soundtrack. In 2018, during Phantom Manor's major renovation, parts of Price's narration were announced to be restored to the soundtrack of the attraction. Since the 2019 reopening, the new tracks are dual-language; Price's original excerpts as well as previously unused material from his 1990 recording comprise the English-speaking portions, while actor Bernard Alane voices the Phantom in French.
Art
Price, who studied art history at Yale, was an art lover and collector. He was a commissioner of the Indian Arts and Crafts Board.
In 1957, impressed by the spirit of the students and the community's need for the opportunity to experience original art works first hand, Vincent and Mary Grant Price donated 90 pieces from their private collection and a large amount of money to establish the Vincent Price Art Museum at East Los Angeles College in Monterey Park, California, which was the first "teaching art collection" owned by a community college in the United States. They ultimately donated some 2,000 pieces; the collection contains over 9,000 pieces and has been valued in excess of $5 million.
Price also spent time working as an art consultant for Sears-Roebuck: From 1962 to 1971, Sears offered the "Vincent Price Collection of Fine Art", selling about 50,000 fine-art prints to the general public. Works which Price selected or commissioned for the collection included some by Rembrandt, Pablo Picasso, and Salvador Dalí. Public access to fine art was important to Price, who according to his daughter Victoria, saw the Sears deal as an "opportunity to put his populist beliefs into practice, to bring art to the American public." In the 1960s, portraits painted by Charles Bird King, of Native Americans were secured for Jacqueline Kennedy's White House Restoration. Through the efforts of Vincent Price these five paintings were paid for and donated to the White House Collection by Sears-Roebuck.
Price amassed his own extensive collection of art, and in 2008, a painting bought for $25 by a couple from Dallas was identified as a piece from Price's collection. Painted by leading Australian modernist Grace Cossington Smith, it was given a modern valuation of AU$45,000.
Cooking
Price was a gourmet cook, and he authored several cookbooks with his second wife, Mary. These include:
A Treasury of Great Recipes (1965)
Mary and Vincent Price present a National Treasury of Cookery (1967)
Mary and Vincent Price's Come into the Kitchen Cook Book: A Collector's Treasury of America's Great Recipes (1969)
Cooking Price-Wise with Vincent Price (1971)
Mary and Vincent Price present a National Treasury of Cookery was a five-volume series, packaged in a boxed set and published by the Heirloom Publishing Company. These five books were combined into a single book two years later and published as Mary and Vincent Price's Come into the Kitchen Cook Book: A Collector's Treasury of America's Great Recipes. Most of the Prices' cookbooks remained in print throughout the 1970s. After being out of print for several decades, two of their books were reprinted; A Treasury of Great Recipes (in August 2015 by Calla Editions) and Mary and Vincent Price's Come into the Kitchen Cook Book (in November 2016 by Calla Editions), both featuring new forewords by their daughter Victoria Price. Cooking Price-Wise with Vincent Price was scheduled to be reprinted by Dover Publishing in October 2017 under the updated title Cooking Price-Wise – The Original Foodie.
In 1971, Price hosted his own cooking program on British television, called Cooking Price-Wise produced for the ITV network by Thames Television, which was broadcast in April and May 1971. This show gave its name to Price's fourth and final cookbook later that year. Price promoted his cookbooks on many talk shows, one of the most famous instances being the November 21, 1975, broadcast of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, when he demonstrated how to poach a fish in a dishwasher.
Price recorded a number of audio cooking tutorials titled International Cooking Course. These were titled Bounty of Paradise, Classical Spanish Cuisine, Cuisina Italiana, Delights from the Sultan's Pantry, Dinner at the Casbah, Dining at Versailles, Exotic Delights from the Far East, Food of the Gods, Foods from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, La Cocina Mejicana, The Bard's Board, and The Wok. In addition to those, he recorded an audio wine course titled Wine Is Elegance. These audio recordings were released on 33⅓ LPs by Nelson Industries in 1977, and were also packaged in a 12-cassette boxed set titled Beverly Hills Cookbook – Cookbook of the Rich and Famous, Your Host Mr. Vincent Price.
In August 1982, he co-hosted A Taste of China for Thames Television over five episodes. He also prepared a fish recipe on Wolfgang Puck's Cooking with Wolfgang Puck VHS, released in October 1987 by Warner Home Video.
Personal life
Price married three times. His first marriage was in 1938 to former actress Edith Barrett; they had one son, poet and columnist Vincent Barrett Price. Edith and Price divorced in 1948. Price married Mary Grant in 1949, and they had a daughter, inspirational speaker Victoria Price, on April 27, 1962, naming her after Price's first major success in the play Victoria Regina. The marriage lasted until 1973. He married Australian actress Coral Browne in 1974; she had appeared as one of his victims in Theatre of Blood (1973). The marriage lasted until her death in 1991.
Victoria Price's biography Vincent Price: A Daughter's Biography (1999) details Price's early antisemitism and initial admiration for Adolf Hitler. According to his daughter: "When he went to Germany and Austria as a young man, he was struck by a lot of things going on during the Weimar Republic and the disillusion of the empire... So when Hitler came into power, instead of seeing him as a dangerous force, he was sort of swept up in this whole idea that Hitler was going to bring German pride back." However, Price became a liberal after becoming friends with New York intellectuals such as Dorothy Parker and Lillian Hellman in the 1930s, so much so that he was "greylisted" under McCarthyism in the 1950s for having been a prewar "premature anti-Nazi", and after being unable to find work for a year, agreed to requests by the FBI that he sign a "secret oath" to save his career. Victoria said that her father became so liberal that "one of my brother's earliest memories is when Franklin Roosevelt's death was announced, my father fell backwards off the sofa sobbing."
Price denounced racial and religious prejudice as a form of poison at the end of an episode of The Saint, which aired on NBC Radio on July 30, 1950,
claiming that Americans must actively fight against it because such prejudices within the United States fuels support for the nation's enemies. He was later appointed to the Indian Arts and Crafts Board under the Dwight D. Eisenhower administration; he called the appointment "kind of a surprise, since I am a Democrat".
Price was supportive of his daughter when she came out as a lesbian, and he was critical of Anita Bryant's anti-gay-rights campaign in the 1970s. In an interview in 2015, Victoria confirmed that her father confided with her of his intimate relationships with men when she came out to him as a lesbian.
Death
Price suffered from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and Parkinson's disease. His symptoms were especially severe during the filming of Edward Scissorhands, making cutting his filming schedule short a necessity. His illness also contributed to his retirement from Mystery! in 1989. He died at age 82 of lung cancer on October 25, 1993, at his home in Los Angeles, California. His remains were cremated and his ashes scattered off Point Dume in Malibu.
Legacy
The A&E Network aired an episode of Biography the night following Price's death, highlighting his horror-film career, but because of its failure to clear copyrights, the show was never aired again. Four years later, A&E produced its updated episode, titled Vincent Price: The Versatile Villain, which aired on October 12, 1997. The script was by Lucy Chase Williams, author of The Complete Films of Vincent Price. In early 1991, Tim Burton was developing a personal documentary with the working title Conversations with Vincent, in which interviews with Price were shot at the Vincent Price Gallery, but the project was never completed and was eventually shelved.
Rhythmeen, the ZZ Top album from 1996, includes a track named "Vincent Price Blues".
Price was an honorary board member and strong supporter of the Witch's Dungeon Classic Movie Museum in Bristol, Connecticut, until his death in 1993. The museum features detailed life-sized wax replicas of characters from some of Price's films, including The Fly, The Abominable Dr. Phibes, and The Masque of the Red Death. A black-box theater at Price's alma mater, Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School, is named after him.
Tim Burton directed a short stop-motion film as a tribute to Vincent Price called Vincent, about a young boy named Vincent Malloy who is obsessed with the grim and macabre; it is narrated by Price. "Vincent Twice, Vincent Twice" was a parody on Sesame Street. He was parodied in an episode of The Simpsons ("Sunday, Cruddy Sunday"). Price had his own Spitting Image puppet, who was always trying to be "sinister" and lure people into his ghoulish traps, only for his victims to point out all the obvious flaws.
Starting in November 2005, featured cast member Bill Hader of the NBC sketch comedy/variety show Saturday Night Live has played Price in a recurring sketch in which Price hosts botched holiday specials filled with celebrities of the 1950s/'60s. Other cast members who played Price on SNL include Dan Aykroyd and Michael McKean (who played Price when he hosted a season-10 episode and again when he was hired as a cast member for the 1994–95 season).
In 1999, a frank and detailed biography about Price written by his daughter, Victoria, was published by St. Martin's Press. In late May 2011, an event was held by the organization Cinema St. Louis to celebrate what would have been Price's 100th birthday. It included a public event with Victoria at the Missouri History Museum and a showcase of ephemeral and historic items at the gallery inside the Sheldon Concert Hall.
In an unusual convergence of widely different generational and cultural backgrounds, the genteel Price was a friend of the English hard rock band Deep Purple and in 1975, he appeared on Roger Glover's live version of The Butterfly Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast as a narrator. Decades later, in 2013, Deep Purple released "Vincent Price", a single the band members dedicated to him. That same year, American director and writer John Waters composed a "heartfelt and appreciative" retrospective on Price for Turner Classic Movies, which recognized the actor as its "Star of the Month" in October 2013 and showcased then a selection of his most popular films. The tribute was repeatedly broadcast on TCM to promote and complement those televised presentations. In sharing with viewers his feelings about Price, Waters at one point describes the actor's screen appeal, especially when he was featured in his darker roles:
Filmography
Radio appearances
Books
Introductions to Works by Others
Peter Haining (ed). The Ghouls. NY: Stein and Day, 1971.
Tom Hutchinson. Horror and Fantasy in the Movies. NY: Crescent Books, 1974.
Audio books
References
External links
Vincent Price Official Website
Vincent Price Gallery
St. Louis Walk of Fame
Vincent Price Papers catalog
Vincent Price at Virtual History
Cooking with Vincent, A Treasury Of Great Recipes
Vincent Price Papers (MS 1625). Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library.
1911 births
1993 deaths
20th Century Fox contract players
20th-century American male actors
20th-century American essayists
Alumni of the Courtauld Institute of Art
American art collectors
American people of English descent
American people of Welsh descent
American art writers
American autobiographers
American cookbook writers
American food writers
American male film actors
American male radio actors
American male stage actors
American male television actors
American male voice actors
Audiobook narrators
Philanthropists from New York (state)
Caedmon Records artists
American television hosts
California Democrats
Deaths from cancer in California
Deaths from emphysema
Deaths from lung cancer
LGBT rights activists from the United States
Male actors from Los Angeles
Male actors from St. Louis
Missouri Democrats
People with Parkinson's disease
The Yale Record alumni
Writers from Los Angeles
Writers from Missouri
20th-century American businesspeople
20th-century American male writers
American male non-fiction writers
Articles containing video clips
LGBT writers from the United States
Bisexual male actors
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American bisexual actors | false | [
"Přírodní park Třebíčsko (before Oblast klidu Třebíčsko) is a natural park near Třebíč in the Czech Republic. There are many interesting plants. The park was founded in 1983.\n\nKobylinec and Ptáčovský kopeček\n\nKobylinec is a natural monument situated ca 0,5 km from the village of Trnava.\nThe area of this monument is 0,44 ha. Pulsatilla grandis can be found here and in the Ptáčovský kopeček park near Ptáčov near Třebíč. Both monuments are very popular for tourists.\n\nPonds\n\nIn the natural park there are some interesting ponds such as Velký Bor, Malý Bor, Buršík near Přeckov and a brook Březinka. Dams on the brook are examples of European beaver activity.\n\nSyenitové skály near Pocoucov\n\nSyenitové skály (rocks of syenit) near Pocoucov is one of famed locations. There are interesting granite boulders. The area of the reservation is 0,77 ha.\n\nExternal links\nParts of this article or all article was translated from Czech. The original article is :cs:Přírodní park Třebíčsko.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nNature near the village Trnava which is there\n\nTřebíč\nParks in the Czech Republic\nTourist attractions in the Vysočina Region",
"Damn Interesting is an independent website founded by Alan Bellows in 2005. The website presents true stories from science, history, and psychology, primarily as long-form articles, often illustrated with original artwork. Works are written by various authors, and published at irregular intervals. The website openly rejects advertising, relying on reader and listener donations to cover operating costs.\n\nAs of October 2012, each article is also published as a podcast under the same name. In November 2019, a second podcast was launched under the title Damn Interesting Week, featuring unscripted commentary on an assortment of news articles featured on the website's \"Curated Links\" section that week. In mid-2020, a third podcast called Damn Interesting Curio Cabinet began highlighting the website's periodic short-form articles in the same radioplay format as the original podcast.\n\nIn July 2009, Damn Interesting published the print book Alien Hand Syndrome through Workman Publishing. It contains some favorites from the site and some exclusive content.\n\nAwards and recognition \nIn August 2007, PC Magazine named Damn Interesting one of the \"Top 100 Undiscovered Web Sites\".\nThe article \"The Zero-Armed Bandit\" by Alan Bellows won a 2015 Sidney Award from David Brooks in The New York Times.\nThe article \"Ghoulish Acts and Dastardly Deeds\" by Alan Bellows was cited as \"nonfiction journalism from 2017 that will stand the test of time\" by Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic.\nThe article \"Dupes and Duplicity\" by Jennifer Lee Noonan won a 2020 Sidney Award from David Brooks in the New York Times.\n\nAccusing The Dollop of plagiarism \n\nOn July 9, 2015, Bellows posted an open letter accusing The Dollop, a comedy podcast about history, of plagiarism due to their repeated use of verbatim text from Damn Interesting articles without permission or attribution. Dave Anthony, the writer of The Dollop, responded on reddit, admitting to using Damn Interesting content, but claiming that the use was protected by fair use, and that \"historical facts are not copyrightable.\" In an article about the controversy on Plagiarism Today, Jonathan Bailey concluded, \"Any way one looks at it, The Dollop failed its ethical obligations to all of the people, not just those writing for Damn Interesting, who put in the time, energy and expertise into writing the original content upon which their show is based.\"\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n Official website\n\n2005 podcast debuts"
]
|
[
"Vincent Price",
"Personal life",
"What was his family life like?",
"Price married three times.",
"Did he have children?",
"they had one son, Vincent Barrett Price, and divorced in 1948. A year later, in 1949, Price married Mary Grant, and they had a daughter,",
"Who is his most current wife?",
"Price's last marriage was in 1974 to Australian actress Coral Browne,",
"How was his life growing up?",
"I don't know.",
"Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?",
"His daughter has stated that she is \"as close to certain as (she) can be that (Price) had physically intimate relationships with men.\""
]
| C_9632aada122e45be87f8cc63486a96c7_0 | What does the article say about his acting career? | 6 | What does the article say about Vincent Price's acting career? | Vincent Price | Price married three times. His first marriage was in 1938 to former actress Edith Barrett; they had one son, Vincent Barrett Price, and divorced in 1948. A year later, in 1949, Price married Mary Grant, and they had a daughter, Victoria Price, on April 27, 1962. She was named Victoria after Price's first major success in the play Victoria Regina. The marriage lasted until 1973. Price's last marriage was in 1974 to Australian actress Coral Browne, who appeared with him (as one of his victims) in Theatre of Blood (1973). The marriage lasted until Browne's death in 1991. One example of his outspoken political action came when he concluded an old-time radio episode of The Saint, entitled "Author of Murder", which aired on NBC Radio on July 30, 1950. He denounced racial and religious prejudice as a form of poison and claimed Americans must actively fight against it because racial and religious prejudice within the United States fuels support for the nation's enemies. Price was later appointed to the Indian Arts and Crafts Board under the Dwight D. Eisenhower Administration; he called the appointment "kind of a surprise, since I am a Democrat." Price was supportive of his daughter, who came out as a lesbian, and was critical of Anita Bryant's anti-gay campaign in the 1970s. He was an honorary board member of PFLAG and among the first celebrities to appear in public service announcements discussing AIDS with the public. His daughter has stated that she is "as close to certain as (she) can be that (Price) had physically intimate relationships with men." although never confirmed by anyone else. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Vincent Leonard Price Jr. (May 27, 1911 – October 25, 1993) was an American actor best known for his performances in horror films, although his career spanned other genres. He appeared on stage, television, and radio, and in more than 100 films. Price has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for motion pictures and one for television.
Price's first film role was as leading man in the 1938 comedy Service de Luxe. He became well known as a character actor, appearing in films such as The Song of Bernadette (1943), Laura (1944), The Keys of the Kingdom (1944), Leave Her to Heaven (1945), Dragonwyck (1946), and The Ten Commandments (1956). He established himself as a recognizable horror-movie star after his leading role in House of Wax (1953). He subsequently starred in other horror films, including The Fly (1958), House on Haunted Hill (1959), Return of the Fly (1959), The Tingler (1959), The Last Man on Earth (1964), Witchfinder General (1968), The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971), and Theatre of Blood (1973). He was also known for his collaborations with Roger Corman on Edgar Allan Poe adaptations such as House of Usher (1960), The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), and The Masque of the Red Death (1964). Price occasionally appeared on television series, such as in Batman as Egghead.
In his later years, Price voiced the villainous Professor Ratigan in Disney's classic animated film The Great Mouse Detective (1986), then appeared in the drama The Whales of August (1987), which earned him an Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Male nomination, and in Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands (1990), his last theatrical release. For his contributions to cinema, especially to genre films, he has received lifetime achievement or special tribute awards from Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films, Fantasporto, Bram Stoker Awards, and Los Angeles Film Critics Association. Price narrated several animation films, radio dramas and documentaries, as well as the monologue on Michael Jackson's song "Thriller". For his voice work in Great American Speeches (1959), Price was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album.
Price was also an art collector and arts consultant, with a degree in art history, and he lectured and wrote books on the subject. The Vincent Price Art Museum at East Los Angeles College is named in his honor. Price was also a noted gourmet cook.
Early life and career
Vincent Leonard Price Jr. was born on May 27, 1911, in St. Louis, Missouri, the youngest of the four children of Vincent Leonard Price Sr., president of the National Candy Company, and his wife Marguerite Cobb (née Wilcox) Price. His grandfather was Vincent Clarence Price, who invented "Dr. Price's Baking Powder", the first cream of tartar-based baking powder, and it secured the family's fortune. Price was of Welsh and English descent and was a descendant of Peregrine White, the first white child born in colonial Massachusetts, being born on the Mayflower while it was in Provincetown Harbor.
Price attended the St. Louis Country Day School and Milford Academy in Milford, Connecticut. In 1933, he graduated with a degree in English and a minor in art history from Yale University, where he worked on the campus humor magazine The Yale Record. After teaching for a year, he entered the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, intending to study for a master's degree in fine arts. Instead, he was drawn to the theater, first appearing on stage professionally in 1934. His acting career began in London in 1935, performing with Orson Welles's Mercury Theatre.
In 1936, Price appeared as Prince Albert in the American production of Laurence Housman's play Victoria Regina, which starred Helen Hayes in the title role of Queen Victoria.
Introduction to film roles
Price started out in films as a character actor. He made his film debut in Service de Luxe (1938), and established himself in the film Laura (1944), opposite Gene Tierney, directed by Otto Preminger. He played Joseph Smith in the movie Brigham Young (1940) and William Gibbs McAdoo in Wilson (1944), as well as Bernadette's prosecutor, Vital Dutour, in The Song of Bernadette (1943), and as a pretentious priest in The Keys of the Kingdom (1944).
Price's first venture into the horror genre, for which he later became best known, was in the Boris Karloff film Tower of London (1939). The following year, Price portrayed the title character in The Invisible Man Returns (a role he reprised in a voice-only cameo in the closing scene of the horror-comedy spoof Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein released in 1948). He reunited with Tierney in Leave Her to Heaven (1945) and Dragonwyck (1946). He also had many villainous roles in film noir thrillers such as The Web (1947), The Long Night (1947), Rogues' Regiment (1948), and The Bribe (1949), with Robert Taylor, Ava Gardner, and Charles Laughton.
Price's first starring role was as con man James Reavis in the biopic The Baron of Arizona (1950). He did a comedic turn as the tycoon Burnbridge Waters, co-starring with Ronald Colman in Champagne for Caesar (also 1950), one of his favorite film roles.
Price was active in radio, portraying the Robin Hood-inspired crime-fighter Simon Templar in The Saint, which ran from 1947 to 1951. In the 1950s, Price moved into more regular horror-film roles with the leading role in House of Wax (1953) as a homicidal sculptor, the first three-dimensional film to land in the year's top 10 at the North American box-office. His next roles were The Mad Magician (1954), the monster movie The Fly (1958), and its sequel Return of the Fly (1959). That same year, Price starred in two thrillers by producer-director William Castle: House on Haunted Hill as eccentric millionaire Fredrick Loren, and The Tingler as Dr. Warren Chapin, who discovered the titular creature. He appeared in the radio drama Three Skeleton Key, the story of an island lighthouse besieged by an army of rats. He had first performed the work in 1950 on Escape and returned to it in 1956 and 1958 for Suspense.
Outside the horror realm, Price played Baka in The Ten Commandments, released in 1956. About this time, he also appeared in episodes of television shows such as Science Fiction Theatre, Playhouse 90, and General Electric Theater. In the 1955–56 television season, he was cast three times on the religion anthology series Crossroads. In the 1955 episode "Cleanup", Price portrayed the Reverend Robert Russell. In 1956, he was cast as Rabbi Gershom Mendes Seixas in "The Rebel", and as the Rev. Alfred W. Price in "God's Healing".
1960s
In the 1960s, Price achieved a number of low-budget filmmaking successes with Roger Corman and American International Pictures (AIP) starting with the House of Usher (1960), which earned over $2 million at the box office in the United States and led to the subsequent Edgar Allan Poe adaptations of The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), Tales of Terror (1962), The Comedy of Terrors (1963), The Raven (1963), The Masque of the Red Death (1964), and The Tomb of Ligeia (1964). He starred in The Last Man on Earth (1964), the first adaptation of the Richard Matheson novel I Am Legend, and portrayed witch hunter Matthew Hopkins in Witchfinder General (US: The Conqueror Worm, 1968) set during the English Civil War. Price also starred in comedy films such as Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine (1965) and its sequel Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs (1966). In 1968, he played the part of an eccentric artist in the musical Darling of the Day, opposite Patricia Routledge.
In the 1960s, Price began his role as a guest on the television game show Hollywood Squares, becoming a semiregular in the 1970s, including being one of the guest panelists on the finale in 1980.
Price made many guest-star appearances in television shows during the decade, including The Red Skelton Show, Daniel Boone, F Troop, Get Smart, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. He had a recurring role in the Batman TV series as the villain Egghead from 1966 to 1967. In 1964, he provided the narration for the Tombstone Historama in Tombstone, Arizona, which was still in operation as of 2016. He also starred as the host of the Australian TV series If These Walls Could Speak, in which a short history of a historical building (supposedly narrated by the building itself) was covered, and as the narrating voice of the building.
Later career
During the early 1970s, Price hosted and starred in BBC Radio's horror and mystery series The Price of Fear. He accepted a cameo part in the Canadian children's television program The Hilarious House of Frightenstein (1971) in Hamilton, Ontario, on the local television station CHCH-TV. In addition to the opening and closing monologues, his role in the show was to recite poems about various characters, sometimes wearing a cloak or other costumes. He appeared in The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971), its sequel Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1972), and Theatre of Blood (1973), in which he portrayed one of two serial killers. That same year, he appeared as himself in Mooch Goes to Hollywood, a film written by Jim Backus.
Price was an admirer of the works of Edgar Allan Poe, and in 1975 visited the Edgar Allan Poe Museum in Richmond, Virginia, where he had his picture taken with the museum's popular stuffed raven. Price also recorded dramatic readings of Poe's short stories and poems, which were collected together with readings by Basil Rathbone.
In 1975, Price and his wife Coral Browne appeared together in an international stage adaptation of Ardèle, which played in the U.S. and in London at the Queen's Theatre. During this run, Browne and Price starred together in the BBC Radio play Night of the Wolf first airing in 1975. Price greatly reduced his film work from around 1975, as horror itself suffered a slump, and he increased his narrative and voice work, as well as advertising Milton Bradley's Shrunken Head Apple Sculpture.
Price provided a monologue for the Alice Cooper song "Devil's Food" on the Welcome to My Nightmare album in 1975, and he appeared in the corresponding TV special Alice Cooper: The Nightmare. He starred for a year in the early 1970s in the syndicated daily radio program Tales of the Unexplained. He made guest appearances in a 1970 episode of Here's Lucy, showcasing his art expertise, and in a 1972 episode of ABC's The Brady Bunch, in which he played a deranged archaeologist. In October 1976, he appeared as the featured guest in an episode of The Muppet Show.
In 1977, Price began performing as Oscar Wilde in the one-man stage play Diversions and Delights, written by John Gay and directed by Joe Hardy, and set in a Parisian theatre on a night about one year before Wilde's death. The original tour of the play was a success in every city except for New York City. In the summer of 1979, Price performed the role of Wilde at the Tabor Opera House in Leadville, Colorado, on the same stage from which Wilde had spoken to miners about art some 96 years before. He eventually performed the play worldwide. Victoria Price stated in her biography of her father that several members of Price's family and friends thought that this was his best acting performance.
In 1979, Price starred with his wife in the short-lived CBS series Time Express. That same year he hosted the hour-long television special America Screams, riding on several roller coasters and recounting their history. During 1979–1980, he hosted the "Mystery Night" segment of the radio series Sears Radio Theater.
In 1982, Price provided the narrator's voice in Vincent, Tim Burton's six-minute film about a young boy who flashes from reality into a fantasy where he is Vincent Price. He appeared as Sir Despard Murgatroyd in a 1982 television production of Gilbert and Sullivan's Ruddigore (with Keith Michell as Robin Oakapple). In 1982, Price provided the spoken-word sequence to the end of the Michael Jackson song "Thriller". In 1983, he played the Sinister Man in the British spoof horror film Bloodbath at the House of Death. He appeared in House of the Long Shadows with Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, and John Carradine; he had worked with each of those actors at least once in previous decades, but this was the first time that all had teamed up. One of his last major roles, and one of his favorites, was as the voice of Professor Ratigan in Walt Disney Pictures' The Great Mouse Detective in 1986.
From 1981 to 1989, Price hosted the PBS television series Mystery! In 1985, he provided voice talent on the Hanna-Barbera series The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo as the mysterious "Vincent Van Ghoul", who aided Scooby-Doo, Scrappy-Doo, and the gang in recapturing thirteen demons. He was a lifelong fan of roller coasters, and he narrated a 1987 thirty-minute documentary on the history of roller coasters and amusement parks, including Coney Island. During this time (1985–1989), he appeared in horror-themed commercials for Tilex bathroom cleanser.
In 1984, Price appeared in Shelley Duvall's live-action series Faerie Tale Theatre as the Mirror in "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", and the narrator for "The Boy Who Left Home to Find Out About the Shivers". In 1987, he starred with Bette Davis, Lillian Gish, and Ann Sothern in The Whales of August, a story of two sisters living in Maine facing the end of their days. His performance in The Whales of August earned the only award nomination of his career, an Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Male.
In 1989, Price was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame. His last significant film work was as the inventor in Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands (1990).
In 1990, Price recorded the narration as the Phantom for Disneyland Paris's Phantom Manor. After the attraction opened in 1992, though, the narration was shortly removed and replaced with one entirely in French, performed by Gérard Chevalier. Only Price's infamous laughter remained on the soundtrack. In 2018, during Phantom Manor's major renovation, parts of Price's narration were announced to be restored to the soundtrack of the attraction. Since the 2019 reopening, the new tracks are dual-language; Price's original excerpts as well as previously unused material from his 1990 recording comprise the English-speaking portions, while actor Bernard Alane voices the Phantom in French.
Art
Price, who studied art history at Yale, was an art lover and collector. He was a commissioner of the Indian Arts and Crafts Board.
In 1957, impressed by the spirit of the students and the community's need for the opportunity to experience original art works first hand, Vincent and Mary Grant Price donated 90 pieces from their private collection and a large amount of money to establish the Vincent Price Art Museum at East Los Angeles College in Monterey Park, California, which was the first "teaching art collection" owned by a community college in the United States. They ultimately donated some 2,000 pieces; the collection contains over 9,000 pieces and has been valued in excess of $5 million.
Price also spent time working as an art consultant for Sears-Roebuck: From 1962 to 1971, Sears offered the "Vincent Price Collection of Fine Art", selling about 50,000 fine-art prints to the general public. Works which Price selected or commissioned for the collection included some by Rembrandt, Pablo Picasso, and Salvador Dalí. Public access to fine art was important to Price, who according to his daughter Victoria, saw the Sears deal as an "opportunity to put his populist beliefs into practice, to bring art to the American public." In the 1960s, portraits painted by Charles Bird King, of Native Americans were secured for Jacqueline Kennedy's White House Restoration. Through the efforts of Vincent Price these five paintings were paid for and donated to the White House Collection by Sears-Roebuck.
Price amassed his own extensive collection of art, and in 2008, a painting bought for $25 by a couple from Dallas was identified as a piece from Price's collection. Painted by leading Australian modernist Grace Cossington Smith, it was given a modern valuation of AU$45,000.
Cooking
Price was a gourmet cook, and he authored several cookbooks with his second wife, Mary. These include:
A Treasury of Great Recipes (1965)
Mary and Vincent Price present a National Treasury of Cookery (1967)
Mary and Vincent Price's Come into the Kitchen Cook Book: A Collector's Treasury of America's Great Recipes (1969)
Cooking Price-Wise with Vincent Price (1971)
Mary and Vincent Price present a National Treasury of Cookery was a five-volume series, packaged in a boxed set and published by the Heirloom Publishing Company. These five books were combined into a single book two years later and published as Mary and Vincent Price's Come into the Kitchen Cook Book: A Collector's Treasury of America's Great Recipes. Most of the Prices' cookbooks remained in print throughout the 1970s. After being out of print for several decades, two of their books were reprinted; A Treasury of Great Recipes (in August 2015 by Calla Editions) and Mary and Vincent Price's Come into the Kitchen Cook Book (in November 2016 by Calla Editions), both featuring new forewords by their daughter Victoria Price. Cooking Price-Wise with Vincent Price was scheduled to be reprinted by Dover Publishing in October 2017 under the updated title Cooking Price-Wise – The Original Foodie.
In 1971, Price hosted his own cooking program on British television, called Cooking Price-Wise produced for the ITV network by Thames Television, which was broadcast in April and May 1971. This show gave its name to Price's fourth and final cookbook later that year. Price promoted his cookbooks on many talk shows, one of the most famous instances being the November 21, 1975, broadcast of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, when he demonstrated how to poach a fish in a dishwasher.
Price recorded a number of audio cooking tutorials titled International Cooking Course. These were titled Bounty of Paradise, Classical Spanish Cuisine, Cuisina Italiana, Delights from the Sultan's Pantry, Dinner at the Casbah, Dining at Versailles, Exotic Delights from the Far East, Food of the Gods, Foods from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, La Cocina Mejicana, The Bard's Board, and The Wok. In addition to those, he recorded an audio wine course titled Wine Is Elegance. These audio recordings were released on 33⅓ LPs by Nelson Industries in 1977, and were also packaged in a 12-cassette boxed set titled Beverly Hills Cookbook – Cookbook of the Rich and Famous, Your Host Mr. Vincent Price.
In August 1982, he co-hosted A Taste of China for Thames Television over five episodes. He also prepared a fish recipe on Wolfgang Puck's Cooking with Wolfgang Puck VHS, released in October 1987 by Warner Home Video.
Personal life
Price married three times. His first marriage was in 1938 to former actress Edith Barrett; they had one son, poet and columnist Vincent Barrett Price. Edith and Price divorced in 1948. Price married Mary Grant in 1949, and they had a daughter, inspirational speaker Victoria Price, on April 27, 1962, naming her after Price's first major success in the play Victoria Regina. The marriage lasted until 1973. He married Australian actress Coral Browne in 1974; she had appeared as one of his victims in Theatre of Blood (1973). The marriage lasted until her death in 1991.
Victoria Price's biography Vincent Price: A Daughter's Biography (1999) details Price's early antisemitism and initial admiration for Adolf Hitler. According to his daughter: "When he went to Germany and Austria as a young man, he was struck by a lot of things going on during the Weimar Republic and the disillusion of the empire... So when Hitler came into power, instead of seeing him as a dangerous force, he was sort of swept up in this whole idea that Hitler was going to bring German pride back." However, Price became a liberal after becoming friends with New York intellectuals such as Dorothy Parker and Lillian Hellman in the 1930s, so much so that he was "greylisted" under McCarthyism in the 1950s for having been a prewar "premature anti-Nazi", and after being unable to find work for a year, agreed to requests by the FBI that he sign a "secret oath" to save his career. Victoria said that her father became so liberal that "one of my brother's earliest memories is when Franklin Roosevelt's death was announced, my father fell backwards off the sofa sobbing."
Price denounced racial and religious prejudice as a form of poison at the end of an episode of The Saint, which aired on NBC Radio on July 30, 1950,
claiming that Americans must actively fight against it because such prejudices within the United States fuels support for the nation's enemies. He was later appointed to the Indian Arts and Crafts Board under the Dwight D. Eisenhower administration; he called the appointment "kind of a surprise, since I am a Democrat".
Price was supportive of his daughter when she came out as a lesbian, and he was critical of Anita Bryant's anti-gay-rights campaign in the 1970s. In an interview in 2015, Victoria confirmed that her father confided with her of his intimate relationships with men when she came out to him as a lesbian.
Death
Price suffered from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and Parkinson's disease. His symptoms were especially severe during the filming of Edward Scissorhands, making cutting his filming schedule short a necessity. His illness also contributed to his retirement from Mystery! in 1989. He died at age 82 of lung cancer on October 25, 1993, at his home in Los Angeles, California. His remains were cremated and his ashes scattered off Point Dume in Malibu.
Legacy
The A&E Network aired an episode of Biography the night following Price's death, highlighting his horror-film career, but because of its failure to clear copyrights, the show was never aired again. Four years later, A&E produced its updated episode, titled Vincent Price: The Versatile Villain, which aired on October 12, 1997. The script was by Lucy Chase Williams, author of The Complete Films of Vincent Price. In early 1991, Tim Burton was developing a personal documentary with the working title Conversations with Vincent, in which interviews with Price were shot at the Vincent Price Gallery, but the project was never completed and was eventually shelved.
Rhythmeen, the ZZ Top album from 1996, includes a track named "Vincent Price Blues".
Price was an honorary board member and strong supporter of the Witch's Dungeon Classic Movie Museum in Bristol, Connecticut, until his death in 1993. The museum features detailed life-sized wax replicas of characters from some of Price's films, including The Fly, The Abominable Dr. Phibes, and The Masque of the Red Death. A black-box theater at Price's alma mater, Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School, is named after him.
Tim Burton directed a short stop-motion film as a tribute to Vincent Price called Vincent, about a young boy named Vincent Malloy who is obsessed with the grim and macabre; it is narrated by Price. "Vincent Twice, Vincent Twice" was a parody on Sesame Street. He was parodied in an episode of The Simpsons ("Sunday, Cruddy Sunday"). Price had his own Spitting Image puppet, who was always trying to be "sinister" and lure people into his ghoulish traps, only for his victims to point out all the obvious flaws.
Starting in November 2005, featured cast member Bill Hader of the NBC sketch comedy/variety show Saturday Night Live has played Price in a recurring sketch in which Price hosts botched holiday specials filled with celebrities of the 1950s/'60s. Other cast members who played Price on SNL include Dan Aykroyd and Michael McKean (who played Price when he hosted a season-10 episode and again when he was hired as a cast member for the 1994–95 season).
In 1999, a frank and detailed biography about Price written by his daughter, Victoria, was published by St. Martin's Press. In late May 2011, an event was held by the organization Cinema St. Louis to celebrate what would have been Price's 100th birthday. It included a public event with Victoria at the Missouri History Museum and a showcase of ephemeral and historic items at the gallery inside the Sheldon Concert Hall.
In an unusual convergence of widely different generational and cultural backgrounds, the genteel Price was a friend of the English hard rock band Deep Purple and in 1975, he appeared on Roger Glover's live version of The Butterfly Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast as a narrator. Decades later, in 2013, Deep Purple released "Vincent Price", a single the band members dedicated to him. That same year, American director and writer John Waters composed a "heartfelt and appreciative" retrospective on Price for Turner Classic Movies, which recognized the actor as its "Star of the Month" in October 2013 and showcased then a selection of his most popular films. The tribute was repeatedly broadcast on TCM to promote and complement those televised presentations. In sharing with viewers his feelings about Price, Waters at one point describes the actor's screen appeal, especially when he was featured in his darker roles:
Filmography
Radio appearances
Books
Introductions to Works by Others
Peter Haining (ed). The Ghouls. NY: Stein and Day, 1971.
Tom Hutchinson. Horror and Fantasy in the Movies. NY: Crescent Books, 1974.
Audio books
References
External links
Vincent Price Official Website
Vincent Price Gallery
St. Louis Walk of Fame
Vincent Price Papers catalog
Vincent Price at Virtual History
Cooking with Vincent, A Treasury Of Great Recipes
Vincent Price Papers (MS 1625). Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library.
1911 births
1993 deaths
20th Century Fox contract players
20th-century American male actors
20th-century American essayists
Alumni of the Courtauld Institute of Art
American art collectors
American people of English descent
American people of Welsh descent
American art writers
American autobiographers
American cookbook writers
American food writers
American male film actors
American male radio actors
American male stage actors
American male television actors
American male voice actors
Audiobook narrators
Philanthropists from New York (state)
Caedmon Records artists
American television hosts
California Democrats
Deaths from cancer in California
Deaths from emphysema
Deaths from lung cancer
LGBT rights activists from the United States
Male actors from Los Angeles
Male actors from St. Louis
Missouri Democrats
People with Parkinson's disease
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Writers from Los Angeles
Writers from Missouri
20th-century American businesspeople
20th-century American male writers
American male non-fiction writers
Articles containing video clips
LGBT writers from the United States
Bisexual male actors
Bisexual writers
American bisexual actors | false | [
"The philosophy of thermal and statistical physics is that part of the philosophy of physics whose subject matter is an amalgam of classical thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, and related theories. Its central questions include: What is entropy, and what does the second law of thermodynamics say about it? Does either thermodynamics or statistical mechanics contain an element of time-irreversibility? If so, what does statistical mechanics tell us about the arrow of time? What is the nature of the probabilities that appear in statistical mechanics?\n\nSee also \n Laws of thermodynamics\n Maxwell's demon\n H-theorem\n Maximum entropy thermodynamics\n Entropy in thermodynamics and information theory\n\nReferences \n\n Uffink, J., 2001, \"Bluff your way in the second law of thermodynamics,\" Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 32(3): 305–94.\n --------, 2007, \"Compendium of the Foundations of Classical Statistical Physics\" in Butterfield, J., and John Earman, eds., Philosophy of Physics, Part B. North Holland: 923–1074.\n Valev, P., 2002, \"The Law of Self-Acting Machines and Irreversible Processes with reversible Replicas,\" in Sheehan, D., (ed.) Proceedings of the First International conference on Quantum Limits to the Second Law, American Institute of Physics: 430–35.\n Martinas et al., Thermodynamics: History And Philosophy - Facts, Trends, Debates\n Hoyer, Thermodynamics and Philosophy: Ludwig Boltzmann\n Sklar, Physics and Chance: Philosophical Issues in the Foundations of Statistical Mechanics\n Ernst & Hüttemann, Time, Chance, and Reduction: Philosophical Aspects of Statistical Mechanics\n\nExternal links\n \n \n\n \nPhilosophy of physics",
"Dona Hardy (December 3, 1912 – February 13, 2011), sometimes misspelled as Donna Hardy, was an American film and television actress.\n\nEarly life\nJean Dona Barley was born December 3, 1912 in Los Angeles to Ethel Macgillivoy Barley. In the early 1930s she toured the United States with a dance troupe, but left and returned to her native Los Angeles during the Depression. She briefly dated an up-and-coming, but still largely unknown, actor named Anthony Quinn. She was the Executive Director of a United Way affiliate, and retired at age 66, when she looked to begin her acting career.\n\nActing career\nHardy began her acting career late in life, usually playing sweet, sometimes deceptively harmless-looking old ladies. During her acting career, Hardy bedded John Ritter, kissed Matthew Perry, and, fitted with a walker, was asked by faux-auteur Jerry Stiller (in an episode of The King of Queens) to consider \"some tasteful nudity\" for a community theater production of The Gin Game. She worked with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Richard Dawson in her first film credit, the Stephen King-penned thriller, The Running Man, in which she had played \"Mrs. McArdle\" and had to say a certain 12 letter hyphenated vulgarism. \"There is nothing that people enjoy so much as hearing old people say dirty words.... I don't know what's so attractive about that, but every old lady knows she is going to be asked to say the 'F' word sooner or later.\" Her second film credit, When Harry Met Sally..., was her favorite film. Her last role was in 2010.\n\nPersonal life\nShe married Irving Hardekopf in 1946; the couple adopted a son and remained together until his death in 1980. Widowed, she adapted her acting name from a shortened version of her married name. In 2009, she relocated with her son, Bill, a former president/general manager of the Birmingham Barons, to the Birmingham area, where she died on February 13, 2011, aged 98.\n\nSelected filmography\n\nFilms\n The Running Man (1987) - Mrs. McArdle\n When Harry Met Sally... (1989) - Documentary Couple #10\n Shattered (1991) - Pet Shop Woman\n We're Talking Serious Money (1992) - Old Lady\n Universal Soldier (1992) - Old Woman\n Rave Review (1994) - Complaining Patron\n The Cable Guy (1996) - Karaoke Party Guest\n Dogtown (1997) - Other Cast\n The Truman Show (1998) - Senior Citizen\n Civility (2000) - Danni\n Nurse Betty (2000) - Woman Patient\n Sordid Lives (2000) - Mrs. King (Organist)\n Attention Shoppers (2000) - Old Woman\n Serial Killing 4 Dummys (2004) - Rose\n You Did What? (2006) - Neighbor\n Choose Connor (2007) - Old Woman\n Superbad (2007) - Old Lady\n Extreme Movie (2008) - Molly\n Timer (2009) - Sadie\n Spork (2010) - Old Lady\n How to Make Love to a Woman (2010) - Grandma Conners (final film role)\n\nTelevision\n Quantum Leap (1989) - Grey Haired Lady\n Designing Women (1990, 1991) - Margaret / Mrs. Chesley\n Night Court (1992) - Margaret Keane\n Hearts Afire (1993, 1994) - Aunt Grace / Elderly Woman / Dorothy Bingham\n ER (1994, 2008) - Freda / Harriet\n The Nanny (1998) - Sister\n Reba (2002) - Mrs. Wolf\n Malcolm in the Middle (2003) - Old Lady\n Charmed (2004) - Old Paige\n The King of Queens (2005) - Minna\n My Name Is Earl (2006) - Hank's Grandmother\n Grey's Anatomy (2006) - Grace Bickham\n It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (2006) - Old Woman\n Bones (2008) - Nadine Spring\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n (does not contain the correct spelling of Hardy's first name or her date of birth or places of birth and death)\n\n1912 births\n2011 deaths\nAmerican film actresses\nAmerican television actresses\nActresses from Los Angeles\n21st-century American women"
]
|
[
"Vincent Price",
"Personal life",
"What was his family life like?",
"Price married three times.",
"Did he have children?",
"they had one son, Vincent Barrett Price, and divorced in 1948. A year later, in 1949, Price married Mary Grant, and they had a daughter,",
"Who is his most current wife?",
"Price's last marriage was in 1974 to Australian actress Coral Browne,",
"How was his life growing up?",
"I don't know.",
"Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?",
"His daughter has stated that she is \"as close to certain as (she) can be that (Price) had physically intimate relationships with men.\"",
"What does the article say about his acting career?",
"I don't know."
]
| C_9632aada122e45be87f8cc63486a96c7_0 | Did his children stay close to him? | 7 | Did Vincent Price's children stay close to him? | Vincent Price | Price married three times. His first marriage was in 1938 to former actress Edith Barrett; they had one son, Vincent Barrett Price, and divorced in 1948. A year later, in 1949, Price married Mary Grant, and they had a daughter, Victoria Price, on April 27, 1962. She was named Victoria after Price's first major success in the play Victoria Regina. The marriage lasted until 1973. Price's last marriage was in 1974 to Australian actress Coral Browne, who appeared with him (as one of his victims) in Theatre of Blood (1973). The marriage lasted until Browne's death in 1991. One example of his outspoken political action came when he concluded an old-time radio episode of The Saint, entitled "Author of Murder", which aired on NBC Radio on July 30, 1950. He denounced racial and religious prejudice as a form of poison and claimed Americans must actively fight against it because racial and religious prejudice within the United States fuels support for the nation's enemies. Price was later appointed to the Indian Arts and Crafts Board under the Dwight D. Eisenhower Administration; he called the appointment "kind of a surprise, since I am a Democrat." Price was supportive of his daughter, who came out as a lesbian, and was critical of Anita Bryant's anti-gay campaign in the 1970s. He was an honorary board member of PFLAG and among the first celebrities to appear in public service announcements discussing AIDS with the public. His daughter has stated that she is "as close to certain as (she) can be that (Price) had physically intimate relationships with men." although never confirmed by anyone else. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Vincent Leonard Price Jr. (May 27, 1911 – October 25, 1993) was an American actor best known for his performances in horror films, although his career spanned other genres. He appeared on stage, television, and radio, and in more than 100 films. Price has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for motion pictures and one for television.
Price's first film role was as leading man in the 1938 comedy Service de Luxe. He became well known as a character actor, appearing in films such as The Song of Bernadette (1943), Laura (1944), The Keys of the Kingdom (1944), Leave Her to Heaven (1945), Dragonwyck (1946), and The Ten Commandments (1956). He established himself as a recognizable horror-movie star after his leading role in House of Wax (1953). He subsequently starred in other horror films, including The Fly (1958), House on Haunted Hill (1959), Return of the Fly (1959), The Tingler (1959), The Last Man on Earth (1964), Witchfinder General (1968), The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971), and Theatre of Blood (1973). He was also known for his collaborations with Roger Corman on Edgar Allan Poe adaptations such as House of Usher (1960), The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), and The Masque of the Red Death (1964). Price occasionally appeared on television series, such as in Batman as Egghead.
In his later years, Price voiced the villainous Professor Ratigan in Disney's classic animated film The Great Mouse Detective (1986), then appeared in the drama The Whales of August (1987), which earned him an Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Male nomination, and in Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands (1990), his last theatrical release. For his contributions to cinema, especially to genre films, he has received lifetime achievement or special tribute awards from Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films, Fantasporto, Bram Stoker Awards, and Los Angeles Film Critics Association. Price narrated several animation films, radio dramas and documentaries, as well as the monologue on Michael Jackson's song "Thriller". For his voice work in Great American Speeches (1959), Price was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album.
Price was also an art collector and arts consultant, with a degree in art history, and he lectured and wrote books on the subject. The Vincent Price Art Museum at East Los Angeles College is named in his honor. Price was also a noted gourmet cook.
Early life and career
Vincent Leonard Price Jr. was born on May 27, 1911, in St. Louis, Missouri, the youngest of the four children of Vincent Leonard Price Sr., president of the National Candy Company, and his wife Marguerite Cobb (née Wilcox) Price. His grandfather was Vincent Clarence Price, who invented "Dr. Price's Baking Powder", the first cream of tartar-based baking powder, and it secured the family's fortune. Price was of Welsh and English descent and was a descendant of Peregrine White, the first white child born in colonial Massachusetts, being born on the Mayflower while it was in Provincetown Harbor.
Price attended the St. Louis Country Day School and Milford Academy in Milford, Connecticut. In 1933, he graduated with a degree in English and a minor in art history from Yale University, where he worked on the campus humor magazine The Yale Record. After teaching for a year, he entered the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, intending to study for a master's degree in fine arts. Instead, he was drawn to the theater, first appearing on stage professionally in 1934. His acting career began in London in 1935, performing with Orson Welles's Mercury Theatre.
In 1936, Price appeared as Prince Albert in the American production of Laurence Housman's play Victoria Regina, which starred Helen Hayes in the title role of Queen Victoria.
Introduction to film roles
Price started out in films as a character actor. He made his film debut in Service de Luxe (1938), and established himself in the film Laura (1944), opposite Gene Tierney, directed by Otto Preminger. He played Joseph Smith in the movie Brigham Young (1940) and William Gibbs McAdoo in Wilson (1944), as well as Bernadette's prosecutor, Vital Dutour, in The Song of Bernadette (1943), and as a pretentious priest in The Keys of the Kingdom (1944).
Price's first venture into the horror genre, for which he later became best known, was in the Boris Karloff film Tower of London (1939). The following year, Price portrayed the title character in The Invisible Man Returns (a role he reprised in a voice-only cameo in the closing scene of the horror-comedy spoof Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein released in 1948). He reunited with Tierney in Leave Her to Heaven (1945) and Dragonwyck (1946). He also had many villainous roles in film noir thrillers such as The Web (1947), The Long Night (1947), Rogues' Regiment (1948), and The Bribe (1949), with Robert Taylor, Ava Gardner, and Charles Laughton.
Price's first starring role was as con man James Reavis in the biopic The Baron of Arizona (1950). He did a comedic turn as the tycoon Burnbridge Waters, co-starring with Ronald Colman in Champagne for Caesar (also 1950), one of his favorite film roles.
Price was active in radio, portraying the Robin Hood-inspired crime-fighter Simon Templar in The Saint, which ran from 1947 to 1951. In the 1950s, Price moved into more regular horror-film roles with the leading role in House of Wax (1953) as a homicidal sculptor, the first three-dimensional film to land in the year's top 10 at the North American box-office. His next roles were The Mad Magician (1954), the monster movie The Fly (1958), and its sequel Return of the Fly (1959). That same year, Price starred in two thrillers by producer-director William Castle: House on Haunted Hill as eccentric millionaire Fredrick Loren, and The Tingler as Dr. Warren Chapin, who discovered the titular creature. He appeared in the radio drama Three Skeleton Key, the story of an island lighthouse besieged by an army of rats. He had first performed the work in 1950 on Escape and returned to it in 1956 and 1958 for Suspense.
Outside the horror realm, Price played Baka in The Ten Commandments, released in 1956. About this time, he also appeared in episodes of television shows such as Science Fiction Theatre, Playhouse 90, and General Electric Theater. In the 1955–56 television season, he was cast three times on the religion anthology series Crossroads. In the 1955 episode "Cleanup", Price portrayed the Reverend Robert Russell. In 1956, he was cast as Rabbi Gershom Mendes Seixas in "The Rebel", and as the Rev. Alfred W. Price in "God's Healing".
1960s
In the 1960s, Price achieved a number of low-budget filmmaking successes with Roger Corman and American International Pictures (AIP) starting with the House of Usher (1960), which earned over $2 million at the box office in the United States and led to the subsequent Edgar Allan Poe adaptations of The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), Tales of Terror (1962), The Comedy of Terrors (1963), The Raven (1963), The Masque of the Red Death (1964), and The Tomb of Ligeia (1964). He starred in The Last Man on Earth (1964), the first adaptation of the Richard Matheson novel I Am Legend, and portrayed witch hunter Matthew Hopkins in Witchfinder General (US: The Conqueror Worm, 1968) set during the English Civil War. Price also starred in comedy films such as Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine (1965) and its sequel Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs (1966). In 1968, he played the part of an eccentric artist in the musical Darling of the Day, opposite Patricia Routledge.
In the 1960s, Price began his role as a guest on the television game show Hollywood Squares, becoming a semiregular in the 1970s, including being one of the guest panelists on the finale in 1980.
Price made many guest-star appearances in television shows during the decade, including The Red Skelton Show, Daniel Boone, F Troop, Get Smart, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. He had a recurring role in the Batman TV series as the villain Egghead from 1966 to 1967. In 1964, he provided the narration for the Tombstone Historama in Tombstone, Arizona, which was still in operation as of 2016. He also starred as the host of the Australian TV series If These Walls Could Speak, in which a short history of a historical building (supposedly narrated by the building itself) was covered, and as the narrating voice of the building.
Later career
During the early 1970s, Price hosted and starred in BBC Radio's horror and mystery series The Price of Fear. He accepted a cameo part in the Canadian children's television program The Hilarious House of Frightenstein (1971) in Hamilton, Ontario, on the local television station CHCH-TV. In addition to the opening and closing monologues, his role in the show was to recite poems about various characters, sometimes wearing a cloak or other costumes. He appeared in The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971), its sequel Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1972), and Theatre of Blood (1973), in which he portrayed one of two serial killers. That same year, he appeared as himself in Mooch Goes to Hollywood, a film written by Jim Backus.
Price was an admirer of the works of Edgar Allan Poe, and in 1975 visited the Edgar Allan Poe Museum in Richmond, Virginia, where he had his picture taken with the museum's popular stuffed raven. Price also recorded dramatic readings of Poe's short stories and poems, which were collected together with readings by Basil Rathbone.
In 1975, Price and his wife Coral Browne appeared together in an international stage adaptation of Ardèle, which played in the U.S. and in London at the Queen's Theatre. During this run, Browne and Price starred together in the BBC Radio play Night of the Wolf first airing in 1975. Price greatly reduced his film work from around 1975, as horror itself suffered a slump, and he increased his narrative and voice work, as well as advertising Milton Bradley's Shrunken Head Apple Sculpture.
Price provided a monologue for the Alice Cooper song "Devil's Food" on the Welcome to My Nightmare album in 1975, and he appeared in the corresponding TV special Alice Cooper: The Nightmare. He starred for a year in the early 1970s in the syndicated daily radio program Tales of the Unexplained. He made guest appearances in a 1970 episode of Here's Lucy, showcasing his art expertise, and in a 1972 episode of ABC's The Brady Bunch, in which he played a deranged archaeologist. In October 1976, he appeared as the featured guest in an episode of The Muppet Show.
In 1977, Price began performing as Oscar Wilde in the one-man stage play Diversions and Delights, written by John Gay and directed by Joe Hardy, and set in a Parisian theatre on a night about one year before Wilde's death. The original tour of the play was a success in every city except for New York City. In the summer of 1979, Price performed the role of Wilde at the Tabor Opera House in Leadville, Colorado, on the same stage from which Wilde had spoken to miners about art some 96 years before. He eventually performed the play worldwide. Victoria Price stated in her biography of her father that several members of Price's family and friends thought that this was his best acting performance.
In 1979, Price starred with his wife in the short-lived CBS series Time Express. That same year he hosted the hour-long television special America Screams, riding on several roller coasters and recounting their history. During 1979–1980, he hosted the "Mystery Night" segment of the radio series Sears Radio Theater.
In 1982, Price provided the narrator's voice in Vincent, Tim Burton's six-minute film about a young boy who flashes from reality into a fantasy where he is Vincent Price. He appeared as Sir Despard Murgatroyd in a 1982 television production of Gilbert and Sullivan's Ruddigore (with Keith Michell as Robin Oakapple). In 1982, Price provided the spoken-word sequence to the end of the Michael Jackson song "Thriller". In 1983, he played the Sinister Man in the British spoof horror film Bloodbath at the House of Death. He appeared in House of the Long Shadows with Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, and John Carradine; he had worked with each of those actors at least once in previous decades, but this was the first time that all had teamed up. One of his last major roles, and one of his favorites, was as the voice of Professor Ratigan in Walt Disney Pictures' The Great Mouse Detective in 1986.
From 1981 to 1989, Price hosted the PBS television series Mystery! In 1985, he provided voice talent on the Hanna-Barbera series The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo as the mysterious "Vincent Van Ghoul", who aided Scooby-Doo, Scrappy-Doo, and the gang in recapturing thirteen demons. He was a lifelong fan of roller coasters, and he narrated a 1987 thirty-minute documentary on the history of roller coasters and amusement parks, including Coney Island. During this time (1985–1989), he appeared in horror-themed commercials for Tilex bathroom cleanser.
In 1984, Price appeared in Shelley Duvall's live-action series Faerie Tale Theatre as the Mirror in "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", and the narrator for "The Boy Who Left Home to Find Out About the Shivers". In 1987, he starred with Bette Davis, Lillian Gish, and Ann Sothern in The Whales of August, a story of two sisters living in Maine facing the end of their days. His performance in The Whales of August earned the only award nomination of his career, an Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Male.
In 1989, Price was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame. His last significant film work was as the inventor in Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands (1990).
In 1990, Price recorded the narration as the Phantom for Disneyland Paris's Phantom Manor. After the attraction opened in 1992, though, the narration was shortly removed and replaced with one entirely in French, performed by Gérard Chevalier. Only Price's infamous laughter remained on the soundtrack. In 2018, during Phantom Manor's major renovation, parts of Price's narration were announced to be restored to the soundtrack of the attraction. Since the 2019 reopening, the new tracks are dual-language; Price's original excerpts as well as previously unused material from his 1990 recording comprise the English-speaking portions, while actor Bernard Alane voices the Phantom in French.
Art
Price, who studied art history at Yale, was an art lover and collector. He was a commissioner of the Indian Arts and Crafts Board.
In 1957, impressed by the spirit of the students and the community's need for the opportunity to experience original art works first hand, Vincent and Mary Grant Price donated 90 pieces from their private collection and a large amount of money to establish the Vincent Price Art Museum at East Los Angeles College in Monterey Park, California, which was the first "teaching art collection" owned by a community college in the United States. They ultimately donated some 2,000 pieces; the collection contains over 9,000 pieces and has been valued in excess of $5 million.
Price also spent time working as an art consultant for Sears-Roebuck: From 1962 to 1971, Sears offered the "Vincent Price Collection of Fine Art", selling about 50,000 fine-art prints to the general public. Works which Price selected or commissioned for the collection included some by Rembrandt, Pablo Picasso, and Salvador Dalí. Public access to fine art was important to Price, who according to his daughter Victoria, saw the Sears deal as an "opportunity to put his populist beliefs into practice, to bring art to the American public." In the 1960s, portraits painted by Charles Bird King, of Native Americans were secured for Jacqueline Kennedy's White House Restoration. Through the efforts of Vincent Price these five paintings were paid for and donated to the White House Collection by Sears-Roebuck.
Price amassed his own extensive collection of art, and in 2008, a painting bought for $25 by a couple from Dallas was identified as a piece from Price's collection. Painted by leading Australian modernist Grace Cossington Smith, it was given a modern valuation of AU$45,000.
Cooking
Price was a gourmet cook, and he authored several cookbooks with his second wife, Mary. These include:
A Treasury of Great Recipes (1965)
Mary and Vincent Price present a National Treasury of Cookery (1967)
Mary and Vincent Price's Come into the Kitchen Cook Book: A Collector's Treasury of America's Great Recipes (1969)
Cooking Price-Wise with Vincent Price (1971)
Mary and Vincent Price present a National Treasury of Cookery was a five-volume series, packaged in a boxed set and published by the Heirloom Publishing Company. These five books were combined into a single book two years later and published as Mary and Vincent Price's Come into the Kitchen Cook Book: A Collector's Treasury of America's Great Recipes. Most of the Prices' cookbooks remained in print throughout the 1970s. After being out of print for several decades, two of their books were reprinted; A Treasury of Great Recipes (in August 2015 by Calla Editions) and Mary and Vincent Price's Come into the Kitchen Cook Book (in November 2016 by Calla Editions), both featuring new forewords by their daughter Victoria Price. Cooking Price-Wise with Vincent Price was scheduled to be reprinted by Dover Publishing in October 2017 under the updated title Cooking Price-Wise – The Original Foodie.
In 1971, Price hosted his own cooking program on British television, called Cooking Price-Wise produced for the ITV network by Thames Television, which was broadcast in April and May 1971. This show gave its name to Price's fourth and final cookbook later that year. Price promoted his cookbooks on many talk shows, one of the most famous instances being the November 21, 1975, broadcast of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, when he demonstrated how to poach a fish in a dishwasher.
Price recorded a number of audio cooking tutorials titled International Cooking Course. These were titled Bounty of Paradise, Classical Spanish Cuisine, Cuisina Italiana, Delights from the Sultan's Pantry, Dinner at the Casbah, Dining at Versailles, Exotic Delights from the Far East, Food of the Gods, Foods from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, La Cocina Mejicana, The Bard's Board, and The Wok. In addition to those, he recorded an audio wine course titled Wine Is Elegance. These audio recordings were released on 33⅓ LPs by Nelson Industries in 1977, and were also packaged in a 12-cassette boxed set titled Beverly Hills Cookbook – Cookbook of the Rich and Famous, Your Host Mr. Vincent Price.
In August 1982, he co-hosted A Taste of China for Thames Television over five episodes. He also prepared a fish recipe on Wolfgang Puck's Cooking with Wolfgang Puck VHS, released in October 1987 by Warner Home Video.
Personal life
Price married three times. His first marriage was in 1938 to former actress Edith Barrett; they had one son, poet and columnist Vincent Barrett Price. Edith and Price divorced in 1948. Price married Mary Grant in 1949, and they had a daughter, inspirational speaker Victoria Price, on April 27, 1962, naming her after Price's first major success in the play Victoria Regina. The marriage lasted until 1973. He married Australian actress Coral Browne in 1974; she had appeared as one of his victims in Theatre of Blood (1973). The marriage lasted until her death in 1991.
Victoria Price's biography Vincent Price: A Daughter's Biography (1999) details Price's early antisemitism and initial admiration for Adolf Hitler. According to his daughter: "When he went to Germany and Austria as a young man, he was struck by a lot of things going on during the Weimar Republic and the disillusion of the empire... So when Hitler came into power, instead of seeing him as a dangerous force, he was sort of swept up in this whole idea that Hitler was going to bring German pride back." However, Price became a liberal after becoming friends with New York intellectuals such as Dorothy Parker and Lillian Hellman in the 1930s, so much so that he was "greylisted" under McCarthyism in the 1950s for having been a prewar "premature anti-Nazi", and after being unable to find work for a year, agreed to requests by the FBI that he sign a "secret oath" to save his career. Victoria said that her father became so liberal that "one of my brother's earliest memories is when Franklin Roosevelt's death was announced, my father fell backwards off the sofa sobbing."
Price denounced racial and religious prejudice as a form of poison at the end of an episode of The Saint, which aired on NBC Radio on July 30, 1950,
claiming that Americans must actively fight against it because such prejudices within the United States fuels support for the nation's enemies. He was later appointed to the Indian Arts and Crafts Board under the Dwight D. Eisenhower administration; he called the appointment "kind of a surprise, since I am a Democrat".
Price was supportive of his daughter when she came out as a lesbian, and he was critical of Anita Bryant's anti-gay-rights campaign in the 1970s. In an interview in 2015, Victoria confirmed that her father confided with her of his intimate relationships with men when she came out to him as a lesbian.
Death
Price suffered from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and Parkinson's disease. His symptoms were especially severe during the filming of Edward Scissorhands, making cutting his filming schedule short a necessity. His illness also contributed to his retirement from Mystery! in 1989. He died at age 82 of lung cancer on October 25, 1993, at his home in Los Angeles, California. His remains were cremated and his ashes scattered off Point Dume in Malibu.
Legacy
The A&E Network aired an episode of Biography the night following Price's death, highlighting his horror-film career, but because of its failure to clear copyrights, the show was never aired again. Four years later, A&E produced its updated episode, titled Vincent Price: The Versatile Villain, which aired on October 12, 1997. The script was by Lucy Chase Williams, author of The Complete Films of Vincent Price. In early 1991, Tim Burton was developing a personal documentary with the working title Conversations with Vincent, in which interviews with Price were shot at the Vincent Price Gallery, but the project was never completed and was eventually shelved.
Rhythmeen, the ZZ Top album from 1996, includes a track named "Vincent Price Blues".
Price was an honorary board member and strong supporter of the Witch's Dungeon Classic Movie Museum in Bristol, Connecticut, until his death in 1993. The museum features detailed life-sized wax replicas of characters from some of Price's films, including The Fly, The Abominable Dr. Phibes, and The Masque of the Red Death. A black-box theater at Price's alma mater, Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School, is named after him.
Tim Burton directed a short stop-motion film as a tribute to Vincent Price called Vincent, about a young boy named Vincent Malloy who is obsessed with the grim and macabre; it is narrated by Price. "Vincent Twice, Vincent Twice" was a parody on Sesame Street. He was parodied in an episode of The Simpsons ("Sunday, Cruddy Sunday"). Price had his own Spitting Image puppet, who was always trying to be "sinister" and lure people into his ghoulish traps, only for his victims to point out all the obvious flaws.
Starting in November 2005, featured cast member Bill Hader of the NBC sketch comedy/variety show Saturday Night Live has played Price in a recurring sketch in which Price hosts botched holiday specials filled with celebrities of the 1950s/'60s. Other cast members who played Price on SNL include Dan Aykroyd and Michael McKean (who played Price when he hosted a season-10 episode and again when he was hired as a cast member for the 1994–95 season).
In 1999, a frank and detailed biography about Price written by his daughter, Victoria, was published by St. Martin's Press. In late May 2011, an event was held by the organization Cinema St. Louis to celebrate what would have been Price's 100th birthday. It included a public event with Victoria at the Missouri History Museum and a showcase of ephemeral and historic items at the gallery inside the Sheldon Concert Hall.
In an unusual convergence of widely different generational and cultural backgrounds, the genteel Price was a friend of the English hard rock band Deep Purple and in 1975, he appeared on Roger Glover's live version of The Butterfly Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast as a narrator. Decades later, in 2013, Deep Purple released "Vincent Price", a single the band members dedicated to him. That same year, American director and writer John Waters composed a "heartfelt and appreciative" retrospective on Price for Turner Classic Movies, which recognized the actor as its "Star of the Month" in October 2013 and showcased then a selection of his most popular films. The tribute was repeatedly broadcast on TCM to promote and complement those televised presentations. In sharing with viewers his feelings about Price, Waters at one point describes the actor's screen appeal, especially when he was featured in his darker roles:
Filmography
Radio appearances
Books
Introductions to Works by Others
Peter Haining (ed). The Ghouls. NY: Stein and Day, 1971.
Tom Hutchinson. Horror and Fantasy in the Movies. NY: Crescent Books, 1974.
Audio books
References
External links
Vincent Price Official Website
Vincent Price Gallery
St. Louis Walk of Fame
Vincent Price Papers catalog
Vincent Price at Virtual History
Cooking with Vincent, A Treasury Of Great Recipes
Vincent Price Papers (MS 1625). Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library.
1911 births
1993 deaths
20th Century Fox contract players
20th-century American male actors
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Alumni of the Courtauld Institute of Art
American art collectors
American people of English descent
American people of Welsh descent
American art writers
American autobiographers
American cookbook writers
American food writers
American male film actors
American male radio actors
American male stage actors
American male television actors
American male voice actors
Audiobook narrators
Philanthropists from New York (state)
Caedmon Records artists
American television hosts
California Democrats
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Deaths from emphysema
Deaths from lung cancer
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Male actors from Los Angeles
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Writers from Los Angeles
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20th-century American businesspeople
20th-century American male writers
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Articles containing video clips
LGBT writers from the United States
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American bisexual actors | false | [
"The Sick Children's Trust is the charity that gives families with a sick child in hospital one less thing to worry about by giving them a place to stay, and someone to talk to, free of charge just minutes from their child's bedside. The charity is working towards a future where every family with a seriously ill child in hospital can stay together, close to their sick child's bedside.\n\nThe Sick Children's Trust was founded in 1982 by Dr Jon Pritchard, working at Great Ormond Street Hospital and Professor James Malpas, from St Bart's Hospital. They saw first-hand the families who weren't able to stay near their sick children. Some were sleeping on mattresses on the floor or in chairs as there was nowhere for them to stay.\n\nIn 1984 The Sick Children's Trust opened their first ‘Home from Home’, Rainbow House in London. Since then they have opened another nine houses in Leeds, Cambridge, Sheffield and Newcastle upon Tyne.\n\nOn average, two million children every year require treatment, and often have to go to specialist hospitals far from home. Keeping families together significantly improves the recovery of seriously ill children. The Sick Children's Trust provides families with a sick child free high-quality ‘Home from Home’ accommodation, as well as practical and emotional support so they can be there for their child.\n\nThe President of The Sick Children's Trust is Michael Crawford CBE who has been hugely active and supportive since 1987, over 32 years.\nOne of their ‘Homes from Home’, Crawford House in Newcastle, is named in his honour.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n \n\nChildren's charities based in the United Kingdom\nOrganizations established in 1982\n1982 establishments in the United Kingdom",
"People Who Are Well () is a 2014 Italian comedy-drama film written and directed by Francesco Patierno. It is loosely based on the novel La gente che sta bene by Federico Baccomo.\n\nPlot \nUmberto is apparently a successful and happily married lawyer living in Milan. At work, he is ambitious and ruthless, and, when given the task, fires his coworkers without any regret. At home, his relationship with his wife, Carla, is strained, and his daughter barely talks to him.\n\nOne day, after he fails to close a deal, he is, in turn, unexpectedly fired by his law firm. Anyway, luck seems to stay on his side, as, that same evening, at a party, he meets top lawyer Patrizio Azzesi, who offers him a possible job as a director of the new Italian branch of a large international law firm. At the party, he also meets Morgana, Azzesi's wife, who takes a liking to him. Umberto flies to Berlin for his job interview. Afterwards, he spends the evening with Patrizio, who tells him the deal should be done in a matter of days. On his flight back to Italy, the following morning, he finds himself sitting next to Morgana. The two exchange their phone numbers.\n\nDuring a dinner out at a restaurant, Carla reveals to Umberto that she is pregnant. He quickly dismisses the issue and asks her to have an abortion. She seems to reluctantly comply, however the next day she leaves with the children, to stay at their beach house for a while. In the following days, home alone, Umberto waits in vain for a call from Patrizio. Carla, in turn, won't answer to his calls. When he finally decides to call Patrizio, the latter reveals that another man has been chosen instead of Umberto.\n\nOut of desperation and seeking revenge on both his wife and Patrizio, he arranges a romantic week-end in the mountains with Morgana. There, he receives a call from Patrizio, who renews him the job offer; it is revealed that the man who was supposed to replace him was a former colleague of his, who had contacted Azzesi unbeknownst to Umberto, but this man has been arrested that very day. Despite feeling somewhat humiliated at being considered a second choice, Umberto accepts the offer and lies to Morgana about the reason why he quickly needs to go back to Milan. On their way back, Morgana grows increasingly frustrated at his cynicism and his constant lies. She suddenly accelerates and sends the car off the road. She is killed, while Umberto survives and escapes the accident scene.\n\nPatrizio and Umberto meet to finally close their deal, but Umberto is disgusted by the fact the Patrizio does not care at all about his wife's death. On the contrary, he is relieved at having dodged an expensive divorce. Umberto abruptly refuses the job offer and leaves. He joins Carla at the beach house, where she reveals she did not have the abortion. The couple exchange their roles in the family: Carla resumes her own career as a lawyer, while Umberto takes care of the newborn and their children.\n\nCast \n \nClaudio Bisio as Umberto Ilario Durloni\nMargherita Buy as Carla\nDiego Abatantuono as Patrizio Azzesi\n Jennipher Rodriguez as Morgana\nClaudio Bigagli as Durloni's Associate \n Laura Baldi as Lorena\n Matteo Scalzo as Giacomino\n Carlotta Giannone as Martina\nCarlo Buccirosso as The Carabinieri Marshal\n Raul Cremona as The Client\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n\nPeople Who Are Well at Eurochannel\n\n2014 films\n2014 comedy-drama films\nItalian films\nItalian comedy-drama films\nFilms set in Milan\nFilms based on Italian novels\nFilms about lawyers"
]
|
[
"Jello Biafra",
"Lawsuit and reunion activities"
]
| C_f6fb62c57f214974b44a408134a9d048_0 | Why did he have a lawsuit? | 1 | Why did Jello Biafra have a lawsuit? | Jello Biafra | In October 1998, three former members of the Dead Kennedys sued Biafra for nonpayment of royalties. The other members of Dead Kennedys alleged that after Biafra, in his capacity as the head of Alternative Tentacles records, discovered an accounting error amounting to some $75,000 in unpaid royalties over almost a decade. Rather than informing his bandmates of this mistake, the suit alleged, Biafra knowingly concealed the information until a whistleblower employee at the record label notified the band. According to Biafra, the suit resulted from his refusal to allow one of the band's most well-known singles, "Holiday in Cambodia", to be used in a commercial for Levi's Dockers; Biafra opposes Levi's because of his claim that they use unfair business practices and sweatshop labor. Biafra maintained that he had never denied them royalties, and that he himself had not even received royalties for re-releases of their albums or "posthumous" live albums which had been licensed to other labels by the Decay Music partnership. Decay Music denied this charge and have posted what they say are his cashed royalty checks, written to his legal name of Eric Boucher. Biafra also complained about the songwriting credits in new reissues and archival live albums of songs, alleging that he was the sole composer of songs that were wrongly credited to the entire band. In May 2000, a jury found Biafra and Alternative Tentacles "guilty of malice, oppression and fraud" by not promptly informing his former bandmates of the accounting error and instead withholding the information during subsequent discussions and contractual negotiations. Biafra was ordered to pay $200,000, including $20,000 in punitive damages. After an appeal by Biafra's lawyers, in June 2003, the California Court of Appeal unanimously upheld all the conditions of the 2000 verdict against Biafra and Alternative Tentacles. Furthermore, the plaintiffs were awarded the rights to most of Dead Kennedys recorded works -- which accounted for about half the sales for Alternative Tentacles. Now in control of the Dead Kennedys name, Biafra's former bandmates went on tour with a new lead vocalist. CANNOTANSWER | three former members of the Dead Kennedys sued Biafra for nonpayment of royalties. | Eric Reed Boucher (born June 17, 1958), better known by his professional name Jello Biafra, is an American singer and spoken word artist. He is the former lead singer and songwriter for the San Francisco punk rock band Dead Kennedys.
Initially active from 1979 to 1986, Dead Kennedys were known for rapid-fire music topped with Biafra's sardonic lyrics and biting social commentary, delivered in his "unique quiver of a voice". When the band broke up in 1986, he took over the influential independent record label Alternative Tentacles, which he had founded in 1979 with Dead Kennedys bandmate East Bay Ray. In a 2000 lawsuit, upheld on appeal in 2003 by the California Supreme Court, Biafra was found liable for breach of contract, fraud and malice in withholding a decade's worth of royalties from his former bandmates and ordered to pay over $200,000 in compensation and punitive damages; the band subsequently reformed without Biafra. Although now focused primarily on spoken word performances, Biafra has continued as a musician in numerous collaborations. He has also occasionally appeared in cameo roles in films.
Politically, Biafra is a member of the Green Party of the United States and supports various political causes. He ran for the party's presidential nomination in the 2000 presidential election, finishing a distant second to Ralph Nader. In 1979 he ran for mayor of San Francisco, California. He is a staunch believer in a free society, and utilizes shock value and advocates direct action and pranksterism in the name of political causes. Biafra is known to use absurdist media tactics, in the leftist tradition of the Yippies, to highlight issues of civil rights and social justice.
Early life
Eric Reed Boucher was born in Boulder, Colorado, the son of Virginia (née Parker), a librarian, and Stanley Wayne Boucher, a psychiatric social worker and poet. His sister, Julie J. Boucher, was Associate Director of the Library Research Service at the Colorado State Library; she died in a mountain-climbing accident on October 12, 1996. Biafra has a Jewish great grandparent, but was unaware of this until the mid-2000s. He grew up in a secular household and has said that he is "not really Jewish".
As a child, Boucher developed an interest in international politics that was encouraged by his parents. An avid news watcher, one of his earliest memories was of the John F. Kennedy assassination. Biafra says he has been a fan of rock music since first hearing it in 1965, when his parents accidentally tuned in to a rock radio station. Boucher ignored his high school guidance counselor's advice that he spend his adolescence preparing to become a dental hygienist.
He began his career in music in January 1977 as a roadie for the punk rock band The Ravers (who later changed their name to The Nails), soon joining his friend John Greenway in a band called The Healers. The Healers became well known locally for their mainly improvised lyrics and avant garde music. In the autumn of that year, he began attending the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Musical career
Dead Kennedys
In June 1978, Biafra responded to an advertisement placed in a store by guitarist East Bay Ray, stating "guitarist wants to form punk band", and together they formed the Dead Kennedys. He began performing with the band under the stage name Occupant, but soon began to use his current stage name, a combination of the brand name Jell-O and the short-lived African state Biafra. The band's lyrics were written by Biafra. The lyrics were mostly political in nature and displayed a sardonic, sometimes absurdist, sense of humor despite their serious subject matter. In the tradition of UK anarcho-punk bands like Crass and the Subhumans, the Dead Kennedys were one of the first US punk bands to write politically themed songs. The lyrics Biafra wrote helped popularize the use of humorous lyrics in punk and other types of hard-core music. Biafra cites Joey Ramone as the inspiration for his use of humor in his songs (as well as being the musician who made him interested in punk rock), noting in particular songs by the Ramones such as "Beat on the Brat" and "Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue".
Biafra initially attempted to compose music on guitar, but his lack of experience on the instrument and his own admission of being "a fumbler with my hands" led Dead Kennedys bassist Klaus Flouride to suggest that Biafra simply sing the parts he envisioned to the band. Biafra sang his riffs and melodies into a tape recorder, which he brought to the band's rehearsal and/or recording sessions. This later became a problem when the other members of the Dead Kennedys sued Biafra over royalties and publishing rights. By all accounts, including his own, Biafra is not a conventionally skilled musician, though he and his collaborators (Joey Shithead of D.O.A. in particular) attest that he is a skilled composer and his work, particularly with the Dead Kennedys, is highly respected by punk-oriented critics and fans.
Biafra's first popular song was the first single by the Dead Kennedys, "California über alles". The song, which spoofed California governor Jerry Brown, was the first of many political songs by the group and Biafra. The song's popularity resulted in its being covered by other musicians, such as The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy (who rewrote the lyrics to parody Pete Wilson), John Linnell of They Might Be Giants and Six Feet Under on their Graveyard Classics album of cover versions. Not long after, the Dead Kennedys had a second and bigger hit with "Holiday in Cambodia" from their debut album Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables. AllMusic cites this song as "possibly the most successful single of the American hardcore scene" and Biafra counts it as his personal favorite Dead Kennedy's song. Minor hits from the album included "Kill the Poor" (about potential abuse of the then-new neutron bomb) and a satirical cover of Elvis Presley's "Viva Las Vegas".
The Dead Kennedys received some controversy in the spring of 1981 over the single "Too Drunk to Fuck". The song became a hit in Britain, and the BBC feared that it would manage to be a big enough hit to appear among the top 30 songs on the national charts, requiring a mention on Top of the Pops. However, the single peaked at number 31 in the charts.
Later albums also contained memorable songs, but with less popularity than the earlier ones. The EP In God We Trust, Inc. contained the song "Nazi Punks Fuck Off!" as well as "We've Got A Bigger Problem Now", a rewritten version of "California über alles" about Ronald Reagan. Punk musician and scholar Vic Bondi considers the latter song to be the song that "defined the lyrical agenda of much of hardcore music, and represented its break with punk". The band's most controversial album, Frankenchrist, brought with it the song "MTV Get Off the Air," which accused MTV of promoting poor quality music and sedating the public. The album also contained a controversial poster by Swiss surrealist artist H. R. Giger entitled Penis Landscape.
The Dead Kennedys toured widely during their career, starting in the late 1970s. They began playing at San Francisco's Mabuhay Gardens (their home base) and other Bay Area venues, later branching out to shows in southern Californian clubs (most notably the Whisky a Go Go), but eventually they moved to major clubs across the country, including CBGB in New York. Later, they played to larger audiences such as at the 1980 Bay Area Music Awards (where they played the notorious "Pull My Strings" for the only time), and headlined the 1983 Rock Against Reagan festival.
On May 7, 1994, punk rock fans who believed Biafra was a "sell out" attacked him at the 924 Gilman Street club in Berkeley, California. Biafra claims that he was attacked by a man nicknamed Cretin, who crashed into him while moshing. The crash injured Biafra's leg, causing an argument between the two men. During the argument, Cretin pushed Biafra to the floor and five or six friends of Cretin assaulted Biafra while he was down, yelling "Sellout rock star, kick him", and attempting to pull out his hair. Biafra was later hospitalized with serious injuries. The attack derailed Biafra's plans for both a Canadian spoken-word tour and an accompanying album, and the production of Pure Chewing Satisfaction was halted. However, Biafra returned to the Gilman club a few months after the incident to perform a spoken-word performance as an act of reconciliation with the club.
Biafra has been a prominent figure of the Californian punk scene and was one of the third generation members of the San Francisco punk community. Many later hardcore bands have cited the Dead Kennedys as a major influence. Hardcore punk author Steven Blush describes Biafra as hardcore's "biggest star" who was a "powerful presence whose political insurgence and rabid fandom made him the father figure of a burgeoning subculture [and an] inspirational force [who] could also be a real prick ... Biafra was a visionary, incendiary [performer]."
After the Dead Kennedys disbanded, Biafra's new songs were recorded with other bands, and he released only spoken word albums as solo projects. These collaborations had less popularity than Biafra's earlier work. However, his song "That's Progress", originally recorded with D.O.A. for the album Last Scream of the Missing Neighbors, received considerable exposure when it appeared on the album Rock Against Bush, Vol. 1.
Obscenity prosecution
In April 1986, police officers raided Biafra's house in response to complaints by the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC). In June 1986, L.A. deputy city attorney Michael Guarino, working under City Attorney James Hahn, brought Biafra to trial in Los Angeles for distributing "harmful material to minors" in the Dead Kennedys album Frankenchrist. However, the dispute was about neither the music nor the lyrics from the album, but rather the print of the H. R. Giger poster Landscape XX (Penis Landscape) included with the album.
Music author Reebee Garofalo argued that Biafra and Alternative Tentacles may have been targeted because the label was a "small, self-managed and self-supported company that could ill afford a protracted legal battle." Facing the possible sentence of a year in jail and a $2,000 fine, Biafra, Dirk Dirksen, and Suzanne Stefanac founded the No More Censorship Defense Fund, a benefit featuring several punk rock bands, to help pay for his legal fees, which neither he nor his record label could afford. The jury deadlocked 5 to 7 in favor of acquittal, prompting a mistrial; despite a motion to re-try the case, the judge ordered all charges dropped. The Dead Kennedys disbanded during the trial, in December 1986, due to the mounting legal costs; in the wake of their disbandment, Biafra made a career of his spoken word performances.
Biafra has a cameo role in the 1988 film Tapeheads. He plays an FBI agent who arrests the two protagonists (played by Tim Robbins and John Cusack). While arresting them his character asks "Remember what we did to Jello Biafra?" lampooning the obscenity prosecution.
On March 25, 2005, Biafra appeared on the U.S. radio program This American Life, "Episode 285: Know Your Enemy", which featured a phone call between Jello Biafra and Michael Guarino, the prosecutor in the Frankenchrist trial.
Lawsuit and reunion activities
In October 1998, three former members of the Dead Kennedys sued Biafra for nonpayment of royalties. The other members of Dead Kennedys alleged that Biafra, in his capacity as the head of Alternative Tentacles records, discovered an accounting error amounting to some $75,000 in unpaid royalties over almost a decade. Rather than informing his bandmates of this mistake, the suit alleged, Biafra knowingly concealed the information until a whistleblower employee at the record label notified the band.
According to Biafra, the suit resulted from his refusal to allow one of the band's most well-known singles, "Holiday in Cambodia", to be used in a commercial for Levi's Dockers; Biafra opposes Levi's because of his belief that they use unfair business practices and sweatshop labor. Biafra maintained that he had never denied them royalties, and that he himself had not even received royalties for re-releases of their albums or "posthumous" live albums which had been licensed to other labels by the Decay Music partnership. Decay Music denied this charge and have posted what they say are his cashed royalty checks, written to his legal name of Eric Boucher. Biafra also complained about the songwriting credits in new reissues and archival live albums of songs, alleging that he was the sole composer of songs that were wrongly credited to the entire band.
In May 2000, a jury found Biafra and Alternative Tentacles liable by not promptly informing his former bandmates of the accounting error and instead withholding the information during subsequent discussions and contractual negotiations. Biafra was ordered to pay $200,000, including $20,000 in punitive damages. After an appeal by Biafra's lawyers, in June 2003, the California Court of Appeals unanimously upheld all the conditions of the 2000 verdict against Biafra and Alternative Tentacles. Furthermore, the plaintiffs were awarded the rights to most of Dead Kennedys recorded works—which accounted for about half the sales for Alternative Tentacles. Now in control of the Dead Kennedys name, Biafra's former bandmates went on tour with a new lead vocalist.
Other bands
In the early 1980s, Biafra collaborated with musicians Christian Lunch and Adrian Borland (of The Sound) and Morgan Fisher (of Mott the Hoople) for the electropunk musical project The Witch Trials, releasing one self-titled EP in its lifetime.
In 1988, Biafra, with Al Jourgensen and Paul Barker of the band Ministry, and Jeff Ward, formed Lard. The band became yet another side project for Ministry, with Biafra providing vocals and lyrics. According to a March 2009 interview with Jourgensen, he and Biafra are working on a new Lard album, which is being recorded in Jourgensen's El Paso studio. Jourgensen also claimed in 2021 that Biafra was in works of a new Lard album. While working on the film Terminal City Ricochet in 1989, Biafra did a song for the film's soundtrack with D.O.A.. As a result, Biafra worked with D.O.A. on the album Last Scream of the Missing Neighbors. Biafra also worked with Nomeansno on the soundtrack, which led to their collaboration on the album The Sky Is Falling and I Want My Mommy the following year. Biafra also provided lyrics for the song "Biotech is Godzilla" for Sepultura's 1993 album Chaos A.D..
In 1999, Biafra and other members of the anti-globalization movement protested the WTO Meeting of 1999 in Seattle. Along with other prominent West Coast musicians, he formed the short-lived band the No WTO Combo to help promote the movement's cause. The band was originally scheduled to play during the protest, but the performance was canceled due to riots. The band performed a short set the following night at the Showbox in downtown Seattle (outside the designated area), along with the hiphop group Spearhead. No WTO Combo later released a CD of recordings from the concert, entitled Live from the Battle in Seattle.
As of late 2005, Biafra was performing with the band The Melvins under the name "Jello Biafra and the Melvins", though fans sometimes refer to them as "The Jelvins". Together they have released two albums, and worked on material for a third collaborative release, much of which was premiered live at two concerts at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco during an event called Biafra Five-O, commemorating Biafra's 50th birthday, the 30th anniversary of the founding of the Dead Kennedys, and the beginning of legalized same-sex marriage in California. Biafra was also working with a band known as Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine, which included Ralph Spight of Victims Family on guitar and Billy Gould of Faith No More on bass. This group debuted during Biafra Five-O.
In 2011, Biafra appeared in a singular concert event with an all-star cast of Southern musicians including members from Cowboy Mouth, Dash Rip Rock, Mojo Nixon and Down entitled, "Jello Biafra and the New Orleans Raunch & Soul All Stars" who performed an array of classic Soul covers to a packed house at the 12-Bar in New Orleans, Louisiana. He would later reunite with many of the same musicians during the Carnival season 2014 to revisit many of these classics at Siberia, New Orleans. A live album from the 2011 performance, Walk on Jindal's Splinters, and a companion single, Fannie May/Just a Little Bit, were released in 2015.
Alternative Tentacles
In June 1979, Biafra co-founded the record label Alternative Tentacles, with which the Dead Kennedys released their first single, "California über alles". The label was created to allow the band to release albums without having to deal with pressure from major labels to change their music, although the major labels were not willing to sign the band due to their songs being deemed too controversial. After dealing with Cherry Red in the UK and IRS Records in the US for their first album Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, the band released all later albums, and later pressings of Fresh Fruit on Alternative Tentacles. The exception being live albums released after the band's break-up, which the other band members compiled from recordings in the band partnership's vaults without Biafra's input or endorsement.. Biafra has been the owner of the company since its founding, though he does not receive a salary for his position; Biafra has referred to his position in the company as "absentee thoughtlord".
Biafra is an ardent collector of unusual vinyl records of all kinds, from 1950s and 1960s ethno-pop recordings by the likes of Les Baxter and Esquivel to vanity pressings that have circulated regionally, to German crooner Heino (for whom he would later participate in the documentary Heino: Made In Germany); he cites his always growing collection as one of his biggest musical influences. In 1993 he gave an interview to RE/Search Publications for their second Incredibly Strange Music book focusing primarily on these records, and later participated in a two-part episode of Fuse TV's program Crate Diggers on the same subject. His interest in such recordings, often categorized as outsider music, led to his discovery of the prolific (and schizophrenic) singer/songwriter/artist Wesley Willis, whom he signed to Alternative Tentacles in 1994, preceding Willis' major label deal with American Recordings. His collection grew so large that on October 1, 2005, Biafra donated a portion of his collection to an annual yard sale co-promoted by Alternative Tentacles and held at their warehouse in Emeryville, California.
In 2006, along with Alternative Tentacles employee and The Frisk lead singer Jesse Luscious, Biafra began co-hosting The Alternative Tentacles Batcast, a downloadable podcast hosted by alternativetentacles.com. The show primarily focuses on interviews with artists and bands that are currently signed to the Alternative Tentacles label, although there are also occasional episodes where Biafra devoted the show to answering fan questions.
Spoken word
Biafra became a spoken word artist in January 1986 with a performance at University of California, Los Angeles. In his performance he combined humor with his political beliefs, much in the same way that he did with the lyrics to his songs. Despite his continued spoken word performances, he did not begin recording spoken word albums until after the disbanding of the Dead Kennedys.
His ninth spoken word album, In the Grip of Official Treason, was released in October 2006.
Biafra was also featured in the British band Pitchshifter's song As Seen on TV reciting the words of dystopian futuristic radio advertisements.
Politics
Biafra has resisted identifying with any particular political party or ideology, saying, "I don't label myself strictly an anarchist or a socialist or let alone a libertarian or something like that," In a 2012 interview, Biafra said "I'm very pro-tax as long as it goes for the right things. I don't mind paying more money as long as it's going to provide shelter for people sleeping in the street or getting the schools fixed back up, getting the infrastructure up to the standards of other countries, including a high speed rail system. I'm totally down with that."
Mayoral campaign
In the autumn of 1979, Biafra ran for mayor of San Francisco, using the Jell-O ad campaign catchphrase, "There's always room for Jello", as his campaign slogan. Having entered the race before creating a campaign platform, Biafra later wrote his platform on a napkin while attending a Pere Ubu concert where Dead Kennedys drummer Ted told Biafra, "Biafra, you have such a big mouth that you should run for Mayor." As he campaigned, Biafra wore campaign T-shirts from his opponent Quentin Kopp's previous campaign and at one point vacuumed leaves off the front lawn of another opponent, current U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, to mock her publicity stunt of sweeping streets in downtown San Francisco for a few hours. He also made a whistlestop campaign tour along the BART line. Supporters committed equally odd actions; two well known signs held by supporters said "If he doesn't win I'll kill myself" and "What if he does win?"
At the time, in San Francisco any individual could legally run for mayor if a petition was signed by 1500 people or if $1500 was paid. Biafra paid $900 and got signatures over time and eventually became a legal candidate, meaning he received statements put in voters' pamphlets and equal news coverage.
His platform included unconventional points such as forcing businessmen to wear clown suits within city limits, erecting statues of Dan White, who assassinated Mayor George Moscone and City Supervisor Harvey Milk in 1978, around the city and allowing the parks department to sell eggs and tomatoes with which people could pelt the statues, hiring workers who had lost their jobs due to a tax initiative to panhandle in wealthy neighborhoods (including Senator Dianne Feinstein's), and a citywide ban on cars. Biafra has expressed irritation that these parts of his platform attained such notoriety, preferring instead to be remembered for serious proposals such as legalizing squatting in vacant, tax-delinquent buildings and requiring police officers to run for election by the people of the neighborhoods they patrol.
He finished third out of a field of ten, receiving 3.79 percent of the vote (6,591 votes); the election ended in a runoff that did not involve him (Feinstein was declared the winner).
Presidential campaign
In 2000, the New York State Green Party drafted Biafra as a candidate for the Green Party presidential nomination, and a few supporters were elected to the party's nominating convention in Denver, Colorado. Biafra chose death row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal as his running mate. The party overwhelmingly chose Ralph Nader as the presidential candidate with 295 of the 319 delegate votes. Biafra received 10 votes.
Biafra, along with a camera crew (dubbed by Biafra as "The Camcorder Truth Jihad"), later reported for the Independent Media Center at the Republican and Democratic conventions.
Post-2000
After losing the 2000 nomination, Biafra became highly active in Nader's presidential campaign, as well as in 2004 and 2008. During the 2008 campaign Jello played at rallies and answered questions for journalists in support of Nader. When gay rights activists accused Nader of costing Al Gore the 2000 election, Biafra reminded them that Tipper Gore's Parents Music Resource Center wanted warning stickers on albums with content referencing homosexuality.
After Barack Obama won the general election, Biafra wrote an open letter making suggestions on how to run his term as president. Biafra criticized Obama during his term, stating that "Obama even won the award for best advertising campaign of 2008." Biafra dubbed Obama "Barackstar O'Bummer". Biafra refused to support Obama in 2012. Biafra has stated that he feels that Obama continued many of George W. Bush's policies, summarizing Obama's policies as containing "worse and worse laws against human rights and more and more illegal unconstitutional spying."
On September 18, 2015, it was announced that Biafra would be supporting Bernie Sanders in his campaign for the 2016 presidential election. He has strongly criticised the political position of Donald Trump, saying "how can people be so fucking stupid" on hearing the election result, and later adding "The last person we want with their finger on the nuclear button is somebody connected to this extreme Christianist doomsday cult."
On February 28, 2020, Jello announced that he would be supporting both Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders in the 2020 presidential election. “I personally like Warren slightly better than Bernie because: 1) She’s done her homework. Bernie too, but not to quite the same depth or degree. 2) Think about it — who really has a better chance of actually beating Trump, and helping flip Congress and state legislatures? It’s Elizabeth Warren, hands down.” He went on to say that he considered Joe Biden and Mike Bloomberg "almost as bad as Trump".
On April 12, 2020, Biafra expressed disappointment that Sanders had suspended his campaign for the 2020 Democratic nomination.
Boycott of Israel
In mid-2011 Jello Biafra and his band were scheduled to play at the Barby Club in Tel Aviv. They came under heavy pressure by the pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, and finally decided to cancel the concert – after a debate which according to Biafra "deeply tore at the fabric of our band ... This whole controversy has been one of the most intense situations of my life – and I thrive on intense situations".
Biafra then decided to travel to Israel and the Palestinian Occupied Territories, at his own expense, and talk with Israeli and Palestinian activists as well as with fans disappointed at his cancellation. In the article stating his conclusions he wrote:
"I will not perform in Israel unless it is a pro-human rights, anti-occupation event, that does not violate the spirit of the boycott. Each musician, artist, etc. must decide this for themselves. I am staying away for now, but am also really creeped out by the attitudes of some of the hardliners and hope some day to find a way to contribute something positive here. I will not march or sign on with anyone who runs around calling people Zionazis and is more interested in making threats than making friends."
Personal life
Biafra married Theresa Soder, a.k.a. Ninotchka, lead singer of San Francisco-area punk band the Situations, on October 31, 1981. The wedding was conducted by Flipper vocalist/bassist Bruce Loose, who became a Universal Life Church minister just to conduct the ceremony, which took place in a graveyard. The wedding reception, which members of Flipper, Black Flag, and D.O.A. attended, was held at director Joe Rees' Target Video studios. The marriage ended in 1986. Biafra generally does not discuss his private life. He lives in San Francisco, California.
Selected discography
For a more complete list, see the Jello Biafra discography.
Dead Kennedys
1980 – Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables
1981 – In God We Trust, Inc.
1982 – Plastic Surgery Disasters
1985 – Frankenchrist
1986 – Bedtime for Democracy
1987 – Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death
Spoken word
1987 – No More Cocoons
1989 – High Priest of Harmful Matter: Tales From the Trial
1991 – I Blow Minds for a Living
1994 – Beyond the Valley of the Gift Police
1998 – If Evolution Is Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Evolve
2000 – Become the Media
2002 – The Big Ka-Boom, Pt. 1
2002 – Machine Gun in the Clown's Hand
2006 – In the Grip of Official Treason
Lard
1989 – The Power of Lard
1990 – The Last Temptation of Reid
1997 – Pure Chewing Satisfaction
2000 – 70's Rock Must Die
Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine
2009 – The Audacity of Hype
2011 – Enhanced Methods of Questioning
2012 – SHOCK-U-PY
2013 – White People and the Damage Done
2020 – Tea Party Revenge Porn
Collaborations
Filmography
1977 – This Is America, Pt. 2
1981 – Urgh! A Music War
1983 – Anarchism in America
1986 – Lovedolls Superstar, directed by Dave Markey
1987 – Household Affairs, directed & filmed by Allen Ginsberg
1988 – Tapeheads, directed by Bill Fishman
1990 – Terminal City Ricochet
1991 – Highway 61, directed by Bruce McDonald
1994 – Skulhedface, directed by Melanie Mandl
1997 – Mary Jane's Not a Virgin Anymore, directed by Sarah Jacobson
1999 – The Widower
1999 – Virtue
2001 – Plaster Caster
2002 – Bikini Bandits, directed by Steve and Peter Grasse
2004 – Death and Texas
2004 – Punk: Attitude
2005 – We Jam Econo: The Story of the Minutemen
2006 – Punk's Not Dead, directed by Susan Dynner
2006 – Whose War?, directed by Donald Farmer
2007 – American Drug War: The Last White Hope, directed by Kevin Booth
2008 – Nerdcore Rising, directed by Negin Farsad
2009 – Open Your Mouth and Say Mr. Chi Pig, directed by Sean Patrick Shaul
2010 – A Man Within, directed by Yony Leyser
2011 – I Love You ... I Am the Porn Queen, short film directed by Ani Kyd
2014 – Heino: Made in Germany, directed by Oliver Schwabe
2014 – Portlandia, season 4, episode 4 – "Pull-Out King"
2018 – Bathtubs Over Broadway, directed by Dava Whisenant (as himself)
2018 – Boiled Angels: The Trial of Mike Diana, directed by Frank Henenlotter (narrator)
2019 – The Last Black Man in San Francisco, directed by Joe Talbot
Notes
References
External links
Jello Biafra on Alternative Tentacles
1958 births
Living people
20th-century American politicians
Candidates in the 2000 United States presidential election
Alternative Tentacles
Alternative Tentacles artists
American anti–Iraq War activists
American anti-war activists
American human rights activists
American male film actors
American people of Jewish descent
American punk rock singers
American satirists
American male singer-songwriters
American spoken word artists
Anti-consumerists
Anti-corporate activists
Anti-globalization activists
Boulder High School alumni
California Greens
Dead Kennedys members
Finance fraud
Green Party of the United States politicians
Hardcore punk musicians
Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine members
Lard (band) members
Male actors from Boulder, Colorado
Musicians from Boulder, Colorado
Pigface members
Pranksters
Teenage Time Killers members
Singer-songwriters from Colorado | true | [
"The Tabeo is a discontinued tablet computer developed by Toys \"R\" Us that runs on a version of the Android 4.0 operating system. Tabeo is officially at \"End of Life\" status, meaning the company is no longer providing support for the original Tabeo and Tabeo E2. Though some of the E2 devices seem to have been sold in Mexico, this seems to have happened to devices that were returned to the reseller. Tabeo is no longer fulfilling warranty repair or replacements, as the company has not produced a new device in 3 years. The company is also no longer providing assistance with any issues that may arise with the device, as the device is considerably Out of Warranty. All support has been discontinued.It was specifically designed with children in mind, allows parents to implement parental controls, and has 50 apps pre-installed. More than 6000 other apps, all considered to be safe for children, are available on the Tabeo App Store. It has a 7-inch screen and 4 gigabytes of built-in storage space, but is capable of supporting SDHC cards with up to 32 gigabytes of space. It was released on October 21, 2012.\n\nLawsuit\nFuhu Inc., producer of the Nabi tablet for children, sued Toys \"R\" Us before the Tabeo was released, claiming that the company had stolen its trade secrets, breached its contract, and committed fraud; and accusing the company of unfair competition. In October 2011, Toys \"R\" Us had made a deal with Fuhu for exclusive rights to distribute the Nabi tablet. However, Toys \"R\" Us barely advertised the device and did not order many units, eventually ending the deal in January 2012. Fuhu claimed that it did not know why Toys \"R\" Us did this until the Tabeo was announced. The lawsuit aimed to prevent the release of the Tabeo, and asked for any Tabeos that had been produced to be turned over to Fuhu, along with additional monetary damages.\n\nReferences\n\nTablet computers\nToys \"R\" Us",
"\"Llangollen Market\" is a song from early 19th century Wales. It is known to have been performed at an eisteddfod at Llangollen in 1858.\n\nThe text of the song survives in a manuscript held by the National Museum of Wales, which came into the possession of singer Mary Davies, a co-founder of the Welsh Folk-Song Society.\n\nThe song tells the tale of a young man from the Llangollen area going off to war and leaving behind his broken-hearted girlfriend. Originally written in English, the song has been translated into Welsh and recorded by several artists such as Siân James, Siobhan Owen, Calennig and Siwsann George.\n\nLyrics\nIt’s far beyond the mountains that look so distant here,\nTo fight his country’s battles, last Mayday went my dear;\nAh, well shall I remember with bitter sighs the day,\nWhy, Owen, did you leave me? At home why did I stay?\n\nAh, cruel was my father that did my flight restrain,\nAnd I was cruel-hearted that did at home remain,\nWith you, my love, contented, I’d journey far away;\nWhy, Owen, did you leave me? At home why did I stay?\n\nWhile thinking of my Owen, my eyes with tears do fill,\nAnd then my mother chides me because my wheel stands still,\nBut how can I think of spinning when my Owen’s far away;\nWhy, Owen, did you leave me? At home why did I stay?\n\nTo market at Llangollen each morning do I go,\nBut how to strike a bargain no longer do I know;\nMy father chides at evening, my mother all the day;\nWhy, Owen, did you leave me, at home why did I stay?\n\nOh, would it please kind heaven to shield my love from harm,\nTo clasp him to my bosom would every care disarm,\nBut alas, I fear, 'tis distant - that happy, happy day;\nWhy, Owen, did you leave me, at home why did stay?\n\nReferences\n\nWelsh folk songs"
]
|
[
"Jello Biafra",
"Lawsuit and reunion activities",
"Why did he have a lawsuit?",
"three former members of the Dead Kennedys sued Biafra for nonpayment of royalties."
]
| C_f6fb62c57f214974b44a408134a9d048_0 | Was the lawsuit settled? | 2 | Was the lawsuit filed against Jello Biafra by the Dead Kennedy's settled? | Jello Biafra | In October 1998, three former members of the Dead Kennedys sued Biafra for nonpayment of royalties. The other members of Dead Kennedys alleged that after Biafra, in his capacity as the head of Alternative Tentacles records, discovered an accounting error amounting to some $75,000 in unpaid royalties over almost a decade. Rather than informing his bandmates of this mistake, the suit alleged, Biafra knowingly concealed the information until a whistleblower employee at the record label notified the band. According to Biafra, the suit resulted from his refusal to allow one of the band's most well-known singles, "Holiday in Cambodia", to be used in a commercial for Levi's Dockers; Biafra opposes Levi's because of his claim that they use unfair business practices and sweatshop labor. Biafra maintained that he had never denied them royalties, and that he himself had not even received royalties for re-releases of their albums or "posthumous" live albums which had been licensed to other labels by the Decay Music partnership. Decay Music denied this charge and have posted what they say are his cashed royalty checks, written to his legal name of Eric Boucher. Biafra also complained about the songwriting credits in new reissues and archival live albums of songs, alleging that he was the sole composer of songs that were wrongly credited to the entire band. In May 2000, a jury found Biafra and Alternative Tentacles "guilty of malice, oppression and fraud" by not promptly informing his former bandmates of the accounting error and instead withholding the information during subsequent discussions and contractual negotiations. Biafra was ordered to pay $200,000, including $20,000 in punitive damages. After an appeal by Biafra's lawyers, in June 2003, the California Court of Appeal unanimously upheld all the conditions of the 2000 verdict against Biafra and Alternative Tentacles. Furthermore, the plaintiffs were awarded the rights to most of Dead Kennedys recorded works -- which accounted for about half the sales for Alternative Tentacles. Now in control of the Dead Kennedys name, Biafra's former bandmates went on tour with a new lead vocalist. CANNOTANSWER | In May 2000, a jury found Biafra and Alternative Tentacles "guilty of malice, oppression and fraud | Eric Reed Boucher (born June 17, 1958), better known by his professional name Jello Biafra, is an American singer and spoken word artist. He is the former lead singer and songwriter for the San Francisco punk rock band Dead Kennedys.
Initially active from 1979 to 1986, Dead Kennedys were known for rapid-fire music topped with Biafra's sardonic lyrics and biting social commentary, delivered in his "unique quiver of a voice". When the band broke up in 1986, he took over the influential independent record label Alternative Tentacles, which he had founded in 1979 with Dead Kennedys bandmate East Bay Ray. In a 2000 lawsuit, upheld on appeal in 2003 by the California Supreme Court, Biafra was found liable for breach of contract, fraud and malice in withholding a decade's worth of royalties from his former bandmates and ordered to pay over $200,000 in compensation and punitive damages; the band subsequently reformed without Biafra. Although now focused primarily on spoken word performances, Biafra has continued as a musician in numerous collaborations. He has also occasionally appeared in cameo roles in films.
Politically, Biafra is a member of the Green Party of the United States and supports various political causes. He ran for the party's presidential nomination in the 2000 presidential election, finishing a distant second to Ralph Nader. In 1979 he ran for mayor of San Francisco, California. He is a staunch believer in a free society, and utilizes shock value and advocates direct action and pranksterism in the name of political causes. Biafra is known to use absurdist media tactics, in the leftist tradition of the Yippies, to highlight issues of civil rights and social justice.
Early life
Eric Reed Boucher was born in Boulder, Colorado, the son of Virginia (née Parker), a librarian, and Stanley Wayne Boucher, a psychiatric social worker and poet. His sister, Julie J. Boucher, was Associate Director of the Library Research Service at the Colorado State Library; she died in a mountain-climbing accident on October 12, 1996. Biafra has a Jewish great grandparent, but was unaware of this until the mid-2000s. He grew up in a secular household and has said that he is "not really Jewish".
As a child, Boucher developed an interest in international politics that was encouraged by his parents. An avid news watcher, one of his earliest memories was of the John F. Kennedy assassination. Biafra says he has been a fan of rock music since first hearing it in 1965, when his parents accidentally tuned in to a rock radio station. Boucher ignored his high school guidance counselor's advice that he spend his adolescence preparing to become a dental hygienist.
He began his career in music in January 1977 as a roadie for the punk rock band The Ravers (who later changed their name to The Nails), soon joining his friend John Greenway in a band called The Healers. The Healers became well known locally for their mainly improvised lyrics and avant garde music. In the autumn of that year, he began attending the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Musical career
Dead Kennedys
In June 1978, Biafra responded to an advertisement placed in a store by guitarist East Bay Ray, stating "guitarist wants to form punk band", and together they formed the Dead Kennedys. He began performing with the band under the stage name Occupant, but soon began to use his current stage name, a combination of the brand name Jell-O and the short-lived African state Biafra. The band's lyrics were written by Biafra. The lyrics were mostly political in nature and displayed a sardonic, sometimes absurdist, sense of humor despite their serious subject matter. In the tradition of UK anarcho-punk bands like Crass and the Subhumans, the Dead Kennedys were one of the first US punk bands to write politically themed songs. The lyrics Biafra wrote helped popularize the use of humorous lyrics in punk and other types of hard-core music. Biafra cites Joey Ramone as the inspiration for his use of humor in his songs (as well as being the musician who made him interested in punk rock), noting in particular songs by the Ramones such as "Beat on the Brat" and "Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue".
Biafra initially attempted to compose music on guitar, but his lack of experience on the instrument and his own admission of being "a fumbler with my hands" led Dead Kennedys bassist Klaus Flouride to suggest that Biafra simply sing the parts he envisioned to the band. Biafra sang his riffs and melodies into a tape recorder, which he brought to the band's rehearsal and/or recording sessions. This later became a problem when the other members of the Dead Kennedys sued Biafra over royalties and publishing rights. By all accounts, including his own, Biafra is not a conventionally skilled musician, though he and his collaborators (Joey Shithead of D.O.A. in particular) attest that he is a skilled composer and his work, particularly with the Dead Kennedys, is highly respected by punk-oriented critics and fans.
Biafra's first popular song was the first single by the Dead Kennedys, "California über alles". The song, which spoofed California governor Jerry Brown, was the first of many political songs by the group and Biafra. The song's popularity resulted in its being covered by other musicians, such as The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy (who rewrote the lyrics to parody Pete Wilson), John Linnell of They Might Be Giants and Six Feet Under on their Graveyard Classics album of cover versions. Not long after, the Dead Kennedys had a second and bigger hit with "Holiday in Cambodia" from their debut album Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables. AllMusic cites this song as "possibly the most successful single of the American hardcore scene" and Biafra counts it as his personal favorite Dead Kennedy's song. Minor hits from the album included "Kill the Poor" (about potential abuse of the then-new neutron bomb) and a satirical cover of Elvis Presley's "Viva Las Vegas".
The Dead Kennedys received some controversy in the spring of 1981 over the single "Too Drunk to Fuck". The song became a hit in Britain, and the BBC feared that it would manage to be a big enough hit to appear among the top 30 songs on the national charts, requiring a mention on Top of the Pops. However, the single peaked at number 31 in the charts.
Later albums also contained memorable songs, but with less popularity than the earlier ones. The EP In God We Trust, Inc. contained the song "Nazi Punks Fuck Off!" as well as "We've Got A Bigger Problem Now", a rewritten version of "California über alles" about Ronald Reagan. Punk musician and scholar Vic Bondi considers the latter song to be the song that "defined the lyrical agenda of much of hardcore music, and represented its break with punk". The band's most controversial album, Frankenchrist, brought with it the song "MTV Get Off the Air," which accused MTV of promoting poor quality music and sedating the public. The album also contained a controversial poster by Swiss surrealist artist H. R. Giger entitled Penis Landscape.
The Dead Kennedys toured widely during their career, starting in the late 1970s. They began playing at San Francisco's Mabuhay Gardens (their home base) and other Bay Area venues, later branching out to shows in southern Californian clubs (most notably the Whisky a Go Go), but eventually they moved to major clubs across the country, including CBGB in New York. Later, they played to larger audiences such as at the 1980 Bay Area Music Awards (where they played the notorious "Pull My Strings" for the only time), and headlined the 1983 Rock Against Reagan festival.
On May 7, 1994, punk rock fans who believed Biafra was a "sell out" attacked him at the 924 Gilman Street club in Berkeley, California. Biafra claims that he was attacked by a man nicknamed Cretin, who crashed into him while moshing. The crash injured Biafra's leg, causing an argument between the two men. During the argument, Cretin pushed Biafra to the floor and five or six friends of Cretin assaulted Biafra while he was down, yelling "Sellout rock star, kick him", and attempting to pull out his hair. Biafra was later hospitalized with serious injuries. The attack derailed Biafra's plans for both a Canadian spoken-word tour and an accompanying album, and the production of Pure Chewing Satisfaction was halted. However, Biafra returned to the Gilman club a few months after the incident to perform a spoken-word performance as an act of reconciliation with the club.
Biafra has been a prominent figure of the Californian punk scene and was one of the third generation members of the San Francisco punk community. Many later hardcore bands have cited the Dead Kennedys as a major influence. Hardcore punk author Steven Blush describes Biafra as hardcore's "biggest star" who was a "powerful presence whose political insurgence and rabid fandom made him the father figure of a burgeoning subculture [and an] inspirational force [who] could also be a real prick ... Biafra was a visionary, incendiary [performer]."
After the Dead Kennedys disbanded, Biafra's new songs were recorded with other bands, and he released only spoken word albums as solo projects. These collaborations had less popularity than Biafra's earlier work. However, his song "That's Progress", originally recorded with D.O.A. for the album Last Scream of the Missing Neighbors, received considerable exposure when it appeared on the album Rock Against Bush, Vol. 1.
Obscenity prosecution
In April 1986, police officers raided Biafra's house in response to complaints by the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC). In June 1986, L.A. deputy city attorney Michael Guarino, working under City Attorney James Hahn, brought Biafra to trial in Los Angeles for distributing "harmful material to minors" in the Dead Kennedys album Frankenchrist. However, the dispute was about neither the music nor the lyrics from the album, but rather the print of the H. R. Giger poster Landscape XX (Penis Landscape) included with the album.
Music author Reebee Garofalo argued that Biafra and Alternative Tentacles may have been targeted because the label was a "small, self-managed and self-supported company that could ill afford a protracted legal battle." Facing the possible sentence of a year in jail and a $2,000 fine, Biafra, Dirk Dirksen, and Suzanne Stefanac founded the No More Censorship Defense Fund, a benefit featuring several punk rock bands, to help pay for his legal fees, which neither he nor his record label could afford. The jury deadlocked 5 to 7 in favor of acquittal, prompting a mistrial; despite a motion to re-try the case, the judge ordered all charges dropped. The Dead Kennedys disbanded during the trial, in December 1986, due to the mounting legal costs; in the wake of their disbandment, Biafra made a career of his spoken word performances.
Biafra has a cameo role in the 1988 film Tapeheads. He plays an FBI agent who arrests the two protagonists (played by Tim Robbins and John Cusack). While arresting them his character asks "Remember what we did to Jello Biafra?" lampooning the obscenity prosecution.
On March 25, 2005, Biafra appeared on the U.S. radio program This American Life, "Episode 285: Know Your Enemy", which featured a phone call between Jello Biafra and Michael Guarino, the prosecutor in the Frankenchrist trial.
Lawsuit and reunion activities
In October 1998, three former members of the Dead Kennedys sued Biafra for nonpayment of royalties. The other members of Dead Kennedys alleged that Biafra, in his capacity as the head of Alternative Tentacles records, discovered an accounting error amounting to some $75,000 in unpaid royalties over almost a decade. Rather than informing his bandmates of this mistake, the suit alleged, Biafra knowingly concealed the information until a whistleblower employee at the record label notified the band.
According to Biafra, the suit resulted from his refusal to allow one of the band's most well-known singles, "Holiday in Cambodia", to be used in a commercial for Levi's Dockers; Biafra opposes Levi's because of his belief that they use unfair business practices and sweatshop labor. Biafra maintained that he had never denied them royalties, and that he himself had not even received royalties for re-releases of their albums or "posthumous" live albums which had been licensed to other labels by the Decay Music partnership. Decay Music denied this charge and have posted what they say are his cashed royalty checks, written to his legal name of Eric Boucher. Biafra also complained about the songwriting credits in new reissues and archival live albums of songs, alleging that he was the sole composer of songs that were wrongly credited to the entire band.
In May 2000, a jury found Biafra and Alternative Tentacles liable by not promptly informing his former bandmates of the accounting error and instead withholding the information during subsequent discussions and contractual negotiations. Biafra was ordered to pay $200,000, including $20,000 in punitive damages. After an appeal by Biafra's lawyers, in June 2003, the California Court of Appeals unanimously upheld all the conditions of the 2000 verdict against Biafra and Alternative Tentacles. Furthermore, the plaintiffs were awarded the rights to most of Dead Kennedys recorded works—which accounted for about half the sales for Alternative Tentacles. Now in control of the Dead Kennedys name, Biafra's former bandmates went on tour with a new lead vocalist.
Other bands
In the early 1980s, Biafra collaborated with musicians Christian Lunch and Adrian Borland (of The Sound) and Morgan Fisher (of Mott the Hoople) for the electropunk musical project The Witch Trials, releasing one self-titled EP in its lifetime.
In 1988, Biafra, with Al Jourgensen and Paul Barker of the band Ministry, and Jeff Ward, formed Lard. The band became yet another side project for Ministry, with Biafra providing vocals and lyrics. According to a March 2009 interview with Jourgensen, he and Biafra are working on a new Lard album, which is being recorded in Jourgensen's El Paso studio. Jourgensen also claimed in 2021 that Biafra was in works of a new Lard album. While working on the film Terminal City Ricochet in 1989, Biafra did a song for the film's soundtrack with D.O.A.. As a result, Biafra worked with D.O.A. on the album Last Scream of the Missing Neighbors. Biafra also worked with Nomeansno on the soundtrack, which led to their collaboration on the album The Sky Is Falling and I Want My Mommy the following year. Biafra also provided lyrics for the song "Biotech is Godzilla" for Sepultura's 1993 album Chaos A.D..
In 1999, Biafra and other members of the anti-globalization movement protested the WTO Meeting of 1999 in Seattle. Along with other prominent West Coast musicians, he formed the short-lived band the No WTO Combo to help promote the movement's cause. The band was originally scheduled to play during the protest, but the performance was canceled due to riots. The band performed a short set the following night at the Showbox in downtown Seattle (outside the designated area), along with the hiphop group Spearhead. No WTO Combo later released a CD of recordings from the concert, entitled Live from the Battle in Seattle.
As of late 2005, Biafra was performing with the band The Melvins under the name "Jello Biafra and the Melvins", though fans sometimes refer to them as "The Jelvins". Together they have released two albums, and worked on material for a third collaborative release, much of which was premiered live at two concerts at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco during an event called Biafra Five-O, commemorating Biafra's 50th birthday, the 30th anniversary of the founding of the Dead Kennedys, and the beginning of legalized same-sex marriage in California. Biafra was also working with a band known as Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine, which included Ralph Spight of Victims Family on guitar and Billy Gould of Faith No More on bass. This group debuted during Biafra Five-O.
In 2011, Biafra appeared in a singular concert event with an all-star cast of Southern musicians including members from Cowboy Mouth, Dash Rip Rock, Mojo Nixon and Down entitled, "Jello Biafra and the New Orleans Raunch & Soul All Stars" who performed an array of classic Soul covers to a packed house at the 12-Bar in New Orleans, Louisiana. He would later reunite with many of the same musicians during the Carnival season 2014 to revisit many of these classics at Siberia, New Orleans. A live album from the 2011 performance, Walk on Jindal's Splinters, and a companion single, Fannie May/Just a Little Bit, were released in 2015.
Alternative Tentacles
In June 1979, Biafra co-founded the record label Alternative Tentacles, with which the Dead Kennedys released their first single, "California über alles". The label was created to allow the band to release albums without having to deal with pressure from major labels to change their music, although the major labels were not willing to sign the band due to their songs being deemed too controversial. After dealing with Cherry Red in the UK and IRS Records in the US for their first album Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, the band released all later albums, and later pressings of Fresh Fruit on Alternative Tentacles. The exception being live albums released after the band's break-up, which the other band members compiled from recordings in the band partnership's vaults without Biafra's input or endorsement.. Biafra has been the owner of the company since its founding, though he does not receive a salary for his position; Biafra has referred to his position in the company as "absentee thoughtlord".
Biafra is an ardent collector of unusual vinyl records of all kinds, from 1950s and 1960s ethno-pop recordings by the likes of Les Baxter and Esquivel to vanity pressings that have circulated regionally, to German crooner Heino (for whom he would later participate in the documentary Heino: Made In Germany); he cites his always growing collection as one of his biggest musical influences. In 1993 he gave an interview to RE/Search Publications for their second Incredibly Strange Music book focusing primarily on these records, and later participated in a two-part episode of Fuse TV's program Crate Diggers on the same subject. His interest in such recordings, often categorized as outsider music, led to his discovery of the prolific (and schizophrenic) singer/songwriter/artist Wesley Willis, whom he signed to Alternative Tentacles in 1994, preceding Willis' major label deal with American Recordings. His collection grew so large that on October 1, 2005, Biafra donated a portion of his collection to an annual yard sale co-promoted by Alternative Tentacles and held at their warehouse in Emeryville, California.
In 2006, along with Alternative Tentacles employee and The Frisk lead singer Jesse Luscious, Biafra began co-hosting The Alternative Tentacles Batcast, a downloadable podcast hosted by alternativetentacles.com. The show primarily focuses on interviews with artists and bands that are currently signed to the Alternative Tentacles label, although there are also occasional episodes where Biafra devoted the show to answering fan questions.
Spoken word
Biafra became a spoken word artist in January 1986 with a performance at University of California, Los Angeles. In his performance he combined humor with his political beliefs, much in the same way that he did with the lyrics to his songs. Despite his continued spoken word performances, he did not begin recording spoken word albums until after the disbanding of the Dead Kennedys.
His ninth spoken word album, In the Grip of Official Treason, was released in October 2006.
Biafra was also featured in the British band Pitchshifter's song As Seen on TV reciting the words of dystopian futuristic radio advertisements.
Politics
Biafra has resisted identifying with any particular political party or ideology, saying, "I don't label myself strictly an anarchist or a socialist or let alone a libertarian or something like that," In a 2012 interview, Biafra said "I'm very pro-tax as long as it goes for the right things. I don't mind paying more money as long as it's going to provide shelter for people sleeping in the street or getting the schools fixed back up, getting the infrastructure up to the standards of other countries, including a high speed rail system. I'm totally down with that."
Mayoral campaign
In the autumn of 1979, Biafra ran for mayor of San Francisco, using the Jell-O ad campaign catchphrase, "There's always room for Jello", as his campaign slogan. Having entered the race before creating a campaign platform, Biafra later wrote his platform on a napkin while attending a Pere Ubu concert where Dead Kennedys drummer Ted told Biafra, "Biafra, you have such a big mouth that you should run for Mayor." As he campaigned, Biafra wore campaign T-shirts from his opponent Quentin Kopp's previous campaign and at one point vacuumed leaves off the front lawn of another opponent, current U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, to mock her publicity stunt of sweeping streets in downtown San Francisco for a few hours. He also made a whistlestop campaign tour along the BART line. Supporters committed equally odd actions; two well known signs held by supporters said "If he doesn't win I'll kill myself" and "What if he does win?"
At the time, in San Francisco any individual could legally run for mayor if a petition was signed by 1500 people or if $1500 was paid. Biafra paid $900 and got signatures over time and eventually became a legal candidate, meaning he received statements put in voters' pamphlets and equal news coverage.
His platform included unconventional points such as forcing businessmen to wear clown suits within city limits, erecting statues of Dan White, who assassinated Mayor George Moscone and City Supervisor Harvey Milk in 1978, around the city and allowing the parks department to sell eggs and tomatoes with which people could pelt the statues, hiring workers who had lost their jobs due to a tax initiative to panhandle in wealthy neighborhoods (including Senator Dianne Feinstein's), and a citywide ban on cars. Biafra has expressed irritation that these parts of his platform attained such notoriety, preferring instead to be remembered for serious proposals such as legalizing squatting in vacant, tax-delinquent buildings and requiring police officers to run for election by the people of the neighborhoods they patrol.
He finished third out of a field of ten, receiving 3.79 percent of the vote (6,591 votes); the election ended in a runoff that did not involve him (Feinstein was declared the winner).
Presidential campaign
In 2000, the New York State Green Party drafted Biafra as a candidate for the Green Party presidential nomination, and a few supporters were elected to the party's nominating convention in Denver, Colorado. Biafra chose death row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal as his running mate. The party overwhelmingly chose Ralph Nader as the presidential candidate with 295 of the 319 delegate votes. Biafra received 10 votes.
Biafra, along with a camera crew (dubbed by Biafra as "The Camcorder Truth Jihad"), later reported for the Independent Media Center at the Republican and Democratic conventions.
Post-2000
After losing the 2000 nomination, Biafra became highly active in Nader's presidential campaign, as well as in 2004 and 2008. During the 2008 campaign Jello played at rallies and answered questions for journalists in support of Nader. When gay rights activists accused Nader of costing Al Gore the 2000 election, Biafra reminded them that Tipper Gore's Parents Music Resource Center wanted warning stickers on albums with content referencing homosexuality.
After Barack Obama won the general election, Biafra wrote an open letter making suggestions on how to run his term as president. Biafra criticized Obama during his term, stating that "Obama even won the award for best advertising campaign of 2008." Biafra dubbed Obama "Barackstar O'Bummer". Biafra refused to support Obama in 2012. Biafra has stated that he feels that Obama continued many of George W. Bush's policies, summarizing Obama's policies as containing "worse and worse laws against human rights and more and more illegal unconstitutional spying."
On September 18, 2015, it was announced that Biafra would be supporting Bernie Sanders in his campaign for the 2016 presidential election. He has strongly criticised the political position of Donald Trump, saying "how can people be so fucking stupid" on hearing the election result, and later adding "The last person we want with their finger on the nuclear button is somebody connected to this extreme Christianist doomsday cult."
On February 28, 2020, Jello announced that he would be supporting both Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders in the 2020 presidential election. “I personally like Warren slightly better than Bernie because: 1) She’s done her homework. Bernie too, but not to quite the same depth or degree. 2) Think about it — who really has a better chance of actually beating Trump, and helping flip Congress and state legislatures? It’s Elizabeth Warren, hands down.” He went on to say that he considered Joe Biden and Mike Bloomberg "almost as bad as Trump".
On April 12, 2020, Biafra expressed disappointment that Sanders had suspended his campaign for the 2020 Democratic nomination.
Boycott of Israel
In mid-2011 Jello Biafra and his band were scheduled to play at the Barby Club in Tel Aviv. They came under heavy pressure by the pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, and finally decided to cancel the concert – after a debate which according to Biafra "deeply tore at the fabric of our band ... This whole controversy has been one of the most intense situations of my life – and I thrive on intense situations".
Biafra then decided to travel to Israel and the Palestinian Occupied Territories, at his own expense, and talk with Israeli and Palestinian activists as well as with fans disappointed at his cancellation. In the article stating his conclusions he wrote:
"I will not perform in Israel unless it is a pro-human rights, anti-occupation event, that does not violate the spirit of the boycott. Each musician, artist, etc. must decide this for themselves. I am staying away for now, but am also really creeped out by the attitudes of some of the hardliners and hope some day to find a way to contribute something positive here. I will not march or sign on with anyone who runs around calling people Zionazis and is more interested in making threats than making friends."
Personal life
Biafra married Theresa Soder, a.k.a. Ninotchka, lead singer of San Francisco-area punk band the Situations, on October 31, 1981. The wedding was conducted by Flipper vocalist/bassist Bruce Loose, who became a Universal Life Church minister just to conduct the ceremony, which took place in a graveyard. The wedding reception, which members of Flipper, Black Flag, and D.O.A. attended, was held at director Joe Rees' Target Video studios. The marriage ended in 1986. Biafra generally does not discuss his private life. He lives in San Francisco, California.
Selected discography
For a more complete list, see the Jello Biafra discography.
Dead Kennedys
1980 – Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables
1981 – In God We Trust, Inc.
1982 – Plastic Surgery Disasters
1985 – Frankenchrist
1986 – Bedtime for Democracy
1987 – Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death
Spoken word
1987 – No More Cocoons
1989 – High Priest of Harmful Matter: Tales From the Trial
1991 – I Blow Minds for a Living
1994 – Beyond the Valley of the Gift Police
1998 – If Evolution Is Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Evolve
2000 – Become the Media
2002 – The Big Ka-Boom, Pt. 1
2002 – Machine Gun in the Clown's Hand
2006 – In the Grip of Official Treason
Lard
1989 – The Power of Lard
1990 – The Last Temptation of Reid
1997 – Pure Chewing Satisfaction
2000 – 70's Rock Must Die
Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine
2009 – The Audacity of Hype
2011 – Enhanced Methods of Questioning
2012 – SHOCK-U-PY
2013 – White People and the Damage Done
2020 – Tea Party Revenge Porn
Collaborations
Filmography
1977 – This Is America, Pt. 2
1981 – Urgh! A Music War
1983 – Anarchism in America
1986 – Lovedolls Superstar, directed by Dave Markey
1987 – Household Affairs, directed & filmed by Allen Ginsberg
1988 – Tapeheads, directed by Bill Fishman
1990 – Terminal City Ricochet
1991 – Highway 61, directed by Bruce McDonald
1994 – Skulhedface, directed by Melanie Mandl
1997 – Mary Jane's Not a Virgin Anymore, directed by Sarah Jacobson
1999 – The Widower
1999 – Virtue
2001 – Plaster Caster
2002 – Bikini Bandits, directed by Steve and Peter Grasse
2004 – Death and Texas
2004 – Punk: Attitude
2005 – We Jam Econo: The Story of the Minutemen
2006 – Punk's Not Dead, directed by Susan Dynner
2006 – Whose War?, directed by Donald Farmer
2007 – American Drug War: The Last White Hope, directed by Kevin Booth
2008 – Nerdcore Rising, directed by Negin Farsad
2009 – Open Your Mouth and Say Mr. Chi Pig, directed by Sean Patrick Shaul
2010 – A Man Within, directed by Yony Leyser
2011 – I Love You ... I Am the Porn Queen, short film directed by Ani Kyd
2014 – Heino: Made in Germany, directed by Oliver Schwabe
2014 – Portlandia, season 4, episode 4 – "Pull-Out King"
2018 – Bathtubs Over Broadway, directed by Dava Whisenant (as himself)
2018 – Boiled Angels: The Trial of Mike Diana, directed by Frank Henenlotter (narrator)
2019 – The Last Black Man in San Francisco, directed by Joe Talbot
Notes
References
External links
Jello Biafra on Alternative Tentacles
1958 births
Living people
20th-century American politicians
Candidates in the 2000 United States presidential election
Alternative Tentacles
Alternative Tentacles artists
American anti–Iraq War activists
American anti-war activists
American human rights activists
American male film actors
American people of Jewish descent
American punk rock singers
American satirists
American male singer-songwriters
American spoken word artists
Anti-consumerists
Anti-corporate activists
Anti-globalization activists
Boulder High School alumni
California Greens
Dead Kennedys members
Finance fraud
Green Party of the United States politicians
Hardcore punk musicians
Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine members
Lard (band) members
Male actors from Boulder, Colorado
Musicians from Boulder, Colorado
Pigface members
Pranksters
Teenage Time Killers members
Singer-songwriters from Colorado | false | [
"Yvonne McCain (1948 - 2011) was the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit, which led to a landmark ruling in 1986 by the Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court in Manhattan, stating that New York City could not deny emergency shelter for homeless families with children. However, the case was not settled until 2008, when it was settled by New York City and the Legal Aid Society. The McCain case was settled in 2008 in the Boston v. City of New York case, and the settlement upheld the legal right to shelter for homeless families and children.\n\nLawsuit \nThe lawsuit in which McCain was the lead plaintiff, which was a class-action suit filed in 1983, was initially called McCain v. Koch, referring to mayor Ed Koch, but the name of the lawsuit changed as new mayors of New York City took office. In 1983, McCain was homeless and had children, and had been placed by New York City at the welfare hotel Martinique, which had poor conditions. She had been evicted from her apartment in 1982 after refusing to pay rent because her landlord refused to make repairs. She was a battered woman, and as she moved from city-supported apartments to shelters and back, her husband once found her and broke her nose.\n\nLife and death \nIn 1996 McCain and her children were able to move into a rent-subsidized two-bedroom apartment on Staten Island, where she was living at the time of her death in 2011. She worked as a nurse's aide for some time, and earned an associate degree in human services from the Borough of Manhattan Community College in 2005. In the years before her death she worked in the health services office of the Borough of Manhattan Community College. She died of cancer in 2011.\n\nMcCain's obituary was included in The Socialite who Killed a Nazi with Her Bare Hands: And 144 Other Fascinating People who Died this Year, a collection of The New York Times obituaries, published in 2012.\n\nReferences\n\n1948 births\n2011 deaths",
"Boston Communications Group, Inc., more commonly called bcgi, was one of the largest prepaid mobile phone companies in the United States until 2007. In 2005, they settled a patent lawsuit brought by Freedom Wireless, a private intellectual property firm based in Phoenix, Arizona. bcgi and its co-defendant had lost a jury trial, which awarded Freedom $128 million in damages. The co-defendants agreed to collectively pay $87 million, of which bcgi's share was $55 million. The stock price jumped from $2.09 to $4.01 upon news of the settlement, because the lawsuit threatened to drive the company into bankruptcy.\n\nOn July 12, 2007, Megasoft Ltd. of Hyderabad, India agreed to purchase bcgi in a tender offer, which was settled a few months later.\n\nReferences\n\nMobile phone companies of the United States"
]
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[
"Jello Biafra",
"Lawsuit and reunion activities",
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"three former members of the Dead Kennedys sued Biafra for nonpayment of royalties.",
"Was the lawsuit settled?",
"In May 2000, a jury found Biafra and Alternative Tentacles \"guilty of malice, oppression and fraud"
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| C_f6fb62c57f214974b44a408134a9d048_0 | Did he have to pay the back royalties? | 3 | Did Jello Biafra have to pay the back royalties to the Dead Kennedy's? | Jello Biafra | In October 1998, three former members of the Dead Kennedys sued Biafra for nonpayment of royalties. The other members of Dead Kennedys alleged that after Biafra, in his capacity as the head of Alternative Tentacles records, discovered an accounting error amounting to some $75,000 in unpaid royalties over almost a decade. Rather than informing his bandmates of this mistake, the suit alleged, Biafra knowingly concealed the information until a whistleblower employee at the record label notified the band. According to Biafra, the suit resulted from his refusal to allow one of the band's most well-known singles, "Holiday in Cambodia", to be used in a commercial for Levi's Dockers; Biafra opposes Levi's because of his claim that they use unfair business practices and sweatshop labor. Biafra maintained that he had never denied them royalties, and that he himself had not even received royalties for re-releases of their albums or "posthumous" live albums which had been licensed to other labels by the Decay Music partnership. Decay Music denied this charge and have posted what they say are his cashed royalty checks, written to his legal name of Eric Boucher. Biafra also complained about the songwriting credits in new reissues and archival live albums of songs, alleging that he was the sole composer of songs that were wrongly credited to the entire band. In May 2000, a jury found Biafra and Alternative Tentacles "guilty of malice, oppression and fraud" by not promptly informing his former bandmates of the accounting error and instead withholding the information during subsequent discussions and contractual negotiations. Biafra was ordered to pay $200,000, including $20,000 in punitive damages. After an appeal by Biafra's lawyers, in June 2003, the California Court of Appeal unanimously upheld all the conditions of the 2000 verdict against Biafra and Alternative Tentacles. Furthermore, the plaintiffs were awarded the rights to most of Dead Kennedys recorded works -- which accounted for about half the sales for Alternative Tentacles. Now in control of the Dead Kennedys name, Biafra's former bandmates went on tour with a new lead vocalist. CANNOTANSWER | Biafra was ordered to pay $200,000, including $20,000 in punitive damages. | Eric Reed Boucher (born June 17, 1958), better known by his professional name Jello Biafra, is an American singer and spoken word artist. He is the former lead singer and songwriter for the San Francisco punk rock band Dead Kennedys.
Initially active from 1979 to 1986, Dead Kennedys were known for rapid-fire music topped with Biafra's sardonic lyrics and biting social commentary, delivered in his "unique quiver of a voice". When the band broke up in 1986, he took over the influential independent record label Alternative Tentacles, which he had founded in 1979 with Dead Kennedys bandmate East Bay Ray. In a 2000 lawsuit, upheld on appeal in 2003 by the California Supreme Court, Biafra was found liable for breach of contract, fraud and malice in withholding a decade's worth of royalties from his former bandmates and ordered to pay over $200,000 in compensation and punitive damages; the band subsequently reformed without Biafra. Although now focused primarily on spoken word performances, Biafra has continued as a musician in numerous collaborations. He has also occasionally appeared in cameo roles in films.
Politically, Biafra is a member of the Green Party of the United States and supports various political causes. He ran for the party's presidential nomination in the 2000 presidential election, finishing a distant second to Ralph Nader. In 1979 he ran for mayor of San Francisco, California. He is a staunch believer in a free society, and utilizes shock value and advocates direct action and pranksterism in the name of political causes. Biafra is known to use absurdist media tactics, in the leftist tradition of the Yippies, to highlight issues of civil rights and social justice.
Early life
Eric Reed Boucher was born in Boulder, Colorado, the son of Virginia (née Parker), a librarian, and Stanley Wayne Boucher, a psychiatric social worker and poet. His sister, Julie J. Boucher, was Associate Director of the Library Research Service at the Colorado State Library; she died in a mountain-climbing accident on October 12, 1996. Biafra has a Jewish great grandparent, but was unaware of this until the mid-2000s. He grew up in a secular household and has said that he is "not really Jewish".
As a child, Boucher developed an interest in international politics that was encouraged by his parents. An avid news watcher, one of his earliest memories was of the John F. Kennedy assassination. Biafra says he has been a fan of rock music since first hearing it in 1965, when his parents accidentally tuned in to a rock radio station. Boucher ignored his high school guidance counselor's advice that he spend his adolescence preparing to become a dental hygienist.
He began his career in music in January 1977 as a roadie for the punk rock band The Ravers (who later changed their name to The Nails), soon joining his friend John Greenway in a band called The Healers. The Healers became well known locally for their mainly improvised lyrics and avant garde music. In the autumn of that year, he began attending the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Musical career
Dead Kennedys
In June 1978, Biafra responded to an advertisement placed in a store by guitarist East Bay Ray, stating "guitarist wants to form punk band", and together they formed the Dead Kennedys. He began performing with the band under the stage name Occupant, but soon began to use his current stage name, a combination of the brand name Jell-O and the short-lived African state Biafra. The band's lyrics were written by Biafra. The lyrics were mostly political in nature and displayed a sardonic, sometimes absurdist, sense of humor despite their serious subject matter. In the tradition of UK anarcho-punk bands like Crass and the Subhumans, the Dead Kennedys were one of the first US punk bands to write politically themed songs. The lyrics Biafra wrote helped popularize the use of humorous lyrics in punk and other types of hard-core music. Biafra cites Joey Ramone as the inspiration for his use of humor in his songs (as well as being the musician who made him interested in punk rock), noting in particular songs by the Ramones such as "Beat on the Brat" and "Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue".
Biafra initially attempted to compose music on guitar, but his lack of experience on the instrument and his own admission of being "a fumbler with my hands" led Dead Kennedys bassist Klaus Flouride to suggest that Biafra simply sing the parts he envisioned to the band. Biafra sang his riffs and melodies into a tape recorder, which he brought to the band's rehearsal and/or recording sessions. This later became a problem when the other members of the Dead Kennedys sued Biafra over royalties and publishing rights. By all accounts, including his own, Biafra is not a conventionally skilled musician, though he and his collaborators (Joey Shithead of D.O.A. in particular) attest that he is a skilled composer and his work, particularly with the Dead Kennedys, is highly respected by punk-oriented critics and fans.
Biafra's first popular song was the first single by the Dead Kennedys, "California über alles". The song, which spoofed California governor Jerry Brown, was the first of many political songs by the group and Biafra. The song's popularity resulted in its being covered by other musicians, such as The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy (who rewrote the lyrics to parody Pete Wilson), John Linnell of They Might Be Giants and Six Feet Under on their Graveyard Classics album of cover versions. Not long after, the Dead Kennedys had a second and bigger hit with "Holiday in Cambodia" from their debut album Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables. AllMusic cites this song as "possibly the most successful single of the American hardcore scene" and Biafra counts it as his personal favorite Dead Kennedy's song. Minor hits from the album included "Kill the Poor" (about potential abuse of the then-new neutron bomb) and a satirical cover of Elvis Presley's "Viva Las Vegas".
The Dead Kennedys received some controversy in the spring of 1981 over the single "Too Drunk to Fuck". The song became a hit in Britain, and the BBC feared that it would manage to be a big enough hit to appear among the top 30 songs on the national charts, requiring a mention on Top of the Pops. However, the single peaked at number 31 in the charts.
Later albums also contained memorable songs, but with less popularity than the earlier ones. The EP In God We Trust, Inc. contained the song "Nazi Punks Fuck Off!" as well as "We've Got A Bigger Problem Now", a rewritten version of "California über alles" about Ronald Reagan. Punk musician and scholar Vic Bondi considers the latter song to be the song that "defined the lyrical agenda of much of hardcore music, and represented its break with punk". The band's most controversial album, Frankenchrist, brought with it the song "MTV Get Off the Air," which accused MTV of promoting poor quality music and sedating the public. The album also contained a controversial poster by Swiss surrealist artist H. R. Giger entitled Penis Landscape.
The Dead Kennedys toured widely during their career, starting in the late 1970s. They began playing at San Francisco's Mabuhay Gardens (their home base) and other Bay Area venues, later branching out to shows in southern Californian clubs (most notably the Whisky a Go Go), but eventually they moved to major clubs across the country, including CBGB in New York. Later, they played to larger audiences such as at the 1980 Bay Area Music Awards (where they played the notorious "Pull My Strings" for the only time), and headlined the 1983 Rock Against Reagan festival.
On May 7, 1994, punk rock fans who believed Biafra was a "sell out" attacked him at the 924 Gilman Street club in Berkeley, California. Biafra claims that he was attacked by a man nicknamed Cretin, who crashed into him while moshing. The crash injured Biafra's leg, causing an argument between the two men. During the argument, Cretin pushed Biafra to the floor and five or six friends of Cretin assaulted Biafra while he was down, yelling "Sellout rock star, kick him", and attempting to pull out his hair. Biafra was later hospitalized with serious injuries. The attack derailed Biafra's plans for both a Canadian spoken-word tour and an accompanying album, and the production of Pure Chewing Satisfaction was halted. However, Biafra returned to the Gilman club a few months after the incident to perform a spoken-word performance as an act of reconciliation with the club.
Biafra has been a prominent figure of the Californian punk scene and was one of the third generation members of the San Francisco punk community. Many later hardcore bands have cited the Dead Kennedys as a major influence. Hardcore punk author Steven Blush describes Biafra as hardcore's "biggest star" who was a "powerful presence whose political insurgence and rabid fandom made him the father figure of a burgeoning subculture [and an] inspirational force [who] could also be a real prick ... Biafra was a visionary, incendiary [performer]."
After the Dead Kennedys disbanded, Biafra's new songs were recorded with other bands, and he released only spoken word albums as solo projects. These collaborations had less popularity than Biafra's earlier work. However, his song "That's Progress", originally recorded with D.O.A. for the album Last Scream of the Missing Neighbors, received considerable exposure when it appeared on the album Rock Against Bush, Vol. 1.
Obscenity prosecution
In April 1986, police officers raided Biafra's house in response to complaints by the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC). In June 1986, L.A. deputy city attorney Michael Guarino, working under City Attorney James Hahn, brought Biafra to trial in Los Angeles for distributing "harmful material to minors" in the Dead Kennedys album Frankenchrist. However, the dispute was about neither the music nor the lyrics from the album, but rather the print of the H. R. Giger poster Landscape XX (Penis Landscape) included with the album.
Music author Reebee Garofalo argued that Biafra and Alternative Tentacles may have been targeted because the label was a "small, self-managed and self-supported company that could ill afford a protracted legal battle." Facing the possible sentence of a year in jail and a $2,000 fine, Biafra, Dirk Dirksen, and Suzanne Stefanac founded the No More Censorship Defense Fund, a benefit featuring several punk rock bands, to help pay for his legal fees, which neither he nor his record label could afford. The jury deadlocked 5 to 7 in favor of acquittal, prompting a mistrial; despite a motion to re-try the case, the judge ordered all charges dropped. The Dead Kennedys disbanded during the trial, in December 1986, due to the mounting legal costs; in the wake of their disbandment, Biafra made a career of his spoken word performances.
Biafra has a cameo role in the 1988 film Tapeheads. He plays an FBI agent who arrests the two protagonists (played by Tim Robbins and John Cusack). While arresting them his character asks "Remember what we did to Jello Biafra?" lampooning the obscenity prosecution.
On March 25, 2005, Biafra appeared on the U.S. radio program This American Life, "Episode 285: Know Your Enemy", which featured a phone call between Jello Biafra and Michael Guarino, the prosecutor in the Frankenchrist trial.
Lawsuit and reunion activities
In October 1998, three former members of the Dead Kennedys sued Biafra for nonpayment of royalties. The other members of Dead Kennedys alleged that Biafra, in his capacity as the head of Alternative Tentacles records, discovered an accounting error amounting to some $75,000 in unpaid royalties over almost a decade. Rather than informing his bandmates of this mistake, the suit alleged, Biafra knowingly concealed the information until a whistleblower employee at the record label notified the band.
According to Biafra, the suit resulted from his refusal to allow one of the band's most well-known singles, "Holiday in Cambodia", to be used in a commercial for Levi's Dockers; Biafra opposes Levi's because of his belief that they use unfair business practices and sweatshop labor. Biafra maintained that he had never denied them royalties, and that he himself had not even received royalties for re-releases of their albums or "posthumous" live albums which had been licensed to other labels by the Decay Music partnership. Decay Music denied this charge and have posted what they say are his cashed royalty checks, written to his legal name of Eric Boucher. Biafra also complained about the songwriting credits in new reissues and archival live albums of songs, alleging that he was the sole composer of songs that were wrongly credited to the entire band.
In May 2000, a jury found Biafra and Alternative Tentacles liable by not promptly informing his former bandmates of the accounting error and instead withholding the information during subsequent discussions and contractual negotiations. Biafra was ordered to pay $200,000, including $20,000 in punitive damages. After an appeal by Biafra's lawyers, in June 2003, the California Court of Appeals unanimously upheld all the conditions of the 2000 verdict against Biafra and Alternative Tentacles. Furthermore, the plaintiffs were awarded the rights to most of Dead Kennedys recorded works—which accounted for about half the sales for Alternative Tentacles. Now in control of the Dead Kennedys name, Biafra's former bandmates went on tour with a new lead vocalist.
Other bands
In the early 1980s, Biafra collaborated with musicians Christian Lunch and Adrian Borland (of The Sound) and Morgan Fisher (of Mott the Hoople) for the electropunk musical project The Witch Trials, releasing one self-titled EP in its lifetime.
In 1988, Biafra, with Al Jourgensen and Paul Barker of the band Ministry, and Jeff Ward, formed Lard. The band became yet another side project for Ministry, with Biafra providing vocals and lyrics. According to a March 2009 interview with Jourgensen, he and Biafra are working on a new Lard album, which is being recorded in Jourgensen's El Paso studio. Jourgensen also claimed in 2021 that Biafra was in works of a new Lard album. While working on the film Terminal City Ricochet in 1989, Biafra did a song for the film's soundtrack with D.O.A.. As a result, Biafra worked with D.O.A. on the album Last Scream of the Missing Neighbors. Biafra also worked with Nomeansno on the soundtrack, which led to their collaboration on the album The Sky Is Falling and I Want My Mommy the following year. Biafra also provided lyrics for the song "Biotech is Godzilla" for Sepultura's 1993 album Chaos A.D..
In 1999, Biafra and other members of the anti-globalization movement protested the WTO Meeting of 1999 in Seattle. Along with other prominent West Coast musicians, he formed the short-lived band the No WTO Combo to help promote the movement's cause. The band was originally scheduled to play during the protest, but the performance was canceled due to riots. The band performed a short set the following night at the Showbox in downtown Seattle (outside the designated area), along with the hiphop group Spearhead. No WTO Combo later released a CD of recordings from the concert, entitled Live from the Battle in Seattle.
As of late 2005, Biafra was performing with the band The Melvins under the name "Jello Biafra and the Melvins", though fans sometimes refer to them as "The Jelvins". Together they have released two albums, and worked on material for a third collaborative release, much of which was premiered live at two concerts at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco during an event called Biafra Five-O, commemorating Biafra's 50th birthday, the 30th anniversary of the founding of the Dead Kennedys, and the beginning of legalized same-sex marriage in California. Biafra was also working with a band known as Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine, which included Ralph Spight of Victims Family on guitar and Billy Gould of Faith No More on bass. This group debuted during Biafra Five-O.
In 2011, Biafra appeared in a singular concert event with an all-star cast of Southern musicians including members from Cowboy Mouth, Dash Rip Rock, Mojo Nixon and Down entitled, "Jello Biafra and the New Orleans Raunch & Soul All Stars" who performed an array of classic Soul covers to a packed house at the 12-Bar in New Orleans, Louisiana. He would later reunite with many of the same musicians during the Carnival season 2014 to revisit many of these classics at Siberia, New Orleans. A live album from the 2011 performance, Walk on Jindal's Splinters, and a companion single, Fannie May/Just a Little Bit, were released in 2015.
Alternative Tentacles
In June 1979, Biafra co-founded the record label Alternative Tentacles, with which the Dead Kennedys released their first single, "California über alles". The label was created to allow the band to release albums without having to deal with pressure from major labels to change their music, although the major labels were not willing to sign the band due to their songs being deemed too controversial. After dealing with Cherry Red in the UK and IRS Records in the US for their first album Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, the band released all later albums, and later pressings of Fresh Fruit on Alternative Tentacles. The exception being live albums released after the band's break-up, which the other band members compiled from recordings in the band partnership's vaults without Biafra's input or endorsement.. Biafra has been the owner of the company since its founding, though he does not receive a salary for his position; Biafra has referred to his position in the company as "absentee thoughtlord".
Biafra is an ardent collector of unusual vinyl records of all kinds, from 1950s and 1960s ethno-pop recordings by the likes of Les Baxter and Esquivel to vanity pressings that have circulated regionally, to German crooner Heino (for whom he would later participate in the documentary Heino: Made In Germany); he cites his always growing collection as one of his biggest musical influences. In 1993 he gave an interview to RE/Search Publications for their second Incredibly Strange Music book focusing primarily on these records, and later participated in a two-part episode of Fuse TV's program Crate Diggers on the same subject. His interest in such recordings, often categorized as outsider music, led to his discovery of the prolific (and schizophrenic) singer/songwriter/artist Wesley Willis, whom he signed to Alternative Tentacles in 1994, preceding Willis' major label deal with American Recordings. His collection grew so large that on October 1, 2005, Biafra donated a portion of his collection to an annual yard sale co-promoted by Alternative Tentacles and held at their warehouse in Emeryville, California.
In 2006, along with Alternative Tentacles employee and The Frisk lead singer Jesse Luscious, Biafra began co-hosting The Alternative Tentacles Batcast, a downloadable podcast hosted by alternativetentacles.com. The show primarily focuses on interviews with artists and bands that are currently signed to the Alternative Tentacles label, although there are also occasional episodes where Biafra devoted the show to answering fan questions.
Spoken word
Biafra became a spoken word artist in January 1986 with a performance at University of California, Los Angeles. In his performance he combined humor with his political beliefs, much in the same way that he did with the lyrics to his songs. Despite his continued spoken word performances, he did not begin recording spoken word albums until after the disbanding of the Dead Kennedys.
His ninth spoken word album, In the Grip of Official Treason, was released in October 2006.
Biafra was also featured in the British band Pitchshifter's song As Seen on TV reciting the words of dystopian futuristic radio advertisements.
Politics
Biafra has resisted identifying with any particular political party or ideology, saying, "I don't label myself strictly an anarchist or a socialist or let alone a libertarian or something like that," In a 2012 interview, Biafra said "I'm very pro-tax as long as it goes for the right things. I don't mind paying more money as long as it's going to provide shelter for people sleeping in the street or getting the schools fixed back up, getting the infrastructure up to the standards of other countries, including a high speed rail system. I'm totally down with that."
Mayoral campaign
In the autumn of 1979, Biafra ran for mayor of San Francisco, using the Jell-O ad campaign catchphrase, "There's always room for Jello", as his campaign slogan. Having entered the race before creating a campaign platform, Biafra later wrote his platform on a napkin while attending a Pere Ubu concert where Dead Kennedys drummer Ted told Biafra, "Biafra, you have such a big mouth that you should run for Mayor." As he campaigned, Biafra wore campaign T-shirts from his opponent Quentin Kopp's previous campaign and at one point vacuumed leaves off the front lawn of another opponent, current U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, to mock her publicity stunt of sweeping streets in downtown San Francisco for a few hours. He also made a whistlestop campaign tour along the BART line. Supporters committed equally odd actions; two well known signs held by supporters said "If he doesn't win I'll kill myself" and "What if he does win?"
At the time, in San Francisco any individual could legally run for mayor if a petition was signed by 1500 people or if $1500 was paid. Biafra paid $900 and got signatures over time and eventually became a legal candidate, meaning he received statements put in voters' pamphlets and equal news coverage.
His platform included unconventional points such as forcing businessmen to wear clown suits within city limits, erecting statues of Dan White, who assassinated Mayor George Moscone and City Supervisor Harvey Milk in 1978, around the city and allowing the parks department to sell eggs and tomatoes with which people could pelt the statues, hiring workers who had lost their jobs due to a tax initiative to panhandle in wealthy neighborhoods (including Senator Dianne Feinstein's), and a citywide ban on cars. Biafra has expressed irritation that these parts of his platform attained such notoriety, preferring instead to be remembered for serious proposals such as legalizing squatting in vacant, tax-delinquent buildings and requiring police officers to run for election by the people of the neighborhoods they patrol.
He finished third out of a field of ten, receiving 3.79 percent of the vote (6,591 votes); the election ended in a runoff that did not involve him (Feinstein was declared the winner).
Presidential campaign
In 2000, the New York State Green Party drafted Biafra as a candidate for the Green Party presidential nomination, and a few supporters were elected to the party's nominating convention in Denver, Colorado. Biafra chose death row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal as his running mate. The party overwhelmingly chose Ralph Nader as the presidential candidate with 295 of the 319 delegate votes. Biafra received 10 votes.
Biafra, along with a camera crew (dubbed by Biafra as "The Camcorder Truth Jihad"), later reported for the Independent Media Center at the Republican and Democratic conventions.
Post-2000
After losing the 2000 nomination, Biafra became highly active in Nader's presidential campaign, as well as in 2004 and 2008. During the 2008 campaign Jello played at rallies and answered questions for journalists in support of Nader. When gay rights activists accused Nader of costing Al Gore the 2000 election, Biafra reminded them that Tipper Gore's Parents Music Resource Center wanted warning stickers on albums with content referencing homosexuality.
After Barack Obama won the general election, Biafra wrote an open letter making suggestions on how to run his term as president. Biafra criticized Obama during his term, stating that "Obama even won the award for best advertising campaign of 2008." Biafra dubbed Obama "Barackstar O'Bummer". Biafra refused to support Obama in 2012. Biafra has stated that he feels that Obama continued many of George W. Bush's policies, summarizing Obama's policies as containing "worse and worse laws against human rights and more and more illegal unconstitutional spying."
On September 18, 2015, it was announced that Biafra would be supporting Bernie Sanders in his campaign for the 2016 presidential election. He has strongly criticised the political position of Donald Trump, saying "how can people be so fucking stupid" on hearing the election result, and later adding "The last person we want with their finger on the nuclear button is somebody connected to this extreme Christianist doomsday cult."
On February 28, 2020, Jello announced that he would be supporting both Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders in the 2020 presidential election. “I personally like Warren slightly better than Bernie because: 1) She’s done her homework. Bernie too, but not to quite the same depth or degree. 2) Think about it — who really has a better chance of actually beating Trump, and helping flip Congress and state legislatures? It’s Elizabeth Warren, hands down.” He went on to say that he considered Joe Biden and Mike Bloomberg "almost as bad as Trump".
On April 12, 2020, Biafra expressed disappointment that Sanders had suspended his campaign for the 2020 Democratic nomination.
Boycott of Israel
In mid-2011 Jello Biafra and his band were scheduled to play at the Barby Club in Tel Aviv. They came under heavy pressure by the pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, and finally decided to cancel the concert – after a debate which according to Biafra "deeply tore at the fabric of our band ... This whole controversy has been one of the most intense situations of my life – and I thrive on intense situations".
Biafra then decided to travel to Israel and the Palestinian Occupied Territories, at his own expense, and talk with Israeli and Palestinian activists as well as with fans disappointed at his cancellation. In the article stating his conclusions he wrote:
"I will not perform in Israel unless it is a pro-human rights, anti-occupation event, that does not violate the spirit of the boycott. Each musician, artist, etc. must decide this for themselves. I am staying away for now, but am also really creeped out by the attitudes of some of the hardliners and hope some day to find a way to contribute something positive here. I will not march or sign on with anyone who runs around calling people Zionazis and is more interested in making threats than making friends."
Personal life
Biafra married Theresa Soder, a.k.a. Ninotchka, lead singer of San Francisco-area punk band the Situations, on October 31, 1981. The wedding was conducted by Flipper vocalist/bassist Bruce Loose, who became a Universal Life Church minister just to conduct the ceremony, which took place in a graveyard. The wedding reception, which members of Flipper, Black Flag, and D.O.A. attended, was held at director Joe Rees' Target Video studios. The marriage ended in 1986. Biafra generally does not discuss his private life. He lives in San Francisco, California.
Selected discography
For a more complete list, see the Jello Biafra discography.
Dead Kennedys
1980 – Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables
1981 – In God We Trust, Inc.
1982 – Plastic Surgery Disasters
1985 – Frankenchrist
1986 – Bedtime for Democracy
1987 – Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death
Spoken word
1987 – No More Cocoons
1989 – High Priest of Harmful Matter: Tales From the Trial
1991 – I Blow Minds for a Living
1994 – Beyond the Valley of the Gift Police
1998 – If Evolution Is Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Evolve
2000 – Become the Media
2002 – The Big Ka-Boom, Pt. 1
2002 – Machine Gun in the Clown's Hand
2006 – In the Grip of Official Treason
Lard
1989 – The Power of Lard
1990 – The Last Temptation of Reid
1997 – Pure Chewing Satisfaction
2000 – 70's Rock Must Die
Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine
2009 – The Audacity of Hype
2011 – Enhanced Methods of Questioning
2012 – SHOCK-U-PY
2013 – White People and the Damage Done
2020 – Tea Party Revenge Porn
Collaborations
Filmography
1977 – This Is America, Pt. 2
1981 – Urgh! A Music War
1983 – Anarchism in America
1986 – Lovedolls Superstar, directed by Dave Markey
1987 – Household Affairs, directed & filmed by Allen Ginsberg
1988 – Tapeheads, directed by Bill Fishman
1990 – Terminal City Ricochet
1991 – Highway 61, directed by Bruce McDonald
1994 – Skulhedface, directed by Melanie Mandl
1997 – Mary Jane's Not a Virgin Anymore, directed by Sarah Jacobson
1999 – The Widower
1999 – Virtue
2001 – Plaster Caster
2002 – Bikini Bandits, directed by Steve and Peter Grasse
2004 – Death and Texas
2004 – Punk: Attitude
2005 – We Jam Econo: The Story of the Minutemen
2006 – Punk's Not Dead, directed by Susan Dynner
2006 – Whose War?, directed by Donald Farmer
2007 – American Drug War: The Last White Hope, directed by Kevin Booth
2008 – Nerdcore Rising, directed by Negin Farsad
2009 – Open Your Mouth and Say Mr. Chi Pig, directed by Sean Patrick Shaul
2010 – A Man Within, directed by Yony Leyser
2011 – I Love You ... I Am the Porn Queen, short film directed by Ani Kyd
2014 – Heino: Made in Germany, directed by Oliver Schwabe
2014 – Portlandia, season 4, episode 4 – "Pull-Out King"
2018 – Bathtubs Over Broadway, directed by Dava Whisenant (as himself)
2018 – Boiled Angels: The Trial of Mike Diana, directed by Frank Henenlotter (narrator)
2019 – The Last Black Man in San Francisco, directed by Joe Talbot
Notes
References
External links
Jello Biafra on Alternative Tentacles
1958 births
Living people
20th-century American politicians
Candidates in the 2000 United States presidential election
Alternative Tentacles
Alternative Tentacles artists
American anti–Iraq War activists
American anti-war activists
American human rights activists
American male film actors
American people of Jewish descent
American punk rock singers
American satirists
American male singer-songwriters
American spoken word artists
Anti-consumerists
Anti-corporate activists
Anti-globalization activists
Boulder High School alumni
California Greens
Dead Kennedys members
Finance fraud
Green Party of the United States politicians
Hardcore punk musicians
Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine members
Lard (band) members
Male actors from Boulder, Colorado
Musicians from Boulder, Colorado
Pigface members
Pranksters
Teenage Time Killers members
Singer-songwriters from Colorado | true | [
"Philip Collins Ltd v Davis [2000] 3 All ER 808 is an English unjust enrichment case, an example of a restitution claim and the change of position defence.\n\nFacts\nPhil Collins released Serious Hits… Live! with 15 tracks in 1990. Rahmlee Davis and Louis Satterfield contributed performances on five tracks and received album royalties via Collins' publishing company Philip Collins Ltd. In 1997, Collins said they had been mistakenly overpaid by a factor of three. They had been paid as if they had performed on all fifteen tracks, but they had only performed on five. To reverse this alleged unjust enrichment, Collins proposed to set off the overpaid royalties on future royalties. Davis and Satterfield argued back they were entitled to royalties without the pro rata reduction, and raised both estoppel and change of position defences.\n\nJudgment\nJonathan Parker J held Collins had overpaid Davis and Satterfield and he was entitled to set future royalties off against half of the sums overpaid. He said the overpayment was a mistake of fact, because Collins thought they had played in all 15 tracks. Collins was not estopped from maintaining there was overpayment of royalties because there was never any assumption between the parties that Davis and Satterfield would get royalties for all 15 tracks and there was no acquiescence in the assumption. Overpayment was not acquiescence. There was no evidence Davis and Satterfield ever thought they were entitled. The overpayments did not amount to representations that they were (so no estoppel by representation). But the fact of overpayment did result in a general change of position on Davis and Satterfield's part. It increased their level of outgoings. However, the defence of change of position was not an “all or nothing” doctrine and, in this case, it would be fair to allow the defence to cover one half of the overpayments (Lipkin Gorman v Karpnale Ltd [1991] 2 AC 548 applied). Finally, if Collins had made a claim to recover the overpayments his claim would have been statute barred under the Limitation Act 1980, s.5 because it was six years. But here it was not a return of overpayments, only an equitable set off against future royalties.\n\nThe following is an excerpt about the change of position defence at work.\n\nSee also\nEnglish unjust enrichment\n\nNotes\n\nEnglish unjust enrichment case law\nHigh Court of Justice cases\n2000 in case law\n2000 in British law\nPhil Collins",
"Re Jeavons, ex parte Mackay (1873) LR 8 Ch App 643 is a UK insolvency law case. It decided that a creditor could not reserve an obligation to himself in priority of other creditors if a company were to go into liquidation.\n\nFacts\nMr Joshua Jeavons had an iron manufacturing business (Joshua Jeavons & Company) at the Millwall Ironworks. Jeavons sold one John Brown & Co. Ltd a patent for improving armour plates manufacture. In return Brown would pay Jeavons royalties of 15s per ton of plates produced. Brown also lent Jeavons £12,500, and agreed that half Jeavons' royalties would go to paying back that loan. It was further agreed that if Jeavons went insolvent, or made an arrangement with creditors, Brown could keep all the royalties to satisfy the debt.\n\nJudgment\nThe Chancery Division of the Court of Appeal held that Brown had a lien on one half of the royalties only. The agreement that Brown could retain all royalties if Jeavons went bankrupt was a fraud on the bankruptcy laws and void.\n\nMr. Fry, Q.C., and Mr. Henderson, then argued in support of the second appeal:—\n\nMr. De Gex, Q.C., and Mr. Finlay Knight, for the trustee, were not called on.\n\nSee also\nUK company law\n\nNotes\n\nReferences\n\nUnited Kingdom insolvency case law\n1873 in case law\n1873 in British law\nCourt of Appeal (England and Wales) cases"
]
|
[
"Jello Biafra",
"Lawsuit and reunion activities",
"Why did he have a lawsuit?",
"three former members of the Dead Kennedys sued Biafra for nonpayment of royalties.",
"Was the lawsuit settled?",
"In May 2000, a jury found Biafra and Alternative Tentacles \"guilty of malice, oppression and fraud",
"Did he have to pay the back royalties?",
"Biafra was ordered to pay $200,000, including $20,000 in punitive damages."
]
| C_f6fb62c57f214974b44a408134a9d048_0 | Did he have to serve jail time? | 4 | Did Jello Biafra have to serve jail time? | Jello Biafra | In October 1998, three former members of the Dead Kennedys sued Biafra for nonpayment of royalties. The other members of Dead Kennedys alleged that after Biafra, in his capacity as the head of Alternative Tentacles records, discovered an accounting error amounting to some $75,000 in unpaid royalties over almost a decade. Rather than informing his bandmates of this mistake, the suit alleged, Biafra knowingly concealed the information until a whistleblower employee at the record label notified the band. According to Biafra, the suit resulted from his refusal to allow one of the band's most well-known singles, "Holiday in Cambodia", to be used in a commercial for Levi's Dockers; Biafra opposes Levi's because of his claim that they use unfair business practices and sweatshop labor. Biafra maintained that he had never denied them royalties, and that he himself had not even received royalties for re-releases of their albums or "posthumous" live albums which had been licensed to other labels by the Decay Music partnership. Decay Music denied this charge and have posted what they say are his cashed royalty checks, written to his legal name of Eric Boucher. Biafra also complained about the songwriting credits in new reissues and archival live albums of songs, alleging that he was the sole composer of songs that were wrongly credited to the entire band. In May 2000, a jury found Biafra and Alternative Tentacles "guilty of malice, oppression and fraud" by not promptly informing his former bandmates of the accounting error and instead withholding the information during subsequent discussions and contractual negotiations. Biafra was ordered to pay $200,000, including $20,000 in punitive damages. After an appeal by Biafra's lawyers, in June 2003, the California Court of Appeal unanimously upheld all the conditions of the 2000 verdict against Biafra and Alternative Tentacles. Furthermore, the plaintiffs were awarded the rights to most of Dead Kennedys recorded works -- which accounted for about half the sales for Alternative Tentacles. Now in control of the Dead Kennedys name, Biafra's former bandmates went on tour with a new lead vocalist. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Eric Reed Boucher (born June 17, 1958), better known by his professional name Jello Biafra, is an American singer and spoken word artist. He is the former lead singer and songwriter for the San Francisco punk rock band Dead Kennedys.
Initially active from 1979 to 1986, Dead Kennedys were known for rapid-fire music topped with Biafra's sardonic lyrics and biting social commentary, delivered in his "unique quiver of a voice". When the band broke up in 1986, he took over the influential independent record label Alternative Tentacles, which he had founded in 1979 with Dead Kennedys bandmate East Bay Ray. In a 2000 lawsuit, upheld on appeal in 2003 by the California Supreme Court, Biafra was found liable for breach of contract, fraud and malice in withholding a decade's worth of royalties from his former bandmates and ordered to pay over $200,000 in compensation and punitive damages; the band subsequently reformed without Biafra. Although now focused primarily on spoken word performances, Biafra has continued as a musician in numerous collaborations. He has also occasionally appeared in cameo roles in films.
Politically, Biafra is a member of the Green Party of the United States and supports various political causes. He ran for the party's presidential nomination in the 2000 presidential election, finishing a distant second to Ralph Nader. In 1979 he ran for mayor of San Francisco, California. He is a staunch believer in a free society, and utilizes shock value and advocates direct action and pranksterism in the name of political causes. Biafra is known to use absurdist media tactics, in the leftist tradition of the Yippies, to highlight issues of civil rights and social justice.
Early life
Eric Reed Boucher was born in Boulder, Colorado, the son of Virginia (née Parker), a librarian, and Stanley Wayne Boucher, a psychiatric social worker and poet. His sister, Julie J. Boucher, was Associate Director of the Library Research Service at the Colorado State Library; she died in a mountain-climbing accident on October 12, 1996. Biafra has a Jewish great grandparent, but was unaware of this until the mid-2000s. He grew up in a secular household and has said that he is "not really Jewish".
As a child, Boucher developed an interest in international politics that was encouraged by his parents. An avid news watcher, one of his earliest memories was of the John F. Kennedy assassination. Biafra says he has been a fan of rock music since first hearing it in 1965, when his parents accidentally tuned in to a rock radio station. Boucher ignored his high school guidance counselor's advice that he spend his adolescence preparing to become a dental hygienist.
He began his career in music in January 1977 as a roadie for the punk rock band The Ravers (who later changed their name to The Nails), soon joining his friend John Greenway in a band called The Healers. The Healers became well known locally for their mainly improvised lyrics and avant garde music. In the autumn of that year, he began attending the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Musical career
Dead Kennedys
In June 1978, Biafra responded to an advertisement placed in a store by guitarist East Bay Ray, stating "guitarist wants to form punk band", and together they formed the Dead Kennedys. He began performing with the band under the stage name Occupant, but soon began to use his current stage name, a combination of the brand name Jell-O and the short-lived African state Biafra. The band's lyrics were written by Biafra. The lyrics were mostly political in nature and displayed a sardonic, sometimes absurdist, sense of humor despite their serious subject matter. In the tradition of UK anarcho-punk bands like Crass and the Subhumans, the Dead Kennedys were one of the first US punk bands to write politically themed songs. The lyrics Biafra wrote helped popularize the use of humorous lyrics in punk and other types of hard-core music. Biafra cites Joey Ramone as the inspiration for his use of humor in his songs (as well as being the musician who made him interested in punk rock), noting in particular songs by the Ramones such as "Beat on the Brat" and "Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue".
Biafra initially attempted to compose music on guitar, but his lack of experience on the instrument and his own admission of being "a fumbler with my hands" led Dead Kennedys bassist Klaus Flouride to suggest that Biafra simply sing the parts he envisioned to the band. Biafra sang his riffs and melodies into a tape recorder, which he brought to the band's rehearsal and/or recording sessions. This later became a problem when the other members of the Dead Kennedys sued Biafra over royalties and publishing rights. By all accounts, including his own, Biafra is not a conventionally skilled musician, though he and his collaborators (Joey Shithead of D.O.A. in particular) attest that he is a skilled composer and his work, particularly with the Dead Kennedys, is highly respected by punk-oriented critics and fans.
Biafra's first popular song was the first single by the Dead Kennedys, "California über alles". The song, which spoofed California governor Jerry Brown, was the first of many political songs by the group and Biafra. The song's popularity resulted in its being covered by other musicians, such as The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy (who rewrote the lyrics to parody Pete Wilson), John Linnell of They Might Be Giants and Six Feet Under on their Graveyard Classics album of cover versions. Not long after, the Dead Kennedys had a second and bigger hit with "Holiday in Cambodia" from their debut album Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables. AllMusic cites this song as "possibly the most successful single of the American hardcore scene" and Biafra counts it as his personal favorite Dead Kennedy's song. Minor hits from the album included "Kill the Poor" (about potential abuse of the then-new neutron bomb) and a satirical cover of Elvis Presley's "Viva Las Vegas".
The Dead Kennedys received some controversy in the spring of 1981 over the single "Too Drunk to Fuck". The song became a hit in Britain, and the BBC feared that it would manage to be a big enough hit to appear among the top 30 songs on the national charts, requiring a mention on Top of the Pops. However, the single peaked at number 31 in the charts.
Later albums also contained memorable songs, but with less popularity than the earlier ones. The EP In God We Trust, Inc. contained the song "Nazi Punks Fuck Off!" as well as "We've Got A Bigger Problem Now", a rewritten version of "California über alles" about Ronald Reagan. Punk musician and scholar Vic Bondi considers the latter song to be the song that "defined the lyrical agenda of much of hardcore music, and represented its break with punk". The band's most controversial album, Frankenchrist, brought with it the song "MTV Get Off the Air," which accused MTV of promoting poor quality music and sedating the public. The album also contained a controversial poster by Swiss surrealist artist H. R. Giger entitled Penis Landscape.
The Dead Kennedys toured widely during their career, starting in the late 1970s. They began playing at San Francisco's Mabuhay Gardens (their home base) and other Bay Area venues, later branching out to shows in southern Californian clubs (most notably the Whisky a Go Go), but eventually they moved to major clubs across the country, including CBGB in New York. Later, they played to larger audiences such as at the 1980 Bay Area Music Awards (where they played the notorious "Pull My Strings" for the only time), and headlined the 1983 Rock Against Reagan festival.
On May 7, 1994, punk rock fans who believed Biafra was a "sell out" attacked him at the 924 Gilman Street club in Berkeley, California. Biafra claims that he was attacked by a man nicknamed Cretin, who crashed into him while moshing. The crash injured Biafra's leg, causing an argument between the two men. During the argument, Cretin pushed Biafra to the floor and five or six friends of Cretin assaulted Biafra while he was down, yelling "Sellout rock star, kick him", and attempting to pull out his hair. Biafra was later hospitalized with serious injuries. The attack derailed Biafra's plans for both a Canadian spoken-word tour and an accompanying album, and the production of Pure Chewing Satisfaction was halted. However, Biafra returned to the Gilman club a few months after the incident to perform a spoken-word performance as an act of reconciliation with the club.
Biafra has been a prominent figure of the Californian punk scene and was one of the third generation members of the San Francisco punk community. Many later hardcore bands have cited the Dead Kennedys as a major influence. Hardcore punk author Steven Blush describes Biafra as hardcore's "biggest star" who was a "powerful presence whose political insurgence and rabid fandom made him the father figure of a burgeoning subculture [and an] inspirational force [who] could also be a real prick ... Biafra was a visionary, incendiary [performer]."
After the Dead Kennedys disbanded, Biafra's new songs were recorded with other bands, and he released only spoken word albums as solo projects. These collaborations had less popularity than Biafra's earlier work. However, his song "That's Progress", originally recorded with D.O.A. for the album Last Scream of the Missing Neighbors, received considerable exposure when it appeared on the album Rock Against Bush, Vol. 1.
Obscenity prosecution
In April 1986, police officers raided Biafra's house in response to complaints by the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC). In June 1986, L.A. deputy city attorney Michael Guarino, working under City Attorney James Hahn, brought Biafra to trial in Los Angeles for distributing "harmful material to minors" in the Dead Kennedys album Frankenchrist. However, the dispute was about neither the music nor the lyrics from the album, but rather the print of the H. R. Giger poster Landscape XX (Penis Landscape) included with the album.
Music author Reebee Garofalo argued that Biafra and Alternative Tentacles may have been targeted because the label was a "small, self-managed and self-supported company that could ill afford a protracted legal battle." Facing the possible sentence of a year in jail and a $2,000 fine, Biafra, Dirk Dirksen, and Suzanne Stefanac founded the No More Censorship Defense Fund, a benefit featuring several punk rock bands, to help pay for his legal fees, which neither he nor his record label could afford. The jury deadlocked 5 to 7 in favor of acquittal, prompting a mistrial; despite a motion to re-try the case, the judge ordered all charges dropped. The Dead Kennedys disbanded during the trial, in December 1986, due to the mounting legal costs; in the wake of their disbandment, Biafra made a career of his spoken word performances.
Biafra has a cameo role in the 1988 film Tapeheads. He plays an FBI agent who arrests the two protagonists (played by Tim Robbins and John Cusack). While arresting them his character asks "Remember what we did to Jello Biafra?" lampooning the obscenity prosecution.
On March 25, 2005, Biafra appeared on the U.S. radio program This American Life, "Episode 285: Know Your Enemy", which featured a phone call between Jello Biafra and Michael Guarino, the prosecutor in the Frankenchrist trial.
Lawsuit and reunion activities
In October 1998, three former members of the Dead Kennedys sued Biafra for nonpayment of royalties. The other members of Dead Kennedys alleged that Biafra, in his capacity as the head of Alternative Tentacles records, discovered an accounting error amounting to some $75,000 in unpaid royalties over almost a decade. Rather than informing his bandmates of this mistake, the suit alleged, Biafra knowingly concealed the information until a whistleblower employee at the record label notified the band.
According to Biafra, the suit resulted from his refusal to allow one of the band's most well-known singles, "Holiday in Cambodia", to be used in a commercial for Levi's Dockers; Biafra opposes Levi's because of his belief that they use unfair business practices and sweatshop labor. Biafra maintained that he had never denied them royalties, and that he himself had not even received royalties for re-releases of their albums or "posthumous" live albums which had been licensed to other labels by the Decay Music partnership. Decay Music denied this charge and have posted what they say are his cashed royalty checks, written to his legal name of Eric Boucher. Biafra also complained about the songwriting credits in new reissues and archival live albums of songs, alleging that he was the sole composer of songs that were wrongly credited to the entire band.
In May 2000, a jury found Biafra and Alternative Tentacles liable by not promptly informing his former bandmates of the accounting error and instead withholding the information during subsequent discussions and contractual negotiations. Biafra was ordered to pay $200,000, including $20,000 in punitive damages. After an appeal by Biafra's lawyers, in June 2003, the California Court of Appeals unanimously upheld all the conditions of the 2000 verdict against Biafra and Alternative Tentacles. Furthermore, the plaintiffs were awarded the rights to most of Dead Kennedys recorded works—which accounted for about half the sales for Alternative Tentacles. Now in control of the Dead Kennedys name, Biafra's former bandmates went on tour with a new lead vocalist.
Other bands
In the early 1980s, Biafra collaborated with musicians Christian Lunch and Adrian Borland (of The Sound) and Morgan Fisher (of Mott the Hoople) for the electropunk musical project The Witch Trials, releasing one self-titled EP in its lifetime.
In 1988, Biafra, with Al Jourgensen and Paul Barker of the band Ministry, and Jeff Ward, formed Lard. The band became yet another side project for Ministry, with Biafra providing vocals and lyrics. According to a March 2009 interview with Jourgensen, he and Biafra are working on a new Lard album, which is being recorded in Jourgensen's El Paso studio. Jourgensen also claimed in 2021 that Biafra was in works of a new Lard album. While working on the film Terminal City Ricochet in 1989, Biafra did a song for the film's soundtrack with D.O.A.. As a result, Biafra worked with D.O.A. on the album Last Scream of the Missing Neighbors. Biafra also worked with Nomeansno on the soundtrack, which led to their collaboration on the album The Sky Is Falling and I Want My Mommy the following year. Biafra also provided lyrics for the song "Biotech is Godzilla" for Sepultura's 1993 album Chaos A.D..
In 1999, Biafra and other members of the anti-globalization movement protested the WTO Meeting of 1999 in Seattle. Along with other prominent West Coast musicians, he formed the short-lived band the No WTO Combo to help promote the movement's cause. The band was originally scheduled to play during the protest, but the performance was canceled due to riots. The band performed a short set the following night at the Showbox in downtown Seattle (outside the designated area), along with the hiphop group Spearhead. No WTO Combo later released a CD of recordings from the concert, entitled Live from the Battle in Seattle.
As of late 2005, Biafra was performing with the band The Melvins under the name "Jello Biafra and the Melvins", though fans sometimes refer to them as "The Jelvins". Together they have released two albums, and worked on material for a third collaborative release, much of which was premiered live at two concerts at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco during an event called Biafra Five-O, commemorating Biafra's 50th birthday, the 30th anniversary of the founding of the Dead Kennedys, and the beginning of legalized same-sex marriage in California. Biafra was also working with a band known as Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine, which included Ralph Spight of Victims Family on guitar and Billy Gould of Faith No More on bass. This group debuted during Biafra Five-O.
In 2011, Biafra appeared in a singular concert event with an all-star cast of Southern musicians including members from Cowboy Mouth, Dash Rip Rock, Mojo Nixon and Down entitled, "Jello Biafra and the New Orleans Raunch & Soul All Stars" who performed an array of classic Soul covers to a packed house at the 12-Bar in New Orleans, Louisiana. He would later reunite with many of the same musicians during the Carnival season 2014 to revisit many of these classics at Siberia, New Orleans. A live album from the 2011 performance, Walk on Jindal's Splinters, and a companion single, Fannie May/Just a Little Bit, were released in 2015.
Alternative Tentacles
In June 1979, Biafra co-founded the record label Alternative Tentacles, with which the Dead Kennedys released their first single, "California über alles". The label was created to allow the band to release albums without having to deal with pressure from major labels to change their music, although the major labels were not willing to sign the band due to their songs being deemed too controversial. After dealing with Cherry Red in the UK and IRS Records in the US for their first album Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, the band released all later albums, and later pressings of Fresh Fruit on Alternative Tentacles. The exception being live albums released after the band's break-up, which the other band members compiled from recordings in the band partnership's vaults without Biafra's input or endorsement.. Biafra has been the owner of the company since its founding, though he does not receive a salary for his position; Biafra has referred to his position in the company as "absentee thoughtlord".
Biafra is an ardent collector of unusual vinyl records of all kinds, from 1950s and 1960s ethno-pop recordings by the likes of Les Baxter and Esquivel to vanity pressings that have circulated regionally, to German crooner Heino (for whom he would later participate in the documentary Heino: Made In Germany); he cites his always growing collection as one of his biggest musical influences. In 1993 he gave an interview to RE/Search Publications for their second Incredibly Strange Music book focusing primarily on these records, and later participated in a two-part episode of Fuse TV's program Crate Diggers on the same subject. His interest in such recordings, often categorized as outsider music, led to his discovery of the prolific (and schizophrenic) singer/songwriter/artist Wesley Willis, whom he signed to Alternative Tentacles in 1994, preceding Willis' major label deal with American Recordings. His collection grew so large that on October 1, 2005, Biafra donated a portion of his collection to an annual yard sale co-promoted by Alternative Tentacles and held at their warehouse in Emeryville, California.
In 2006, along with Alternative Tentacles employee and The Frisk lead singer Jesse Luscious, Biafra began co-hosting The Alternative Tentacles Batcast, a downloadable podcast hosted by alternativetentacles.com. The show primarily focuses on interviews with artists and bands that are currently signed to the Alternative Tentacles label, although there are also occasional episodes where Biafra devoted the show to answering fan questions.
Spoken word
Biafra became a spoken word artist in January 1986 with a performance at University of California, Los Angeles. In his performance he combined humor with his political beliefs, much in the same way that he did with the lyrics to his songs. Despite his continued spoken word performances, he did not begin recording spoken word albums until after the disbanding of the Dead Kennedys.
His ninth spoken word album, In the Grip of Official Treason, was released in October 2006.
Biafra was also featured in the British band Pitchshifter's song As Seen on TV reciting the words of dystopian futuristic radio advertisements.
Politics
Biafra has resisted identifying with any particular political party or ideology, saying, "I don't label myself strictly an anarchist or a socialist or let alone a libertarian or something like that," In a 2012 interview, Biafra said "I'm very pro-tax as long as it goes for the right things. I don't mind paying more money as long as it's going to provide shelter for people sleeping in the street or getting the schools fixed back up, getting the infrastructure up to the standards of other countries, including a high speed rail system. I'm totally down with that."
Mayoral campaign
In the autumn of 1979, Biafra ran for mayor of San Francisco, using the Jell-O ad campaign catchphrase, "There's always room for Jello", as his campaign slogan. Having entered the race before creating a campaign platform, Biafra later wrote his platform on a napkin while attending a Pere Ubu concert where Dead Kennedys drummer Ted told Biafra, "Biafra, you have such a big mouth that you should run for Mayor." As he campaigned, Biafra wore campaign T-shirts from his opponent Quentin Kopp's previous campaign and at one point vacuumed leaves off the front lawn of another opponent, current U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, to mock her publicity stunt of sweeping streets in downtown San Francisco for a few hours. He also made a whistlestop campaign tour along the BART line. Supporters committed equally odd actions; two well known signs held by supporters said "If he doesn't win I'll kill myself" and "What if he does win?"
At the time, in San Francisco any individual could legally run for mayor if a petition was signed by 1500 people or if $1500 was paid. Biafra paid $900 and got signatures over time and eventually became a legal candidate, meaning he received statements put in voters' pamphlets and equal news coverage.
His platform included unconventional points such as forcing businessmen to wear clown suits within city limits, erecting statues of Dan White, who assassinated Mayor George Moscone and City Supervisor Harvey Milk in 1978, around the city and allowing the parks department to sell eggs and tomatoes with which people could pelt the statues, hiring workers who had lost their jobs due to a tax initiative to panhandle in wealthy neighborhoods (including Senator Dianne Feinstein's), and a citywide ban on cars. Biafra has expressed irritation that these parts of his platform attained such notoriety, preferring instead to be remembered for serious proposals such as legalizing squatting in vacant, tax-delinquent buildings and requiring police officers to run for election by the people of the neighborhoods they patrol.
He finished third out of a field of ten, receiving 3.79 percent of the vote (6,591 votes); the election ended in a runoff that did not involve him (Feinstein was declared the winner).
Presidential campaign
In 2000, the New York State Green Party drafted Biafra as a candidate for the Green Party presidential nomination, and a few supporters were elected to the party's nominating convention in Denver, Colorado. Biafra chose death row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal as his running mate. The party overwhelmingly chose Ralph Nader as the presidential candidate with 295 of the 319 delegate votes. Biafra received 10 votes.
Biafra, along with a camera crew (dubbed by Biafra as "The Camcorder Truth Jihad"), later reported for the Independent Media Center at the Republican and Democratic conventions.
Post-2000
After losing the 2000 nomination, Biafra became highly active in Nader's presidential campaign, as well as in 2004 and 2008. During the 2008 campaign Jello played at rallies and answered questions for journalists in support of Nader. When gay rights activists accused Nader of costing Al Gore the 2000 election, Biafra reminded them that Tipper Gore's Parents Music Resource Center wanted warning stickers on albums with content referencing homosexuality.
After Barack Obama won the general election, Biafra wrote an open letter making suggestions on how to run his term as president. Biafra criticized Obama during his term, stating that "Obama even won the award for best advertising campaign of 2008." Biafra dubbed Obama "Barackstar O'Bummer". Biafra refused to support Obama in 2012. Biafra has stated that he feels that Obama continued many of George W. Bush's policies, summarizing Obama's policies as containing "worse and worse laws against human rights and more and more illegal unconstitutional spying."
On September 18, 2015, it was announced that Biafra would be supporting Bernie Sanders in his campaign for the 2016 presidential election. He has strongly criticised the political position of Donald Trump, saying "how can people be so fucking stupid" on hearing the election result, and later adding "The last person we want with their finger on the nuclear button is somebody connected to this extreme Christianist doomsday cult."
On February 28, 2020, Jello announced that he would be supporting both Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders in the 2020 presidential election. “I personally like Warren slightly better than Bernie because: 1) She’s done her homework. Bernie too, but not to quite the same depth or degree. 2) Think about it — who really has a better chance of actually beating Trump, and helping flip Congress and state legislatures? It’s Elizabeth Warren, hands down.” He went on to say that he considered Joe Biden and Mike Bloomberg "almost as bad as Trump".
On April 12, 2020, Biafra expressed disappointment that Sanders had suspended his campaign for the 2020 Democratic nomination.
Boycott of Israel
In mid-2011 Jello Biafra and his band were scheduled to play at the Barby Club in Tel Aviv. They came under heavy pressure by the pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, and finally decided to cancel the concert – after a debate which according to Biafra "deeply tore at the fabric of our band ... This whole controversy has been one of the most intense situations of my life – and I thrive on intense situations".
Biafra then decided to travel to Israel and the Palestinian Occupied Territories, at his own expense, and talk with Israeli and Palestinian activists as well as with fans disappointed at his cancellation. In the article stating his conclusions he wrote:
"I will not perform in Israel unless it is a pro-human rights, anti-occupation event, that does not violate the spirit of the boycott. Each musician, artist, etc. must decide this for themselves. I am staying away for now, but am also really creeped out by the attitudes of some of the hardliners and hope some day to find a way to contribute something positive here. I will not march or sign on with anyone who runs around calling people Zionazis and is more interested in making threats than making friends."
Personal life
Biafra married Theresa Soder, a.k.a. Ninotchka, lead singer of San Francisco-area punk band the Situations, on October 31, 1981. The wedding was conducted by Flipper vocalist/bassist Bruce Loose, who became a Universal Life Church minister just to conduct the ceremony, which took place in a graveyard. The wedding reception, which members of Flipper, Black Flag, and D.O.A. attended, was held at director Joe Rees' Target Video studios. The marriage ended in 1986. Biafra generally does not discuss his private life. He lives in San Francisco, California.
Selected discography
For a more complete list, see the Jello Biafra discography.
Dead Kennedys
1980 – Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables
1981 – In God We Trust, Inc.
1982 – Plastic Surgery Disasters
1985 – Frankenchrist
1986 – Bedtime for Democracy
1987 – Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death
Spoken word
1987 – No More Cocoons
1989 – High Priest of Harmful Matter: Tales From the Trial
1991 – I Blow Minds for a Living
1994 – Beyond the Valley of the Gift Police
1998 – If Evolution Is Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Evolve
2000 – Become the Media
2002 – The Big Ka-Boom, Pt. 1
2002 – Machine Gun in the Clown's Hand
2006 – In the Grip of Official Treason
Lard
1989 – The Power of Lard
1990 – The Last Temptation of Reid
1997 – Pure Chewing Satisfaction
2000 – 70's Rock Must Die
Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine
2009 – The Audacity of Hype
2011 – Enhanced Methods of Questioning
2012 – SHOCK-U-PY
2013 – White People and the Damage Done
2020 – Tea Party Revenge Porn
Collaborations
Filmography
1977 – This Is America, Pt. 2
1981 – Urgh! A Music War
1983 – Anarchism in America
1986 – Lovedolls Superstar, directed by Dave Markey
1987 – Household Affairs, directed & filmed by Allen Ginsberg
1988 – Tapeheads, directed by Bill Fishman
1990 – Terminal City Ricochet
1991 – Highway 61, directed by Bruce McDonald
1994 – Skulhedface, directed by Melanie Mandl
1997 – Mary Jane's Not a Virgin Anymore, directed by Sarah Jacobson
1999 – The Widower
1999 – Virtue
2001 – Plaster Caster
2002 – Bikini Bandits, directed by Steve and Peter Grasse
2004 – Death and Texas
2004 – Punk: Attitude
2005 – We Jam Econo: The Story of the Minutemen
2006 – Punk's Not Dead, directed by Susan Dynner
2006 – Whose War?, directed by Donald Farmer
2007 – American Drug War: The Last White Hope, directed by Kevin Booth
2008 – Nerdcore Rising, directed by Negin Farsad
2009 – Open Your Mouth and Say Mr. Chi Pig, directed by Sean Patrick Shaul
2010 – A Man Within, directed by Yony Leyser
2011 – I Love You ... I Am the Porn Queen, short film directed by Ani Kyd
2014 – Heino: Made in Germany, directed by Oliver Schwabe
2014 – Portlandia, season 4, episode 4 – "Pull-Out King"
2018 – Bathtubs Over Broadway, directed by Dava Whisenant (as himself)
2018 – Boiled Angels: The Trial of Mike Diana, directed by Frank Henenlotter (narrator)
2019 – The Last Black Man in San Francisco, directed by Joe Talbot
Notes
References
External links
Jello Biafra on Alternative Tentacles
1958 births
Living people
20th-century American politicians
Candidates in the 2000 United States presidential election
Alternative Tentacles
Alternative Tentacles artists
American anti–Iraq War activists
American anti-war activists
American human rights activists
American male film actors
American people of Jewish descent
American punk rock singers
American satirists
American male singer-songwriters
American spoken word artists
Anti-consumerists
Anti-corporate activists
Anti-globalization activists
Boulder High School alumni
California Greens
Dead Kennedys members
Finance fraud
Green Party of the United States politicians
Hardcore punk musicians
Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine members
Lard (band) members
Male actors from Boulder, Colorado
Musicians from Boulder, Colorado
Pigface members
Pranksters
Teenage Time Killers members
Singer-songwriters from Colorado | false | [
"This is a list of longest prison sentences ever given to a single person, worldwide. Listed are instances where people have been sentenced to jail terms in excess of a human lifetime. Note that many national legislations worldwide do not allow for such sentences.\n\nSince the sentence given is not necessarily equivalent to time served, see the list of longest prison sentences served for those who have spent the longest continuous time in prison.\n\nPrisoners sentenced to more than one life imprisonment or to life imprisonment plus additional time\n\nPrisoners not sentenced to life imprisonment\nThese sentences differ technically from sentences of life imprisonment in that the designated jail times have specific lengths, although in practical terms they may serve the same purpose.\n\nPrisoners sentenced to 1,000 years or more in prison\n\nPrisoners sentenced to between 500 and 1000 years in prison\n\nPrisoners sentenced to between 120 and 499 years in prison\n\nFalse claims\n\nSee also\nList of longest prison sentences served\nList of prisoners with whole-life orders\n\nReferences\n\nLists of prisoners and detainees\nPrisoners sentenced to life imprisonment\nPenal imprisonment\nLife imprisonment\nPrison sentences",
"The Old Jail, also known as the Gordo Jail and Mayor's Office, is a historic former jail and office building in Gordo, Pickens County, Alabama. The two-story brick structure was completed in 1914. It originally contained two jail cells and a mayor's office downstairs, with a courtroom upstairs. It served as jail and town hall until circa 1930, when everything but the jail moved to other premises. It continued to serve as a jail until 1955. It has served various functions since that time. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on December 17, 1974.\n\nReferences\n\nNational Register of Historic Places in Pickens County, Alabama\nJails on the National Register of Historic Places in Alabama\nBuildings and structures in Pickens County, Alabama\nGovernment buildings completed in 1914\nDefunct prisons in Alabama\nJails in Alabama\n1914 establishments in Alabama"
]
|
[
"Jello Biafra",
"Lawsuit and reunion activities",
"Why did he have a lawsuit?",
"three former members of the Dead Kennedys sued Biafra for nonpayment of royalties.",
"Was the lawsuit settled?",
"In May 2000, a jury found Biafra and Alternative Tentacles \"guilty of malice, oppression and fraud",
"Did he have to pay the back royalties?",
"Biafra was ordered to pay $200,000, including $20,000 in punitive damages.",
"Did he have to serve jail time?",
"I don't know."
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| C_f6fb62c57f214974b44a408134a9d048_0 | What was the reunion like? | 5 | What was the Dead Kennedy's reunion like for Jello Biafra? | Jello Biafra | In October 1998, three former members of the Dead Kennedys sued Biafra for nonpayment of royalties. The other members of Dead Kennedys alleged that after Biafra, in his capacity as the head of Alternative Tentacles records, discovered an accounting error amounting to some $75,000 in unpaid royalties over almost a decade. Rather than informing his bandmates of this mistake, the suit alleged, Biafra knowingly concealed the information until a whistleblower employee at the record label notified the band. According to Biafra, the suit resulted from his refusal to allow one of the band's most well-known singles, "Holiday in Cambodia", to be used in a commercial for Levi's Dockers; Biafra opposes Levi's because of his claim that they use unfair business practices and sweatshop labor. Biafra maintained that he had never denied them royalties, and that he himself had not even received royalties for re-releases of their albums or "posthumous" live albums which had been licensed to other labels by the Decay Music partnership. Decay Music denied this charge and have posted what they say are his cashed royalty checks, written to his legal name of Eric Boucher. Biafra also complained about the songwriting credits in new reissues and archival live albums of songs, alleging that he was the sole composer of songs that were wrongly credited to the entire band. In May 2000, a jury found Biafra and Alternative Tentacles "guilty of malice, oppression and fraud" by not promptly informing his former bandmates of the accounting error and instead withholding the information during subsequent discussions and contractual negotiations. Biafra was ordered to pay $200,000, including $20,000 in punitive damages. After an appeal by Biafra's lawyers, in June 2003, the California Court of Appeal unanimously upheld all the conditions of the 2000 verdict against Biafra and Alternative Tentacles. Furthermore, the plaintiffs were awarded the rights to most of Dead Kennedys recorded works -- which accounted for about half the sales for Alternative Tentacles. Now in control of the Dead Kennedys name, Biafra's former bandmates went on tour with a new lead vocalist. CANNOTANSWER | Now in control of the Dead Kennedys name, Biafra's former bandmates went on tour with a new lead vocalist. | Eric Reed Boucher (born June 17, 1958), better known by his professional name Jello Biafra, is an American singer and spoken word artist. He is the former lead singer and songwriter for the San Francisco punk rock band Dead Kennedys.
Initially active from 1979 to 1986, Dead Kennedys were known for rapid-fire music topped with Biafra's sardonic lyrics and biting social commentary, delivered in his "unique quiver of a voice". When the band broke up in 1986, he took over the influential independent record label Alternative Tentacles, which he had founded in 1979 with Dead Kennedys bandmate East Bay Ray. In a 2000 lawsuit, upheld on appeal in 2003 by the California Supreme Court, Biafra was found liable for breach of contract, fraud and malice in withholding a decade's worth of royalties from his former bandmates and ordered to pay over $200,000 in compensation and punitive damages; the band subsequently reformed without Biafra. Although now focused primarily on spoken word performances, Biafra has continued as a musician in numerous collaborations. He has also occasionally appeared in cameo roles in films.
Politically, Biafra is a member of the Green Party of the United States and supports various political causes. He ran for the party's presidential nomination in the 2000 presidential election, finishing a distant second to Ralph Nader. In 1979 he ran for mayor of San Francisco, California. He is a staunch believer in a free society, and utilizes shock value and advocates direct action and pranksterism in the name of political causes. Biafra is known to use absurdist media tactics, in the leftist tradition of the Yippies, to highlight issues of civil rights and social justice.
Early life
Eric Reed Boucher was born in Boulder, Colorado, the son of Virginia (née Parker), a librarian, and Stanley Wayne Boucher, a psychiatric social worker and poet. His sister, Julie J. Boucher, was Associate Director of the Library Research Service at the Colorado State Library; she died in a mountain-climbing accident on October 12, 1996. Biafra has a Jewish great grandparent, but was unaware of this until the mid-2000s. He grew up in a secular household and has said that he is "not really Jewish".
As a child, Boucher developed an interest in international politics that was encouraged by his parents. An avid news watcher, one of his earliest memories was of the John F. Kennedy assassination. Biafra says he has been a fan of rock music since first hearing it in 1965, when his parents accidentally tuned in to a rock radio station. Boucher ignored his high school guidance counselor's advice that he spend his adolescence preparing to become a dental hygienist.
He began his career in music in January 1977 as a roadie for the punk rock band The Ravers (who later changed their name to The Nails), soon joining his friend John Greenway in a band called The Healers. The Healers became well known locally for their mainly improvised lyrics and avant garde music. In the autumn of that year, he began attending the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Musical career
Dead Kennedys
In June 1978, Biafra responded to an advertisement placed in a store by guitarist East Bay Ray, stating "guitarist wants to form punk band", and together they formed the Dead Kennedys. He began performing with the band under the stage name Occupant, but soon began to use his current stage name, a combination of the brand name Jell-O and the short-lived African state Biafra. The band's lyrics were written by Biafra. The lyrics were mostly political in nature and displayed a sardonic, sometimes absurdist, sense of humor despite their serious subject matter. In the tradition of UK anarcho-punk bands like Crass and the Subhumans, the Dead Kennedys were one of the first US punk bands to write politically themed songs. The lyrics Biafra wrote helped popularize the use of humorous lyrics in punk and other types of hard-core music. Biafra cites Joey Ramone as the inspiration for his use of humor in his songs (as well as being the musician who made him interested in punk rock), noting in particular songs by the Ramones such as "Beat on the Brat" and "Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue".
Biafra initially attempted to compose music on guitar, but his lack of experience on the instrument and his own admission of being "a fumbler with my hands" led Dead Kennedys bassist Klaus Flouride to suggest that Biafra simply sing the parts he envisioned to the band. Biafra sang his riffs and melodies into a tape recorder, which he brought to the band's rehearsal and/or recording sessions. This later became a problem when the other members of the Dead Kennedys sued Biafra over royalties and publishing rights. By all accounts, including his own, Biafra is not a conventionally skilled musician, though he and his collaborators (Joey Shithead of D.O.A. in particular) attest that he is a skilled composer and his work, particularly with the Dead Kennedys, is highly respected by punk-oriented critics and fans.
Biafra's first popular song was the first single by the Dead Kennedys, "California über alles". The song, which spoofed California governor Jerry Brown, was the first of many political songs by the group and Biafra. The song's popularity resulted in its being covered by other musicians, such as The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy (who rewrote the lyrics to parody Pete Wilson), John Linnell of They Might Be Giants and Six Feet Under on their Graveyard Classics album of cover versions. Not long after, the Dead Kennedys had a second and bigger hit with "Holiday in Cambodia" from their debut album Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables. AllMusic cites this song as "possibly the most successful single of the American hardcore scene" and Biafra counts it as his personal favorite Dead Kennedy's song. Minor hits from the album included "Kill the Poor" (about potential abuse of the then-new neutron bomb) and a satirical cover of Elvis Presley's "Viva Las Vegas".
The Dead Kennedys received some controversy in the spring of 1981 over the single "Too Drunk to Fuck". The song became a hit in Britain, and the BBC feared that it would manage to be a big enough hit to appear among the top 30 songs on the national charts, requiring a mention on Top of the Pops. However, the single peaked at number 31 in the charts.
Later albums also contained memorable songs, but with less popularity than the earlier ones. The EP In God We Trust, Inc. contained the song "Nazi Punks Fuck Off!" as well as "We've Got A Bigger Problem Now", a rewritten version of "California über alles" about Ronald Reagan. Punk musician and scholar Vic Bondi considers the latter song to be the song that "defined the lyrical agenda of much of hardcore music, and represented its break with punk". The band's most controversial album, Frankenchrist, brought with it the song "MTV Get Off the Air," which accused MTV of promoting poor quality music and sedating the public. The album also contained a controversial poster by Swiss surrealist artist H. R. Giger entitled Penis Landscape.
The Dead Kennedys toured widely during their career, starting in the late 1970s. They began playing at San Francisco's Mabuhay Gardens (their home base) and other Bay Area venues, later branching out to shows in southern Californian clubs (most notably the Whisky a Go Go), but eventually they moved to major clubs across the country, including CBGB in New York. Later, they played to larger audiences such as at the 1980 Bay Area Music Awards (where they played the notorious "Pull My Strings" for the only time), and headlined the 1983 Rock Against Reagan festival.
On May 7, 1994, punk rock fans who believed Biafra was a "sell out" attacked him at the 924 Gilman Street club in Berkeley, California. Biafra claims that he was attacked by a man nicknamed Cretin, who crashed into him while moshing. The crash injured Biafra's leg, causing an argument between the two men. During the argument, Cretin pushed Biafra to the floor and five or six friends of Cretin assaulted Biafra while he was down, yelling "Sellout rock star, kick him", and attempting to pull out his hair. Biafra was later hospitalized with serious injuries. The attack derailed Biafra's plans for both a Canadian spoken-word tour and an accompanying album, and the production of Pure Chewing Satisfaction was halted. However, Biafra returned to the Gilman club a few months after the incident to perform a spoken-word performance as an act of reconciliation with the club.
Biafra has been a prominent figure of the Californian punk scene and was one of the third generation members of the San Francisco punk community. Many later hardcore bands have cited the Dead Kennedys as a major influence. Hardcore punk author Steven Blush describes Biafra as hardcore's "biggest star" who was a "powerful presence whose political insurgence and rabid fandom made him the father figure of a burgeoning subculture [and an] inspirational force [who] could also be a real prick ... Biafra was a visionary, incendiary [performer]."
After the Dead Kennedys disbanded, Biafra's new songs were recorded with other bands, and he released only spoken word albums as solo projects. These collaborations had less popularity than Biafra's earlier work. However, his song "That's Progress", originally recorded with D.O.A. for the album Last Scream of the Missing Neighbors, received considerable exposure when it appeared on the album Rock Against Bush, Vol. 1.
Obscenity prosecution
In April 1986, police officers raided Biafra's house in response to complaints by the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC). In June 1986, L.A. deputy city attorney Michael Guarino, working under City Attorney James Hahn, brought Biafra to trial in Los Angeles for distributing "harmful material to minors" in the Dead Kennedys album Frankenchrist. However, the dispute was about neither the music nor the lyrics from the album, but rather the print of the H. R. Giger poster Landscape XX (Penis Landscape) included with the album.
Music author Reebee Garofalo argued that Biafra and Alternative Tentacles may have been targeted because the label was a "small, self-managed and self-supported company that could ill afford a protracted legal battle." Facing the possible sentence of a year in jail and a $2,000 fine, Biafra, Dirk Dirksen, and Suzanne Stefanac founded the No More Censorship Defense Fund, a benefit featuring several punk rock bands, to help pay for his legal fees, which neither he nor his record label could afford. The jury deadlocked 5 to 7 in favor of acquittal, prompting a mistrial; despite a motion to re-try the case, the judge ordered all charges dropped. The Dead Kennedys disbanded during the trial, in December 1986, due to the mounting legal costs; in the wake of their disbandment, Biafra made a career of his spoken word performances.
Biafra has a cameo role in the 1988 film Tapeheads. He plays an FBI agent who arrests the two protagonists (played by Tim Robbins and John Cusack). While arresting them his character asks "Remember what we did to Jello Biafra?" lampooning the obscenity prosecution.
On March 25, 2005, Biafra appeared on the U.S. radio program This American Life, "Episode 285: Know Your Enemy", which featured a phone call between Jello Biafra and Michael Guarino, the prosecutor in the Frankenchrist trial.
Lawsuit and reunion activities
In October 1998, three former members of the Dead Kennedys sued Biafra for nonpayment of royalties. The other members of Dead Kennedys alleged that Biafra, in his capacity as the head of Alternative Tentacles records, discovered an accounting error amounting to some $75,000 in unpaid royalties over almost a decade. Rather than informing his bandmates of this mistake, the suit alleged, Biafra knowingly concealed the information until a whistleblower employee at the record label notified the band.
According to Biafra, the suit resulted from his refusal to allow one of the band's most well-known singles, "Holiday in Cambodia", to be used in a commercial for Levi's Dockers; Biafra opposes Levi's because of his belief that they use unfair business practices and sweatshop labor. Biafra maintained that he had never denied them royalties, and that he himself had not even received royalties for re-releases of their albums or "posthumous" live albums which had been licensed to other labels by the Decay Music partnership. Decay Music denied this charge and have posted what they say are his cashed royalty checks, written to his legal name of Eric Boucher. Biafra also complained about the songwriting credits in new reissues and archival live albums of songs, alleging that he was the sole composer of songs that were wrongly credited to the entire band.
In May 2000, a jury found Biafra and Alternative Tentacles liable by not promptly informing his former bandmates of the accounting error and instead withholding the information during subsequent discussions and contractual negotiations. Biafra was ordered to pay $200,000, including $20,000 in punitive damages. After an appeal by Biafra's lawyers, in June 2003, the California Court of Appeals unanimously upheld all the conditions of the 2000 verdict against Biafra and Alternative Tentacles. Furthermore, the plaintiffs were awarded the rights to most of Dead Kennedys recorded works—which accounted for about half the sales for Alternative Tentacles. Now in control of the Dead Kennedys name, Biafra's former bandmates went on tour with a new lead vocalist.
Other bands
In the early 1980s, Biafra collaborated with musicians Christian Lunch and Adrian Borland (of The Sound) and Morgan Fisher (of Mott the Hoople) for the electropunk musical project The Witch Trials, releasing one self-titled EP in its lifetime.
In 1988, Biafra, with Al Jourgensen and Paul Barker of the band Ministry, and Jeff Ward, formed Lard. The band became yet another side project for Ministry, with Biafra providing vocals and lyrics. According to a March 2009 interview with Jourgensen, he and Biafra are working on a new Lard album, which is being recorded in Jourgensen's El Paso studio. Jourgensen also claimed in 2021 that Biafra was in works of a new Lard album. While working on the film Terminal City Ricochet in 1989, Biafra did a song for the film's soundtrack with D.O.A.. As a result, Biafra worked with D.O.A. on the album Last Scream of the Missing Neighbors. Biafra also worked with Nomeansno on the soundtrack, which led to their collaboration on the album The Sky Is Falling and I Want My Mommy the following year. Biafra also provided lyrics for the song "Biotech is Godzilla" for Sepultura's 1993 album Chaos A.D..
In 1999, Biafra and other members of the anti-globalization movement protested the WTO Meeting of 1999 in Seattle. Along with other prominent West Coast musicians, he formed the short-lived band the No WTO Combo to help promote the movement's cause. The band was originally scheduled to play during the protest, but the performance was canceled due to riots. The band performed a short set the following night at the Showbox in downtown Seattle (outside the designated area), along with the hiphop group Spearhead. No WTO Combo later released a CD of recordings from the concert, entitled Live from the Battle in Seattle.
As of late 2005, Biafra was performing with the band The Melvins under the name "Jello Biafra and the Melvins", though fans sometimes refer to them as "The Jelvins". Together they have released two albums, and worked on material for a third collaborative release, much of which was premiered live at two concerts at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco during an event called Biafra Five-O, commemorating Biafra's 50th birthday, the 30th anniversary of the founding of the Dead Kennedys, and the beginning of legalized same-sex marriage in California. Biafra was also working with a band known as Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine, which included Ralph Spight of Victims Family on guitar and Billy Gould of Faith No More on bass. This group debuted during Biafra Five-O.
In 2011, Biafra appeared in a singular concert event with an all-star cast of Southern musicians including members from Cowboy Mouth, Dash Rip Rock, Mojo Nixon and Down entitled, "Jello Biafra and the New Orleans Raunch & Soul All Stars" who performed an array of classic Soul covers to a packed house at the 12-Bar in New Orleans, Louisiana. He would later reunite with many of the same musicians during the Carnival season 2014 to revisit many of these classics at Siberia, New Orleans. A live album from the 2011 performance, Walk on Jindal's Splinters, and a companion single, Fannie May/Just a Little Bit, were released in 2015.
Alternative Tentacles
In June 1979, Biafra co-founded the record label Alternative Tentacles, with which the Dead Kennedys released their first single, "California über alles". The label was created to allow the band to release albums without having to deal with pressure from major labels to change their music, although the major labels were not willing to sign the band due to their songs being deemed too controversial. After dealing with Cherry Red in the UK and IRS Records in the US for their first album Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, the band released all later albums, and later pressings of Fresh Fruit on Alternative Tentacles. The exception being live albums released after the band's break-up, which the other band members compiled from recordings in the band partnership's vaults without Biafra's input or endorsement.. Biafra has been the owner of the company since its founding, though he does not receive a salary for his position; Biafra has referred to his position in the company as "absentee thoughtlord".
Biafra is an ardent collector of unusual vinyl records of all kinds, from 1950s and 1960s ethno-pop recordings by the likes of Les Baxter and Esquivel to vanity pressings that have circulated regionally, to German crooner Heino (for whom he would later participate in the documentary Heino: Made In Germany); he cites his always growing collection as one of his biggest musical influences. In 1993 he gave an interview to RE/Search Publications for their second Incredibly Strange Music book focusing primarily on these records, and later participated in a two-part episode of Fuse TV's program Crate Diggers on the same subject. His interest in such recordings, often categorized as outsider music, led to his discovery of the prolific (and schizophrenic) singer/songwriter/artist Wesley Willis, whom he signed to Alternative Tentacles in 1994, preceding Willis' major label deal with American Recordings. His collection grew so large that on October 1, 2005, Biafra donated a portion of his collection to an annual yard sale co-promoted by Alternative Tentacles and held at their warehouse in Emeryville, California.
In 2006, along with Alternative Tentacles employee and The Frisk lead singer Jesse Luscious, Biafra began co-hosting The Alternative Tentacles Batcast, a downloadable podcast hosted by alternativetentacles.com. The show primarily focuses on interviews with artists and bands that are currently signed to the Alternative Tentacles label, although there are also occasional episodes where Biafra devoted the show to answering fan questions.
Spoken word
Biafra became a spoken word artist in January 1986 with a performance at University of California, Los Angeles. In his performance he combined humor with his political beliefs, much in the same way that he did with the lyrics to his songs. Despite his continued spoken word performances, he did not begin recording spoken word albums until after the disbanding of the Dead Kennedys.
His ninth spoken word album, In the Grip of Official Treason, was released in October 2006.
Biafra was also featured in the British band Pitchshifter's song As Seen on TV reciting the words of dystopian futuristic radio advertisements.
Politics
Biafra has resisted identifying with any particular political party or ideology, saying, "I don't label myself strictly an anarchist or a socialist or let alone a libertarian or something like that," In a 2012 interview, Biafra said "I'm very pro-tax as long as it goes for the right things. I don't mind paying more money as long as it's going to provide shelter for people sleeping in the street or getting the schools fixed back up, getting the infrastructure up to the standards of other countries, including a high speed rail system. I'm totally down with that."
Mayoral campaign
In the autumn of 1979, Biafra ran for mayor of San Francisco, using the Jell-O ad campaign catchphrase, "There's always room for Jello", as his campaign slogan. Having entered the race before creating a campaign platform, Biafra later wrote his platform on a napkin while attending a Pere Ubu concert where Dead Kennedys drummer Ted told Biafra, "Biafra, you have such a big mouth that you should run for Mayor." As he campaigned, Biafra wore campaign T-shirts from his opponent Quentin Kopp's previous campaign and at one point vacuumed leaves off the front lawn of another opponent, current U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, to mock her publicity stunt of sweeping streets in downtown San Francisco for a few hours. He also made a whistlestop campaign tour along the BART line. Supporters committed equally odd actions; two well known signs held by supporters said "If he doesn't win I'll kill myself" and "What if he does win?"
At the time, in San Francisco any individual could legally run for mayor if a petition was signed by 1500 people or if $1500 was paid. Biafra paid $900 and got signatures over time and eventually became a legal candidate, meaning he received statements put in voters' pamphlets and equal news coverage.
His platform included unconventional points such as forcing businessmen to wear clown suits within city limits, erecting statues of Dan White, who assassinated Mayor George Moscone and City Supervisor Harvey Milk in 1978, around the city and allowing the parks department to sell eggs and tomatoes with which people could pelt the statues, hiring workers who had lost their jobs due to a tax initiative to panhandle in wealthy neighborhoods (including Senator Dianne Feinstein's), and a citywide ban on cars. Biafra has expressed irritation that these parts of his platform attained such notoriety, preferring instead to be remembered for serious proposals such as legalizing squatting in vacant, tax-delinquent buildings and requiring police officers to run for election by the people of the neighborhoods they patrol.
He finished third out of a field of ten, receiving 3.79 percent of the vote (6,591 votes); the election ended in a runoff that did not involve him (Feinstein was declared the winner).
Presidential campaign
In 2000, the New York State Green Party drafted Biafra as a candidate for the Green Party presidential nomination, and a few supporters were elected to the party's nominating convention in Denver, Colorado. Biafra chose death row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal as his running mate. The party overwhelmingly chose Ralph Nader as the presidential candidate with 295 of the 319 delegate votes. Biafra received 10 votes.
Biafra, along with a camera crew (dubbed by Biafra as "The Camcorder Truth Jihad"), later reported for the Independent Media Center at the Republican and Democratic conventions.
Post-2000
After losing the 2000 nomination, Biafra became highly active in Nader's presidential campaign, as well as in 2004 and 2008. During the 2008 campaign Jello played at rallies and answered questions for journalists in support of Nader. When gay rights activists accused Nader of costing Al Gore the 2000 election, Biafra reminded them that Tipper Gore's Parents Music Resource Center wanted warning stickers on albums with content referencing homosexuality.
After Barack Obama won the general election, Biafra wrote an open letter making suggestions on how to run his term as president. Biafra criticized Obama during his term, stating that "Obama even won the award for best advertising campaign of 2008." Biafra dubbed Obama "Barackstar O'Bummer". Biafra refused to support Obama in 2012. Biafra has stated that he feels that Obama continued many of George W. Bush's policies, summarizing Obama's policies as containing "worse and worse laws against human rights and more and more illegal unconstitutional spying."
On September 18, 2015, it was announced that Biafra would be supporting Bernie Sanders in his campaign for the 2016 presidential election. He has strongly criticised the political position of Donald Trump, saying "how can people be so fucking stupid" on hearing the election result, and later adding "The last person we want with their finger on the nuclear button is somebody connected to this extreme Christianist doomsday cult."
On February 28, 2020, Jello announced that he would be supporting both Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders in the 2020 presidential election. “I personally like Warren slightly better than Bernie because: 1) She’s done her homework. Bernie too, but not to quite the same depth or degree. 2) Think about it — who really has a better chance of actually beating Trump, and helping flip Congress and state legislatures? It’s Elizabeth Warren, hands down.” He went on to say that he considered Joe Biden and Mike Bloomberg "almost as bad as Trump".
On April 12, 2020, Biafra expressed disappointment that Sanders had suspended his campaign for the 2020 Democratic nomination.
Boycott of Israel
In mid-2011 Jello Biafra and his band were scheduled to play at the Barby Club in Tel Aviv. They came under heavy pressure by the pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, and finally decided to cancel the concert – after a debate which according to Biafra "deeply tore at the fabric of our band ... This whole controversy has been one of the most intense situations of my life – and I thrive on intense situations".
Biafra then decided to travel to Israel and the Palestinian Occupied Territories, at his own expense, and talk with Israeli and Palestinian activists as well as with fans disappointed at his cancellation. In the article stating his conclusions he wrote:
"I will not perform in Israel unless it is a pro-human rights, anti-occupation event, that does not violate the spirit of the boycott. Each musician, artist, etc. must decide this for themselves. I am staying away for now, but am also really creeped out by the attitudes of some of the hardliners and hope some day to find a way to contribute something positive here. I will not march or sign on with anyone who runs around calling people Zionazis and is more interested in making threats than making friends."
Personal life
Biafra married Theresa Soder, a.k.a. Ninotchka, lead singer of San Francisco-area punk band the Situations, on October 31, 1981. The wedding was conducted by Flipper vocalist/bassist Bruce Loose, who became a Universal Life Church minister just to conduct the ceremony, which took place in a graveyard. The wedding reception, which members of Flipper, Black Flag, and D.O.A. attended, was held at director Joe Rees' Target Video studios. The marriage ended in 1986. Biafra generally does not discuss his private life. He lives in San Francisco, California.
Selected discography
For a more complete list, see the Jello Biafra discography.
Dead Kennedys
1980 – Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables
1981 – In God We Trust, Inc.
1982 – Plastic Surgery Disasters
1985 – Frankenchrist
1986 – Bedtime for Democracy
1987 – Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death
Spoken word
1987 – No More Cocoons
1989 – High Priest of Harmful Matter: Tales From the Trial
1991 – I Blow Minds for a Living
1994 – Beyond the Valley of the Gift Police
1998 – If Evolution Is Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Evolve
2000 – Become the Media
2002 – The Big Ka-Boom, Pt. 1
2002 – Machine Gun in the Clown's Hand
2006 – In the Grip of Official Treason
Lard
1989 – The Power of Lard
1990 – The Last Temptation of Reid
1997 – Pure Chewing Satisfaction
2000 – 70's Rock Must Die
Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine
2009 – The Audacity of Hype
2011 – Enhanced Methods of Questioning
2012 – SHOCK-U-PY
2013 – White People and the Damage Done
2020 – Tea Party Revenge Porn
Collaborations
Filmography
1977 – This Is America, Pt. 2
1981 – Urgh! A Music War
1983 – Anarchism in America
1986 – Lovedolls Superstar, directed by Dave Markey
1987 – Household Affairs, directed & filmed by Allen Ginsberg
1988 – Tapeheads, directed by Bill Fishman
1990 – Terminal City Ricochet
1991 – Highway 61, directed by Bruce McDonald
1994 – Skulhedface, directed by Melanie Mandl
1997 – Mary Jane's Not a Virgin Anymore, directed by Sarah Jacobson
1999 – The Widower
1999 – Virtue
2001 – Plaster Caster
2002 – Bikini Bandits, directed by Steve and Peter Grasse
2004 – Death and Texas
2004 – Punk: Attitude
2005 – We Jam Econo: The Story of the Minutemen
2006 – Punk's Not Dead, directed by Susan Dynner
2006 – Whose War?, directed by Donald Farmer
2007 – American Drug War: The Last White Hope, directed by Kevin Booth
2008 – Nerdcore Rising, directed by Negin Farsad
2009 – Open Your Mouth and Say Mr. Chi Pig, directed by Sean Patrick Shaul
2010 – A Man Within, directed by Yony Leyser
2011 – I Love You ... I Am the Porn Queen, short film directed by Ani Kyd
2014 – Heino: Made in Germany, directed by Oliver Schwabe
2014 – Portlandia, season 4, episode 4 – "Pull-Out King"
2018 – Bathtubs Over Broadway, directed by Dava Whisenant (as himself)
2018 – Boiled Angels: The Trial of Mike Diana, directed by Frank Henenlotter (narrator)
2019 – The Last Black Man in San Francisco, directed by Joe Talbot
Notes
References
External links
Jello Biafra on Alternative Tentacles
1958 births
Living people
20th-century American politicians
Candidates in the 2000 United States presidential election
Alternative Tentacles
Alternative Tentacles artists
American anti–Iraq War activists
American anti-war activists
American human rights activists
American male film actors
American people of Jewish descent
American punk rock singers
American satirists
American male singer-songwriters
American spoken word artists
Anti-consumerists
Anti-corporate activists
Anti-globalization activists
Boulder High School alumni
California Greens
Dead Kennedys members
Finance fraud
Green Party of the United States politicians
Hardcore punk musicians
Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine members
Lard (band) members
Male actors from Boulder, Colorado
Musicians from Boulder, Colorado
Pigface members
Pranksters
Teenage Time Killers members
Singer-songwriters from Colorado | true | [
"Reunion Golf and Country Club is a country club and neighborhood in Madison, Mississippi. The facility includes sports such as tennis, golf, and swimming.\n\nHistory\nThe country club's land was first settled in the 1800s by John Taylor Johnstone, who immigrated from North Carolina and established several forced-labor farms. He apparently was \"reminded\" of Scotland when he settled the land.\n\nIn the 1990s, David H. Nutt, an attorney and now richest person in Mississippi, acquired 2,100 acres of land on what used to be Johnstone's estate. The first homes were built in the 2000s, and the first clubhouse was built in 2004.\n\nIn 2006, Reunion's administration started plans for a bigger, more luxurious clubhouse. Multiple changes were made to the plans, and construction began in 2015. Its inspiration was Annandale Home, which now serves as Reunion Hall, locally known as the \"White House\". The Reunion Property Owners' Association is headquartered there. Annandale Hall was built in the late 1800s, for the aforementioned Johnstone family. It was burned down in 1920, and was rebuilt thereafter.\n\nGolf course\nReunion's 18-hole, par-72 golf course was designed by Bob Cupp in 2004. Its fairways are made by TifEagle and its greens are made by TifSport. The club has also installed a set of US Kids Family tees on the course.\n\nOther sports\nFor tennis, Reunion has nine Har-Tru clay courts that are open for day and night play. Reunion is also the host of seven JLTA teams, more than 15 social mixers, three sanctioned junior tournaments, and more. Reunion's swimming pool is next to the clubhouse.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n reunionms.com\n\nGolf clubs and courses in Mississippi\n2006 establishments in Mississippi\nMadison County, Mississippi",
"The Porsche Rennsport Reunion is an automotive event and the world's largest meeting of classic Porsche racing cars and their drivers. Porsche has been organising the Rennsport Reunion since 2001 to honour its own motorsport tradition. The event has been conceived by the former British racing driver Brian Redman and former Porsche Cars North America’s press spokesperson Bob Carlson.\n\nHistory \nRennsport Reunion is an event hosted since 2001 every 3 to 4 years in the United States. After the first three events were held on the east coast of the US, two events at Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Florida in 2004 and 2007 followed, before the event moved for Rennsport Reunion IV to the west coast in 2011.\n\nRennsport Reunion I \nThe first Porsche Rennsport Reunion event was held at Lime Rock Park, Connecticut in 2001.\n\nRennsport Reunion II \nThe Porsche Rennsport Reunion II was held at the Daytona International Speedway in 2004.\n\nRennsport Reunion III \nThe Porsche Rennsport Reunion III was held at the Daytona International Speedway in 2007.\n\nRennsport Reunion IV \n\nThe Porsche Rennsport Reunion IV was held at Laguna Seca in Monterey, California in 2011.\n\nRennsport Reunion V \n\nThe Porsche Rennsport Reunion V was held at Laguna Seca in Monterey, California in 2015.\n\nRennsport Reunion VI \nThe Porsche Rennsport Reunion VI was held at Laguna Seca in Monterey, California in September 2018 with 81,550 attendees.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n\nPorsche in motorsport\nAuto shows in the United States"
]
|
[
"Jello Biafra",
"Lawsuit and reunion activities",
"Why did he have a lawsuit?",
"three former members of the Dead Kennedys sued Biafra for nonpayment of royalties.",
"Was the lawsuit settled?",
"In May 2000, a jury found Biafra and Alternative Tentacles \"guilty of malice, oppression and fraud",
"Did he have to pay the back royalties?",
"Biafra was ordered to pay $200,000, including $20,000 in punitive damages.",
"Did he have to serve jail time?",
"I don't know.",
"What was the reunion like?",
"Now in control of the Dead Kennedys name, Biafra's former bandmates went on tour with a new lead vocalist."
]
| C_f6fb62c57f214974b44a408134a9d048_0 | Are there any other interesting aspects about this article? | 6 | Besides Jello Biafra's former bandmates going on tour with a new lead vocalist, are there any other interesting aspects about this article? | Jello Biafra | In October 1998, three former members of the Dead Kennedys sued Biafra for nonpayment of royalties. The other members of Dead Kennedys alleged that after Biafra, in his capacity as the head of Alternative Tentacles records, discovered an accounting error amounting to some $75,000 in unpaid royalties over almost a decade. Rather than informing his bandmates of this mistake, the suit alleged, Biafra knowingly concealed the information until a whistleblower employee at the record label notified the band. According to Biafra, the suit resulted from his refusal to allow one of the band's most well-known singles, "Holiday in Cambodia", to be used in a commercial for Levi's Dockers; Biafra opposes Levi's because of his claim that they use unfair business practices and sweatshop labor. Biafra maintained that he had never denied them royalties, and that he himself had not even received royalties for re-releases of their albums or "posthumous" live albums which had been licensed to other labels by the Decay Music partnership. Decay Music denied this charge and have posted what they say are his cashed royalty checks, written to his legal name of Eric Boucher. Biafra also complained about the songwriting credits in new reissues and archival live albums of songs, alleging that he was the sole composer of songs that were wrongly credited to the entire band. In May 2000, a jury found Biafra and Alternative Tentacles "guilty of malice, oppression and fraud" by not promptly informing his former bandmates of the accounting error and instead withholding the information during subsequent discussions and contractual negotiations. Biafra was ordered to pay $200,000, including $20,000 in punitive damages. After an appeal by Biafra's lawyers, in June 2003, the California Court of Appeal unanimously upheld all the conditions of the 2000 verdict against Biafra and Alternative Tentacles. Furthermore, the plaintiffs were awarded the rights to most of Dead Kennedys recorded works -- which accounted for about half the sales for Alternative Tentacles. Now in control of the Dead Kennedys name, Biafra's former bandmates went on tour with a new lead vocalist. CANNOTANSWER | Furthermore, the plaintiffs were awarded the rights to most of Dead Kennedys recorded works | Eric Reed Boucher (born June 17, 1958), better known by his professional name Jello Biafra, is an American singer and spoken word artist. He is the former lead singer and songwriter for the San Francisco punk rock band Dead Kennedys.
Initially active from 1979 to 1986, Dead Kennedys were known for rapid-fire music topped with Biafra's sardonic lyrics and biting social commentary, delivered in his "unique quiver of a voice". When the band broke up in 1986, he took over the influential independent record label Alternative Tentacles, which he had founded in 1979 with Dead Kennedys bandmate East Bay Ray. In a 2000 lawsuit, upheld on appeal in 2003 by the California Supreme Court, Biafra was found liable for breach of contract, fraud and malice in withholding a decade's worth of royalties from his former bandmates and ordered to pay over $200,000 in compensation and punitive damages; the band subsequently reformed without Biafra. Although now focused primarily on spoken word performances, Biafra has continued as a musician in numerous collaborations. He has also occasionally appeared in cameo roles in films.
Politically, Biafra is a member of the Green Party of the United States and supports various political causes. He ran for the party's presidential nomination in the 2000 presidential election, finishing a distant second to Ralph Nader. In 1979 he ran for mayor of San Francisco, California. He is a staunch believer in a free society, and utilizes shock value and advocates direct action and pranksterism in the name of political causes. Biafra is known to use absurdist media tactics, in the leftist tradition of the Yippies, to highlight issues of civil rights and social justice.
Early life
Eric Reed Boucher was born in Boulder, Colorado, the son of Virginia (née Parker), a librarian, and Stanley Wayne Boucher, a psychiatric social worker and poet. His sister, Julie J. Boucher, was Associate Director of the Library Research Service at the Colorado State Library; she died in a mountain-climbing accident on October 12, 1996. Biafra has a Jewish great grandparent, but was unaware of this until the mid-2000s. He grew up in a secular household and has said that he is "not really Jewish".
As a child, Boucher developed an interest in international politics that was encouraged by his parents. An avid news watcher, one of his earliest memories was of the John F. Kennedy assassination. Biafra says he has been a fan of rock music since first hearing it in 1965, when his parents accidentally tuned in to a rock radio station. Boucher ignored his high school guidance counselor's advice that he spend his adolescence preparing to become a dental hygienist.
He began his career in music in January 1977 as a roadie for the punk rock band The Ravers (who later changed their name to The Nails), soon joining his friend John Greenway in a band called The Healers. The Healers became well known locally for their mainly improvised lyrics and avant garde music. In the autumn of that year, he began attending the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Musical career
Dead Kennedys
In June 1978, Biafra responded to an advertisement placed in a store by guitarist East Bay Ray, stating "guitarist wants to form punk band", and together they formed the Dead Kennedys. He began performing with the band under the stage name Occupant, but soon began to use his current stage name, a combination of the brand name Jell-O and the short-lived African state Biafra. The band's lyrics were written by Biafra. The lyrics were mostly political in nature and displayed a sardonic, sometimes absurdist, sense of humor despite their serious subject matter. In the tradition of UK anarcho-punk bands like Crass and the Subhumans, the Dead Kennedys were one of the first US punk bands to write politically themed songs. The lyrics Biafra wrote helped popularize the use of humorous lyrics in punk and other types of hard-core music. Biafra cites Joey Ramone as the inspiration for his use of humor in his songs (as well as being the musician who made him interested in punk rock), noting in particular songs by the Ramones such as "Beat on the Brat" and "Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue".
Biafra initially attempted to compose music on guitar, but his lack of experience on the instrument and his own admission of being "a fumbler with my hands" led Dead Kennedys bassist Klaus Flouride to suggest that Biafra simply sing the parts he envisioned to the band. Biafra sang his riffs and melodies into a tape recorder, which he brought to the band's rehearsal and/or recording sessions. This later became a problem when the other members of the Dead Kennedys sued Biafra over royalties and publishing rights. By all accounts, including his own, Biafra is not a conventionally skilled musician, though he and his collaborators (Joey Shithead of D.O.A. in particular) attest that he is a skilled composer and his work, particularly with the Dead Kennedys, is highly respected by punk-oriented critics and fans.
Biafra's first popular song was the first single by the Dead Kennedys, "California über alles". The song, which spoofed California governor Jerry Brown, was the first of many political songs by the group and Biafra. The song's popularity resulted in its being covered by other musicians, such as The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy (who rewrote the lyrics to parody Pete Wilson), John Linnell of They Might Be Giants and Six Feet Under on their Graveyard Classics album of cover versions. Not long after, the Dead Kennedys had a second and bigger hit with "Holiday in Cambodia" from their debut album Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables. AllMusic cites this song as "possibly the most successful single of the American hardcore scene" and Biafra counts it as his personal favorite Dead Kennedy's song. Minor hits from the album included "Kill the Poor" (about potential abuse of the then-new neutron bomb) and a satirical cover of Elvis Presley's "Viva Las Vegas".
The Dead Kennedys received some controversy in the spring of 1981 over the single "Too Drunk to Fuck". The song became a hit in Britain, and the BBC feared that it would manage to be a big enough hit to appear among the top 30 songs on the national charts, requiring a mention on Top of the Pops. However, the single peaked at number 31 in the charts.
Later albums also contained memorable songs, but with less popularity than the earlier ones. The EP In God We Trust, Inc. contained the song "Nazi Punks Fuck Off!" as well as "We've Got A Bigger Problem Now", a rewritten version of "California über alles" about Ronald Reagan. Punk musician and scholar Vic Bondi considers the latter song to be the song that "defined the lyrical agenda of much of hardcore music, and represented its break with punk". The band's most controversial album, Frankenchrist, brought with it the song "MTV Get Off the Air," which accused MTV of promoting poor quality music and sedating the public. The album also contained a controversial poster by Swiss surrealist artist H. R. Giger entitled Penis Landscape.
The Dead Kennedys toured widely during their career, starting in the late 1970s. They began playing at San Francisco's Mabuhay Gardens (their home base) and other Bay Area venues, later branching out to shows in southern Californian clubs (most notably the Whisky a Go Go), but eventually they moved to major clubs across the country, including CBGB in New York. Later, they played to larger audiences such as at the 1980 Bay Area Music Awards (where they played the notorious "Pull My Strings" for the only time), and headlined the 1983 Rock Against Reagan festival.
On May 7, 1994, punk rock fans who believed Biafra was a "sell out" attacked him at the 924 Gilman Street club in Berkeley, California. Biafra claims that he was attacked by a man nicknamed Cretin, who crashed into him while moshing. The crash injured Biafra's leg, causing an argument between the two men. During the argument, Cretin pushed Biafra to the floor and five or six friends of Cretin assaulted Biafra while he was down, yelling "Sellout rock star, kick him", and attempting to pull out his hair. Biafra was later hospitalized with serious injuries. The attack derailed Biafra's plans for both a Canadian spoken-word tour and an accompanying album, and the production of Pure Chewing Satisfaction was halted. However, Biafra returned to the Gilman club a few months after the incident to perform a spoken-word performance as an act of reconciliation with the club.
Biafra has been a prominent figure of the Californian punk scene and was one of the third generation members of the San Francisco punk community. Many later hardcore bands have cited the Dead Kennedys as a major influence. Hardcore punk author Steven Blush describes Biafra as hardcore's "biggest star" who was a "powerful presence whose political insurgence and rabid fandom made him the father figure of a burgeoning subculture [and an] inspirational force [who] could also be a real prick ... Biafra was a visionary, incendiary [performer]."
After the Dead Kennedys disbanded, Biafra's new songs were recorded with other bands, and he released only spoken word albums as solo projects. These collaborations had less popularity than Biafra's earlier work. However, his song "That's Progress", originally recorded with D.O.A. for the album Last Scream of the Missing Neighbors, received considerable exposure when it appeared on the album Rock Against Bush, Vol. 1.
Obscenity prosecution
In April 1986, police officers raided Biafra's house in response to complaints by the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC). In June 1986, L.A. deputy city attorney Michael Guarino, working under City Attorney James Hahn, brought Biafra to trial in Los Angeles for distributing "harmful material to minors" in the Dead Kennedys album Frankenchrist. However, the dispute was about neither the music nor the lyrics from the album, but rather the print of the H. R. Giger poster Landscape XX (Penis Landscape) included with the album.
Music author Reebee Garofalo argued that Biafra and Alternative Tentacles may have been targeted because the label was a "small, self-managed and self-supported company that could ill afford a protracted legal battle." Facing the possible sentence of a year in jail and a $2,000 fine, Biafra, Dirk Dirksen, and Suzanne Stefanac founded the No More Censorship Defense Fund, a benefit featuring several punk rock bands, to help pay for his legal fees, which neither he nor his record label could afford. The jury deadlocked 5 to 7 in favor of acquittal, prompting a mistrial; despite a motion to re-try the case, the judge ordered all charges dropped. The Dead Kennedys disbanded during the trial, in December 1986, due to the mounting legal costs; in the wake of their disbandment, Biafra made a career of his spoken word performances.
Biafra has a cameo role in the 1988 film Tapeheads. He plays an FBI agent who arrests the two protagonists (played by Tim Robbins and John Cusack). While arresting them his character asks "Remember what we did to Jello Biafra?" lampooning the obscenity prosecution.
On March 25, 2005, Biafra appeared on the U.S. radio program This American Life, "Episode 285: Know Your Enemy", which featured a phone call between Jello Biafra and Michael Guarino, the prosecutor in the Frankenchrist trial.
Lawsuit and reunion activities
In October 1998, three former members of the Dead Kennedys sued Biafra for nonpayment of royalties. The other members of Dead Kennedys alleged that Biafra, in his capacity as the head of Alternative Tentacles records, discovered an accounting error amounting to some $75,000 in unpaid royalties over almost a decade. Rather than informing his bandmates of this mistake, the suit alleged, Biafra knowingly concealed the information until a whistleblower employee at the record label notified the band.
According to Biafra, the suit resulted from his refusal to allow one of the band's most well-known singles, "Holiday in Cambodia", to be used in a commercial for Levi's Dockers; Biafra opposes Levi's because of his belief that they use unfair business practices and sweatshop labor. Biafra maintained that he had never denied them royalties, and that he himself had not even received royalties for re-releases of their albums or "posthumous" live albums which had been licensed to other labels by the Decay Music partnership. Decay Music denied this charge and have posted what they say are his cashed royalty checks, written to his legal name of Eric Boucher. Biafra also complained about the songwriting credits in new reissues and archival live albums of songs, alleging that he was the sole composer of songs that were wrongly credited to the entire band.
In May 2000, a jury found Biafra and Alternative Tentacles liable by not promptly informing his former bandmates of the accounting error and instead withholding the information during subsequent discussions and contractual negotiations. Biafra was ordered to pay $200,000, including $20,000 in punitive damages. After an appeal by Biafra's lawyers, in June 2003, the California Court of Appeals unanimously upheld all the conditions of the 2000 verdict against Biafra and Alternative Tentacles. Furthermore, the plaintiffs were awarded the rights to most of Dead Kennedys recorded works—which accounted for about half the sales for Alternative Tentacles. Now in control of the Dead Kennedys name, Biafra's former bandmates went on tour with a new lead vocalist.
Other bands
In the early 1980s, Biafra collaborated with musicians Christian Lunch and Adrian Borland (of The Sound) and Morgan Fisher (of Mott the Hoople) for the electropunk musical project The Witch Trials, releasing one self-titled EP in its lifetime.
In 1988, Biafra, with Al Jourgensen and Paul Barker of the band Ministry, and Jeff Ward, formed Lard. The band became yet another side project for Ministry, with Biafra providing vocals and lyrics. According to a March 2009 interview with Jourgensen, he and Biafra are working on a new Lard album, which is being recorded in Jourgensen's El Paso studio. Jourgensen also claimed in 2021 that Biafra was in works of a new Lard album. While working on the film Terminal City Ricochet in 1989, Biafra did a song for the film's soundtrack with D.O.A.. As a result, Biafra worked with D.O.A. on the album Last Scream of the Missing Neighbors. Biafra also worked with Nomeansno on the soundtrack, which led to their collaboration on the album The Sky Is Falling and I Want My Mommy the following year. Biafra also provided lyrics for the song "Biotech is Godzilla" for Sepultura's 1993 album Chaos A.D..
In 1999, Biafra and other members of the anti-globalization movement protested the WTO Meeting of 1999 in Seattle. Along with other prominent West Coast musicians, he formed the short-lived band the No WTO Combo to help promote the movement's cause. The band was originally scheduled to play during the protest, but the performance was canceled due to riots. The band performed a short set the following night at the Showbox in downtown Seattle (outside the designated area), along with the hiphop group Spearhead. No WTO Combo later released a CD of recordings from the concert, entitled Live from the Battle in Seattle.
As of late 2005, Biafra was performing with the band The Melvins under the name "Jello Biafra and the Melvins", though fans sometimes refer to them as "The Jelvins". Together they have released two albums, and worked on material for a third collaborative release, much of which was premiered live at two concerts at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco during an event called Biafra Five-O, commemorating Biafra's 50th birthday, the 30th anniversary of the founding of the Dead Kennedys, and the beginning of legalized same-sex marriage in California. Biafra was also working with a band known as Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine, which included Ralph Spight of Victims Family on guitar and Billy Gould of Faith No More on bass. This group debuted during Biafra Five-O.
In 2011, Biafra appeared in a singular concert event with an all-star cast of Southern musicians including members from Cowboy Mouth, Dash Rip Rock, Mojo Nixon and Down entitled, "Jello Biafra and the New Orleans Raunch & Soul All Stars" who performed an array of classic Soul covers to a packed house at the 12-Bar in New Orleans, Louisiana. He would later reunite with many of the same musicians during the Carnival season 2014 to revisit many of these classics at Siberia, New Orleans. A live album from the 2011 performance, Walk on Jindal's Splinters, and a companion single, Fannie May/Just a Little Bit, were released in 2015.
Alternative Tentacles
In June 1979, Biafra co-founded the record label Alternative Tentacles, with which the Dead Kennedys released their first single, "California über alles". The label was created to allow the band to release albums without having to deal with pressure from major labels to change their music, although the major labels were not willing to sign the band due to their songs being deemed too controversial. After dealing with Cherry Red in the UK and IRS Records in the US for their first album Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, the band released all later albums, and later pressings of Fresh Fruit on Alternative Tentacles. The exception being live albums released after the band's break-up, which the other band members compiled from recordings in the band partnership's vaults without Biafra's input or endorsement.. Biafra has been the owner of the company since its founding, though he does not receive a salary for his position; Biafra has referred to his position in the company as "absentee thoughtlord".
Biafra is an ardent collector of unusual vinyl records of all kinds, from 1950s and 1960s ethno-pop recordings by the likes of Les Baxter and Esquivel to vanity pressings that have circulated regionally, to German crooner Heino (for whom he would later participate in the documentary Heino: Made In Germany); he cites his always growing collection as one of his biggest musical influences. In 1993 he gave an interview to RE/Search Publications for their second Incredibly Strange Music book focusing primarily on these records, and later participated in a two-part episode of Fuse TV's program Crate Diggers on the same subject. His interest in such recordings, often categorized as outsider music, led to his discovery of the prolific (and schizophrenic) singer/songwriter/artist Wesley Willis, whom he signed to Alternative Tentacles in 1994, preceding Willis' major label deal with American Recordings. His collection grew so large that on October 1, 2005, Biafra donated a portion of his collection to an annual yard sale co-promoted by Alternative Tentacles and held at their warehouse in Emeryville, California.
In 2006, along with Alternative Tentacles employee and The Frisk lead singer Jesse Luscious, Biafra began co-hosting The Alternative Tentacles Batcast, a downloadable podcast hosted by alternativetentacles.com. The show primarily focuses on interviews with artists and bands that are currently signed to the Alternative Tentacles label, although there are also occasional episodes where Biafra devoted the show to answering fan questions.
Spoken word
Biafra became a spoken word artist in January 1986 with a performance at University of California, Los Angeles. In his performance he combined humor with his political beliefs, much in the same way that he did with the lyrics to his songs. Despite his continued spoken word performances, he did not begin recording spoken word albums until after the disbanding of the Dead Kennedys.
His ninth spoken word album, In the Grip of Official Treason, was released in October 2006.
Biafra was also featured in the British band Pitchshifter's song As Seen on TV reciting the words of dystopian futuristic radio advertisements.
Politics
Biafra has resisted identifying with any particular political party or ideology, saying, "I don't label myself strictly an anarchist or a socialist or let alone a libertarian or something like that," In a 2012 interview, Biafra said "I'm very pro-tax as long as it goes for the right things. I don't mind paying more money as long as it's going to provide shelter for people sleeping in the street or getting the schools fixed back up, getting the infrastructure up to the standards of other countries, including a high speed rail system. I'm totally down with that."
Mayoral campaign
In the autumn of 1979, Biafra ran for mayor of San Francisco, using the Jell-O ad campaign catchphrase, "There's always room for Jello", as his campaign slogan. Having entered the race before creating a campaign platform, Biafra later wrote his platform on a napkin while attending a Pere Ubu concert where Dead Kennedys drummer Ted told Biafra, "Biafra, you have such a big mouth that you should run for Mayor." As he campaigned, Biafra wore campaign T-shirts from his opponent Quentin Kopp's previous campaign and at one point vacuumed leaves off the front lawn of another opponent, current U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, to mock her publicity stunt of sweeping streets in downtown San Francisco for a few hours. He also made a whistlestop campaign tour along the BART line. Supporters committed equally odd actions; two well known signs held by supporters said "If he doesn't win I'll kill myself" and "What if he does win?"
At the time, in San Francisco any individual could legally run for mayor if a petition was signed by 1500 people or if $1500 was paid. Biafra paid $900 and got signatures over time and eventually became a legal candidate, meaning he received statements put in voters' pamphlets and equal news coverage.
His platform included unconventional points such as forcing businessmen to wear clown suits within city limits, erecting statues of Dan White, who assassinated Mayor George Moscone and City Supervisor Harvey Milk in 1978, around the city and allowing the parks department to sell eggs and tomatoes with which people could pelt the statues, hiring workers who had lost their jobs due to a tax initiative to panhandle in wealthy neighborhoods (including Senator Dianne Feinstein's), and a citywide ban on cars. Biafra has expressed irritation that these parts of his platform attained such notoriety, preferring instead to be remembered for serious proposals such as legalizing squatting in vacant, tax-delinquent buildings and requiring police officers to run for election by the people of the neighborhoods they patrol.
He finished third out of a field of ten, receiving 3.79 percent of the vote (6,591 votes); the election ended in a runoff that did not involve him (Feinstein was declared the winner).
Presidential campaign
In 2000, the New York State Green Party drafted Biafra as a candidate for the Green Party presidential nomination, and a few supporters were elected to the party's nominating convention in Denver, Colorado. Biafra chose death row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal as his running mate. The party overwhelmingly chose Ralph Nader as the presidential candidate with 295 of the 319 delegate votes. Biafra received 10 votes.
Biafra, along with a camera crew (dubbed by Biafra as "The Camcorder Truth Jihad"), later reported for the Independent Media Center at the Republican and Democratic conventions.
Post-2000
After losing the 2000 nomination, Biafra became highly active in Nader's presidential campaign, as well as in 2004 and 2008. During the 2008 campaign Jello played at rallies and answered questions for journalists in support of Nader. When gay rights activists accused Nader of costing Al Gore the 2000 election, Biafra reminded them that Tipper Gore's Parents Music Resource Center wanted warning stickers on albums with content referencing homosexuality.
After Barack Obama won the general election, Biafra wrote an open letter making suggestions on how to run his term as president. Biafra criticized Obama during his term, stating that "Obama even won the award for best advertising campaign of 2008." Biafra dubbed Obama "Barackstar O'Bummer". Biafra refused to support Obama in 2012. Biafra has stated that he feels that Obama continued many of George W. Bush's policies, summarizing Obama's policies as containing "worse and worse laws against human rights and more and more illegal unconstitutional spying."
On September 18, 2015, it was announced that Biafra would be supporting Bernie Sanders in his campaign for the 2016 presidential election. He has strongly criticised the political position of Donald Trump, saying "how can people be so fucking stupid" on hearing the election result, and later adding "The last person we want with their finger on the nuclear button is somebody connected to this extreme Christianist doomsday cult."
On February 28, 2020, Jello announced that he would be supporting both Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders in the 2020 presidential election. “I personally like Warren slightly better than Bernie because: 1) She’s done her homework. Bernie too, but not to quite the same depth or degree. 2) Think about it — who really has a better chance of actually beating Trump, and helping flip Congress and state legislatures? It’s Elizabeth Warren, hands down.” He went on to say that he considered Joe Biden and Mike Bloomberg "almost as bad as Trump".
On April 12, 2020, Biafra expressed disappointment that Sanders had suspended his campaign for the 2020 Democratic nomination.
Boycott of Israel
In mid-2011 Jello Biafra and his band were scheduled to play at the Barby Club in Tel Aviv. They came under heavy pressure by the pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, and finally decided to cancel the concert – after a debate which according to Biafra "deeply tore at the fabric of our band ... This whole controversy has been one of the most intense situations of my life – and I thrive on intense situations".
Biafra then decided to travel to Israel and the Palestinian Occupied Territories, at his own expense, and talk with Israeli and Palestinian activists as well as with fans disappointed at his cancellation. In the article stating his conclusions he wrote:
"I will not perform in Israel unless it is a pro-human rights, anti-occupation event, that does not violate the spirit of the boycott. Each musician, artist, etc. must decide this for themselves. I am staying away for now, but am also really creeped out by the attitudes of some of the hardliners and hope some day to find a way to contribute something positive here. I will not march or sign on with anyone who runs around calling people Zionazis and is more interested in making threats than making friends."
Personal life
Biafra married Theresa Soder, a.k.a. Ninotchka, lead singer of San Francisco-area punk band the Situations, on October 31, 1981. The wedding was conducted by Flipper vocalist/bassist Bruce Loose, who became a Universal Life Church minister just to conduct the ceremony, which took place in a graveyard. The wedding reception, which members of Flipper, Black Flag, and D.O.A. attended, was held at director Joe Rees' Target Video studios. The marriage ended in 1986. Biafra generally does not discuss his private life. He lives in San Francisco, California.
Selected discography
For a more complete list, see the Jello Biafra discography.
Dead Kennedys
1980 – Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables
1981 – In God We Trust, Inc.
1982 – Plastic Surgery Disasters
1985 – Frankenchrist
1986 – Bedtime for Democracy
1987 – Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death
Spoken word
1987 – No More Cocoons
1989 – High Priest of Harmful Matter: Tales From the Trial
1991 – I Blow Minds for a Living
1994 – Beyond the Valley of the Gift Police
1998 – If Evolution Is Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Evolve
2000 – Become the Media
2002 – The Big Ka-Boom, Pt. 1
2002 – Machine Gun in the Clown's Hand
2006 – In the Grip of Official Treason
Lard
1989 – The Power of Lard
1990 – The Last Temptation of Reid
1997 – Pure Chewing Satisfaction
2000 – 70's Rock Must Die
Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine
2009 – The Audacity of Hype
2011 – Enhanced Methods of Questioning
2012 – SHOCK-U-PY
2013 – White People and the Damage Done
2020 – Tea Party Revenge Porn
Collaborations
Filmography
1977 – This Is America, Pt. 2
1981 – Urgh! A Music War
1983 – Anarchism in America
1986 – Lovedolls Superstar, directed by Dave Markey
1987 – Household Affairs, directed & filmed by Allen Ginsberg
1988 – Tapeheads, directed by Bill Fishman
1990 – Terminal City Ricochet
1991 – Highway 61, directed by Bruce McDonald
1994 – Skulhedface, directed by Melanie Mandl
1997 – Mary Jane's Not a Virgin Anymore, directed by Sarah Jacobson
1999 – The Widower
1999 – Virtue
2001 – Plaster Caster
2002 – Bikini Bandits, directed by Steve and Peter Grasse
2004 – Death and Texas
2004 – Punk: Attitude
2005 – We Jam Econo: The Story of the Minutemen
2006 – Punk's Not Dead, directed by Susan Dynner
2006 – Whose War?, directed by Donald Farmer
2007 – American Drug War: The Last White Hope, directed by Kevin Booth
2008 – Nerdcore Rising, directed by Negin Farsad
2009 – Open Your Mouth and Say Mr. Chi Pig, directed by Sean Patrick Shaul
2010 – A Man Within, directed by Yony Leyser
2011 – I Love You ... I Am the Porn Queen, short film directed by Ani Kyd
2014 – Heino: Made in Germany, directed by Oliver Schwabe
2014 – Portlandia, season 4, episode 4 – "Pull-Out King"
2018 – Bathtubs Over Broadway, directed by Dava Whisenant (as himself)
2018 – Boiled Angels: The Trial of Mike Diana, directed by Frank Henenlotter (narrator)
2019 – The Last Black Man in San Francisco, directed by Joe Talbot
Notes
References
External links
Jello Biafra on Alternative Tentacles
1958 births
Living people
20th-century American politicians
Candidates in the 2000 United States presidential election
Alternative Tentacles
Alternative Tentacles artists
American anti–Iraq War activists
American anti-war activists
American human rights activists
American male film actors
American people of Jewish descent
American punk rock singers
American satirists
American male singer-songwriters
American spoken word artists
Anti-consumerists
Anti-corporate activists
Anti-globalization activists
Boulder High School alumni
California Greens
Dead Kennedys members
Finance fraud
Green Party of the United States politicians
Hardcore punk musicians
Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine members
Lard (band) members
Male actors from Boulder, Colorado
Musicians from Boulder, Colorado
Pigface members
Pranksters
Teenage Time Killers members
Singer-songwriters from Colorado | true | [
"Přírodní park Třebíčsko (before Oblast klidu Třebíčsko) is a natural park near Třebíč in the Czech Republic. There are many interesting plants. The park was founded in 1983.\n\nKobylinec and Ptáčovský kopeček\n\nKobylinec is a natural monument situated ca 0,5 km from the village of Trnava.\nThe area of this monument is 0,44 ha. Pulsatilla grandis can be found here and in the Ptáčovský kopeček park near Ptáčov near Třebíč. Both monuments are very popular for tourists.\n\nPonds\n\nIn the natural park there are some interesting ponds such as Velký Bor, Malý Bor, Buršík near Přeckov and a brook Březinka. Dams on the brook are examples of European beaver activity.\n\nSyenitové skály near Pocoucov\n\nSyenitové skály (rocks of syenit) near Pocoucov is one of famed locations. There are interesting granite boulders. The area of the reservation is 0,77 ha.\n\nExternal links\nParts of this article or all article was translated from Czech. The original article is :cs:Přírodní park Třebíčsko.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nNature near the village Trnava which is there\n\nTřebíč\nParks in the Czech Republic\nTourist attractions in the Vysočina Region",
"Damn Interesting is an independent website founded by Alan Bellows in 2005. The website presents true stories from science, history, and psychology, primarily as long-form articles, often illustrated with original artwork. Works are written by various authors, and published at irregular intervals. The website openly rejects advertising, relying on reader and listener donations to cover operating costs.\n\nAs of October 2012, each article is also published as a podcast under the same name. In November 2019, a second podcast was launched under the title Damn Interesting Week, featuring unscripted commentary on an assortment of news articles featured on the website's \"Curated Links\" section that week. In mid-2020, a third podcast called Damn Interesting Curio Cabinet began highlighting the website's periodic short-form articles in the same radioplay format as the original podcast.\n\nIn July 2009, Damn Interesting published the print book Alien Hand Syndrome through Workman Publishing. It contains some favorites from the site and some exclusive content.\n\nAwards and recognition \nIn August 2007, PC Magazine named Damn Interesting one of the \"Top 100 Undiscovered Web Sites\".\nThe article \"The Zero-Armed Bandit\" by Alan Bellows won a 2015 Sidney Award from David Brooks in The New York Times.\nThe article \"Ghoulish Acts and Dastardly Deeds\" by Alan Bellows was cited as \"nonfiction journalism from 2017 that will stand the test of time\" by Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic.\nThe article \"Dupes and Duplicity\" by Jennifer Lee Noonan won a 2020 Sidney Award from David Brooks in the New York Times.\n\nAccusing The Dollop of plagiarism \n\nOn July 9, 2015, Bellows posted an open letter accusing The Dollop, a comedy podcast about history, of plagiarism due to their repeated use of verbatim text from Damn Interesting articles without permission or attribution. Dave Anthony, the writer of The Dollop, responded on reddit, admitting to using Damn Interesting content, but claiming that the use was protected by fair use, and that \"historical facts are not copyrightable.\" In an article about the controversy on Plagiarism Today, Jonathan Bailey concluded, \"Any way one looks at it, The Dollop failed its ethical obligations to all of the people, not just those writing for Damn Interesting, who put in the time, energy and expertise into writing the original content upon which their show is based.\"\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n Official website\n\n2005 podcast debuts"
]
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[
"Jello Biafra",
"Lawsuit and reunion activities",
"Why did he have a lawsuit?",
"three former members of the Dead Kennedys sued Biafra for nonpayment of royalties.",
"Was the lawsuit settled?",
"In May 2000, a jury found Biafra and Alternative Tentacles \"guilty of malice, oppression and fraud",
"Did he have to pay the back royalties?",
"Biafra was ordered to pay $200,000, including $20,000 in punitive damages.",
"Did he have to serve jail time?",
"I don't know.",
"What was the reunion like?",
"Now in control of the Dead Kennedys name, Biafra's former bandmates went on tour with a new lead vocalist.",
"Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?",
"Furthermore, the plaintiffs were awarded the rights to most of Dead Kennedys recorded works"
]
| C_f6fb62c57f214974b44a408134a9d048_0 | How did Biafra react to this? | 7 | How did Jello Biafra react to the plaintiffs being awarded the rights to most of Dead Kennedy's recorded works? | Jello Biafra | In October 1998, three former members of the Dead Kennedys sued Biafra for nonpayment of royalties. The other members of Dead Kennedys alleged that after Biafra, in his capacity as the head of Alternative Tentacles records, discovered an accounting error amounting to some $75,000 in unpaid royalties over almost a decade. Rather than informing his bandmates of this mistake, the suit alleged, Biafra knowingly concealed the information until a whistleblower employee at the record label notified the band. According to Biafra, the suit resulted from his refusal to allow one of the band's most well-known singles, "Holiday in Cambodia", to be used in a commercial for Levi's Dockers; Biafra opposes Levi's because of his claim that they use unfair business practices and sweatshop labor. Biafra maintained that he had never denied them royalties, and that he himself had not even received royalties for re-releases of their albums or "posthumous" live albums which had been licensed to other labels by the Decay Music partnership. Decay Music denied this charge and have posted what they say are his cashed royalty checks, written to his legal name of Eric Boucher. Biafra also complained about the songwriting credits in new reissues and archival live albums of songs, alleging that he was the sole composer of songs that were wrongly credited to the entire band. In May 2000, a jury found Biafra and Alternative Tentacles "guilty of malice, oppression and fraud" by not promptly informing his former bandmates of the accounting error and instead withholding the information during subsequent discussions and contractual negotiations. Biafra was ordered to pay $200,000, including $20,000 in punitive damages. After an appeal by Biafra's lawyers, in June 2003, the California Court of Appeal unanimously upheld all the conditions of the 2000 verdict against Biafra and Alternative Tentacles. Furthermore, the plaintiffs were awarded the rights to most of Dead Kennedys recorded works -- which accounted for about half the sales for Alternative Tentacles. Now in control of the Dead Kennedys name, Biafra's former bandmates went on tour with a new lead vocalist. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Eric Reed Boucher (born June 17, 1958), better known by his professional name Jello Biafra, is an American singer and spoken word artist. He is the former lead singer and songwriter for the San Francisco punk rock band Dead Kennedys.
Initially active from 1979 to 1986, Dead Kennedys were known for rapid-fire music topped with Biafra's sardonic lyrics and biting social commentary, delivered in his "unique quiver of a voice". When the band broke up in 1986, he took over the influential independent record label Alternative Tentacles, which he had founded in 1979 with Dead Kennedys bandmate East Bay Ray. In a 2000 lawsuit, upheld on appeal in 2003 by the California Supreme Court, Biafra was found liable for breach of contract, fraud and malice in withholding a decade's worth of royalties from his former bandmates and ordered to pay over $200,000 in compensation and punitive damages; the band subsequently reformed without Biafra. Although now focused primarily on spoken word performances, Biafra has continued as a musician in numerous collaborations. He has also occasionally appeared in cameo roles in films.
Politically, Biafra is a member of the Green Party of the United States and supports various political causes. He ran for the party's presidential nomination in the 2000 presidential election, finishing a distant second to Ralph Nader. In 1979 he ran for mayor of San Francisco, California. He is a staunch believer in a free society, and utilizes shock value and advocates direct action and pranksterism in the name of political causes. Biafra is known to use absurdist media tactics, in the leftist tradition of the Yippies, to highlight issues of civil rights and social justice.
Early life
Eric Reed Boucher was born in Boulder, Colorado, the son of Virginia (née Parker), a librarian, and Stanley Wayne Boucher, a psychiatric social worker and poet. His sister, Julie J. Boucher, was Associate Director of the Library Research Service at the Colorado State Library; she died in a mountain-climbing accident on October 12, 1996. Biafra has a Jewish great grandparent, but was unaware of this until the mid-2000s. He grew up in a secular household and has said that he is "not really Jewish".
As a child, Boucher developed an interest in international politics that was encouraged by his parents. An avid news watcher, one of his earliest memories was of the John F. Kennedy assassination. Biafra says he has been a fan of rock music since first hearing it in 1965, when his parents accidentally tuned in to a rock radio station. Boucher ignored his high school guidance counselor's advice that he spend his adolescence preparing to become a dental hygienist.
He began his career in music in January 1977 as a roadie for the punk rock band The Ravers (who later changed their name to The Nails), soon joining his friend John Greenway in a band called The Healers. The Healers became well known locally for their mainly improvised lyrics and avant garde music. In the autumn of that year, he began attending the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Musical career
Dead Kennedys
In June 1978, Biafra responded to an advertisement placed in a store by guitarist East Bay Ray, stating "guitarist wants to form punk band", and together they formed the Dead Kennedys. He began performing with the band under the stage name Occupant, but soon began to use his current stage name, a combination of the brand name Jell-O and the short-lived African state Biafra. The band's lyrics were written by Biafra. The lyrics were mostly political in nature and displayed a sardonic, sometimes absurdist, sense of humor despite their serious subject matter. In the tradition of UK anarcho-punk bands like Crass and the Subhumans, the Dead Kennedys were one of the first US punk bands to write politically themed songs. The lyrics Biafra wrote helped popularize the use of humorous lyrics in punk and other types of hard-core music. Biafra cites Joey Ramone as the inspiration for his use of humor in his songs (as well as being the musician who made him interested in punk rock), noting in particular songs by the Ramones such as "Beat on the Brat" and "Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue".
Biafra initially attempted to compose music on guitar, but his lack of experience on the instrument and his own admission of being "a fumbler with my hands" led Dead Kennedys bassist Klaus Flouride to suggest that Biafra simply sing the parts he envisioned to the band. Biafra sang his riffs and melodies into a tape recorder, which he brought to the band's rehearsal and/or recording sessions. This later became a problem when the other members of the Dead Kennedys sued Biafra over royalties and publishing rights. By all accounts, including his own, Biafra is not a conventionally skilled musician, though he and his collaborators (Joey Shithead of D.O.A. in particular) attest that he is a skilled composer and his work, particularly with the Dead Kennedys, is highly respected by punk-oriented critics and fans.
Biafra's first popular song was the first single by the Dead Kennedys, "California über alles". The song, which spoofed California governor Jerry Brown, was the first of many political songs by the group and Biafra. The song's popularity resulted in its being covered by other musicians, such as The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy (who rewrote the lyrics to parody Pete Wilson), John Linnell of They Might Be Giants and Six Feet Under on their Graveyard Classics album of cover versions. Not long after, the Dead Kennedys had a second and bigger hit with "Holiday in Cambodia" from their debut album Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables. AllMusic cites this song as "possibly the most successful single of the American hardcore scene" and Biafra counts it as his personal favorite Dead Kennedy's song. Minor hits from the album included "Kill the Poor" (about potential abuse of the then-new neutron bomb) and a satirical cover of Elvis Presley's "Viva Las Vegas".
The Dead Kennedys received some controversy in the spring of 1981 over the single "Too Drunk to Fuck". The song became a hit in Britain, and the BBC feared that it would manage to be a big enough hit to appear among the top 30 songs on the national charts, requiring a mention on Top of the Pops. However, the single peaked at number 31 in the charts.
Later albums also contained memorable songs, but with less popularity than the earlier ones. The EP In God We Trust, Inc. contained the song "Nazi Punks Fuck Off!" as well as "We've Got A Bigger Problem Now", a rewritten version of "California über alles" about Ronald Reagan. Punk musician and scholar Vic Bondi considers the latter song to be the song that "defined the lyrical agenda of much of hardcore music, and represented its break with punk". The band's most controversial album, Frankenchrist, brought with it the song "MTV Get Off the Air," which accused MTV of promoting poor quality music and sedating the public. The album also contained a controversial poster by Swiss surrealist artist H. R. Giger entitled Penis Landscape.
The Dead Kennedys toured widely during their career, starting in the late 1970s. They began playing at San Francisco's Mabuhay Gardens (their home base) and other Bay Area venues, later branching out to shows in southern Californian clubs (most notably the Whisky a Go Go), but eventually they moved to major clubs across the country, including CBGB in New York. Later, they played to larger audiences such as at the 1980 Bay Area Music Awards (where they played the notorious "Pull My Strings" for the only time), and headlined the 1983 Rock Against Reagan festival.
On May 7, 1994, punk rock fans who believed Biafra was a "sell out" attacked him at the 924 Gilman Street club in Berkeley, California. Biafra claims that he was attacked by a man nicknamed Cretin, who crashed into him while moshing. The crash injured Biafra's leg, causing an argument between the two men. During the argument, Cretin pushed Biafra to the floor and five or six friends of Cretin assaulted Biafra while he was down, yelling "Sellout rock star, kick him", and attempting to pull out his hair. Biafra was later hospitalized with serious injuries. The attack derailed Biafra's plans for both a Canadian spoken-word tour and an accompanying album, and the production of Pure Chewing Satisfaction was halted. However, Biafra returned to the Gilman club a few months after the incident to perform a spoken-word performance as an act of reconciliation with the club.
Biafra has been a prominent figure of the Californian punk scene and was one of the third generation members of the San Francisco punk community. Many later hardcore bands have cited the Dead Kennedys as a major influence. Hardcore punk author Steven Blush describes Biafra as hardcore's "biggest star" who was a "powerful presence whose political insurgence and rabid fandom made him the father figure of a burgeoning subculture [and an] inspirational force [who] could also be a real prick ... Biafra was a visionary, incendiary [performer]."
After the Dead Kennedys disbanded, Biafra's new songs were recorded with other bands, and he released only spoken word albums as solo projects. These collaborations had less popularity than Biafra's earlier work. However, his song "That's Progress", originally recorded with D.O.A. for the album Last Scream of the Missing Neighbors, received considerable exposure when it appeared on the album Rock Against Bush, Vol. 1.
Obscenity prosecution
In April 1986, police officers raided Biafra's house in response to complaints by the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC). In June 1986, L.A. deputy city attorney Michael Guarino, working under City Attorney James Hahn, brought Biafra to trial in Los Angeles for distributing "harmful material to minors" in the Dead Kennedys album Frankenchrist. However, the dispute was about neither the music nor the lyrics from the album, but rather the print of the H. R. Giger poster Landscape XX (Penis Landscape) included with the album.
Music author Reebee Garofalo argued that Biafra and Alternative Tentacles may have been targeted because the label was a "small, self-managed and self-supported company that could ill afford a protracted legal battle." Facing the possible sentence of a year in jail and a $2,000 fine, Biafra, Dirk Dirksen, and Suzanne Stefanac founded the No More Censorship Defense Fund, a benefit featuring several punk rock bands, to help pay for his legal fees, which neither he nor his record label could afford. The jury deadlocked 5 to 7 in favor of acquittal, prompting a mistrial; despite a motion to re-try the case, the judge ordered all charges dropped. The Dead Kennedys disbanded during the trial, in December 1986, due to the mounting legal costs; in the wake of their disbandment, Biafra made a career of his spoken word performances.
Biafra has a cameo role in the 1988 film Tapeheads. He plays an FBI agent who arrests the two protagonists (played by Tim Robbins and John Cusack). While arresting them his character asks "Remember what we did to Jello Biafra?" lampooning the obscenity prosecution.
On March 25, 2005, Biafra appeared on the U.S. radio program This American Life, "Episode 285: Know Your Enemy", which featured a phone call between Jello Biafra and Michael Guarino, the prosecutor in the Frankenchrist trial.
Lawsuit and reunion activities
In October 1998, three former members of the Dead Kennedys sued Biafra for nonpayment of royalties. The other members of Dead Kennedys alleged that Biafra, in his capacity as the head of Alternative Tentacles records, discovered an accounting error amounting to some $75,000 in unpaid royalties over almost a decade. Rather than informing his bandmates of this mistake, the suit alleged, Biafra knowingly concealed the information until a whistleblower employee at the record label notified the band.
According to Biafra, the suit resulted from his refusal to allow one of the band's most well-known singles, "Holiday in Cambodia", to be used in a commercial for Levi's Dockers; Biafra opposes Levi's because of his belief that they use unfair business practices and sweatshop labor. Biafra maintained that he had never denied them royalties, and that he himself had not even received royalties for re-releases of their albums or "posthumous" live albums which had been licensed to other labels by the Decay Music partnership. Decay Music denied this charge and have posted what they say are his cashed royalty checks, written to his legal name of Eric Boucher. Biafra also complained about the songwriting credits in new reissues and archival live albums of songs, alleging that he was the sole composer of songs that were wrongly credited to the entire band.
In May 2000, a jury found Biafra and Alternative Tentacles liable by not promptly informing his former bandmates of the accounting error and instead withholding the information during subsequent discussions and contractual negotiations. Biafra was ordered to pay $200,000, including $20,000 in punitive damages. After an appeal by Biafra's lawyers, in June 2003, the California Court of Appeals unanimously upheld all the conditions of the 2000 verdict against Biafra and Alternative Tentacles. Furthermore, the plaintiffs were awarded the rights to most of Dead Kennedys recorded works—which accounted for about half the sales for Alternative Tentacles. Now in control of the Dead Kennedys name, Biafra's former bandmates went on tour with a new lead vocalist.
Other bands
In the early 1980s, Biafra collaborated with musicians Christian Lunch and Adrian Borland (of The Sound) and Morgan Fisher (of Mott the Hoople) for the electropunk musical project The Witch Trials, releasing one self-titled EP in its lifetime.
In 1988, Biafra, with Al Jourgensen and Paul Barker of the band Ministry, and Jeff Ward, formed Lard. The band became yet another side project for Ministry, with Biafra providing vocals and lyrics. According to a March 2009 interview with Jourgensen, he and Biafra are working on a new Lard album, which is being recorded in Jourgensen's El Paso studio. Jourgensen also claimed in 2021 that Biafra was in works of a new Lard album. While working on the film Terminal City Ricochet in 1989, Biafra did a song for the film's soundtrack with D.O.A.. As a result, Biafra worked with D.O.A. on the album Last Scream of the Missing Neighbors. Biafra also worked with Nomeansno on the soundtrack, which led to their collaboration on the album The Sky Is Falling and I Want My Mommy the following year. Biafra also provided lyrics for the song "Biotech is Godzilla" for Sepultura's 1993 album Chaos A.D..
In 1999, Biafra and other members of the anti-globalization movement protested the WTO Meeting of 1999 in Seattle. Along with other prominent West Coast musicians, he formed the short-lived band the No WTO Combo to help promote the movement's cause. The band was originally scheduled to play during the protest, but the performance was canceled due to riots. The band performed a short set the following night at the Showbox in downtown Seattle (outside the designated area), along with the hiphop group Spearhead. No WTO Combo later released a CD of recordings from the concert, entitled Live from the Battle in Seattle.
As of late 2005, Biafra was performing with the band The Melvins under the name "Jello Biafra and the Melvins", though fans sometimes refer to them as "The Jelvins". Together they have released two albums, and worked on material for a third collaborative release, much of which was premiered live at two concerts at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco during an event called Biafra Five-O, commemorating Biafra's 50th birthday, the 30th anniversary of the founding of the Dead Kennedys, and the beginning of legalized same-sex marriage in California. Biafra was also working with a band known as Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine, which included Ralph Spight of Victims Family on guitar and Billy Gould of Faith No More on bass. This group debuted during Biafra Five-O.
In 2011, Biafra appeared in a singular concert event with an all-star cast of Southern musicians including members from Cowboy Mouth, Dash Rip Rock, Mojo Nixon and Down entitled, "Jello Biafra and the New Orleans Raunch & Soul All Stars" who performed an array of classic Soul covers to a packed house at the 12-Bar in New Orleans, Louisiana. He would later reunite with many of the same musicians during the Carnival season 2014 to revisit many of these classics at Siberia, New Orleans. A live album from the 2011 performance, Walk on Jindal's Splinters, and a companion single, Fannie May/Just a Little Bit, were released in 2015.
Alternative Tentacles
In June 1979, Biafra co-founded the record label Alternative Tentacles, with which the Dead Kennedys released their first single, "California über alles". The label was created to allow the band to release albums without having to deal with pressure from major labels to change their music, although the major labels were not willing to sign the band due to their songs being deemed too controversial. After dealing with Cherry Red in the UK and IRS Records in the US for their first album Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, the band released all later albums, and later pressings of Fresh Fruit on Alternative Tentacles. The exception being live albums released after the band's break-up, which the other band members compiled from recordings in the band partnership's vaults without Biafra's input or endorsement.. Biafra has been the owner of the company since its founding, though he does not receive a salary for his position; Biafra has referred to his position in the company as "absentee thoughtlord".
Biafra is an ardent collector of unusual vinyl records of all kinds, from 1950s and 1960s ethno-pop recordings by the likes of Les Baxter and Esquivel to vanity pressings that have circulated regionally, to German crooner Heino (for whom he would later participate in the documentary Heino: Made In Germany); he cites his always growing collection as one of his biggest musical influences. In 1993 he gave an interview to RE/Search Publications for their second Incredibly Strange Music book focusing primarily on these records, and later participated in a two-part episode of Fuse TV's program Crate Diggers on the same subject. His interest in such recordings, often categorized as outsider music, led to his discovery of the prolific (and schizophrenic) singer/songwriter/artist Wesley Willis, whom he signed to Alternative Tentacles in 1994, preceding Willis' major label deal with American Recordings. His collection grew so large that on October 1, 2005, Biafra donated a portion of his collection to an annual yard sale co-promoted by Alternative Tentacles and held at their warehouse in Emeryville, California.
In 2006, along with Alternative Tentacles employee and The Frisk lead singer Jesse Luscious, Biafra began co-hosting The Alternative Tentacles Batcast, a downloadable podcast hosted by alternativetentacles.com. The show primarily focuses on interviews with artists and bands that are currently signed to the Alternative Tentacles label, although there are also occasional episodes where Biafra devoted the show to answering fan questions.
Spoken word
Biafra became a spoken word artist in January 1986 with a performance at University of California, Los Angeles. In his performance he combined humor with his political beliefs, much in the same way that he did with the lyrics to his songs. Despite his continued spoken word performances, he did not begin recording spoken word albums until after the disbanding of the Dead Kennedys.
His ninth spoken word album, In the Grip of Official Treason, was released in October 2006.
Biafra was also featured in the British band Pitchshifter's song As Seen on TV reciting the words of dystopian futuristic radio advertisements.
Politics
Biafra has resisted identifying with any particular political party or ideology, saying, "I don't label myself strictly an anarchist or a socialist or let alone a libertarian or something like that," In a 2012 interview, Biafra said "I'm very pro-tax as long as it goes for the right things. I don't mind paying more money as long as it's going to provide shelter for people sleeping in the street or getting the schools fixed back up, getting the infrastructure up to the standards of other countries, including a high speed rail system. I'm totally down with that."
Mayoral campaign
In the autumn of 1979, Biafra ran for mayor of San Francisco, using the Jell-O ad campaign catchphrase, "There's always room for Jello", as his campaign slogan. Having entered the race before creating a campaign platform, Biafra later wrote his platform on a napkin while attending a Pere Ubu concert where Dead Kennedys drummer Ted told Biafra, "Biafra, you have such a big mouth that you should run for Mayor." As he campaigned, Biafra wore campaign T-shirts from his opponent Quentin Kopp's previous campaign and at one point vacuumed leaves off the front lawn of another opponent, current U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, to mock her publicity stunt of sweeping streets in downtown San Francisco for a few hours. He also made a whistlestop campaign tour along the BART line. Supporters committed equally odd actions; two well known signs held by supporters said "If he doesn't win I'll kill myself" and "What if he does win?"
At the time, in San Francisco any individual could legally run for mayor if a petition was signed by 1500 people or if $1500 was paid. Biafra paid $900 and got signatures over time and eventually became a legal candidate, meaning he received statements put in voters' pamphlets and equal news coverage.
His platform included unconventional points such as forcing businessmen to wear clown suits within city limits, erecting statues of Dan White, who assassinated Mayor George Moscone and City Supervisor Harvey Milk in 1978, around the city and allowing the parks department to sell eggs and tomatoes with which people could pelt the statues, hiring workers who had lost their jobs due to a tax initiative to panhandle in wealthy neighborhoods (including Senator Dianne Feinstein's), and a citywide ban on cars. Biafra has expressed irritation that these parts of his platform attained such notoriety, preferring instead to be remembered for serious proposals such as legalizing squatting in vacant, tax-delinquent buildings and requiring police officers to run for election by the people of the neighborhoods they patrol.
He finished third out of a field of ten, receiving 3.79 percent of the vote (6,591 votes); the election ended in a runoff that did not involve him (Feinstein was declared the winner).
Presidential campaign
In 2000, the New York State Green Party drafted Biafra as a candidate for the Green Party presidential nomination, and a few supporters were elected to the party's nominating convention in Denver, Colorado. Biafra chose death row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal as his running mate. The party overwhelmingly chose Ralph Nader as the presidential candidate with 295 of the 319 delegate votes. Biafra received 10 votes.
Biafra, along with a camera crew (dubbed by Biafra as "The Camcorder Truth Jihad"), later reported for the Independent Media Center at the Republican and Democratic conventions.
Post-2000
After losing the 2000 nomination, Biafra became highly active in Nader's presidential campaign, as well as in 2004 and 2008. During the 2008 campaign Jello played at rallies and answered questions for journalists in support of Nader. When gay rights activists accused Nader of costing Al Gore the 2000 election, Biafra reminded them that Tipper Gore's Parents Music Resource Center wanted warning stickers on albums with content referencing homosexuality.
After Barack Obama won the general election, Biafra wrote an open letter making suggestions on how to run his term as president. Biafra criticized Obama during his term, stating that "Obama even won the award for best advertising campaign of 2008." Biafra dubbed Obama "Barackstar O'Bummer". Biafra refused to support Obama in 2012. Biafra has stated that he feels that Obama continued many of George W. Bush's policies, summarizing Obama's policies as containing "worse and worse laws against human rights and more and more illegal unconstitutional spying."
On September 18, 2015, it was announced that Biafra would be supporting Bernie Sanders in his campaign for the 2016 presidential election. He has strongly criticised the political position of Donald Trump, saying "how can people be so fucking stupid" on hearing the election result, and later adding "The last person we want with their finger on the nuclear button is somebody connected to this extreme Christianist doomsday cult."
On February 28, 2020, Jello announced that he would be supporting both Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders in the 2020 presidential election. “I personally like Warren slightly better than Bernie because: 1) She’s done her homework. Bernie too, but not to quite the same depth or degree. 2) Think about it — who really has a better chance of actually beating Trump, and helping flip Congress and state legislatures? It’s Elizabeth Warren, hands down.” He went on to say that he considered Joe Biden and Mike Bloomberg "almost as bad as Trump".
On April 12, 2020, Biafra expressed disappointment that Sanders had suspended his campaign for the 2020 Democratic nomination.
Boycott of Israel
In mid-2011 Jello Biafra and his band were scheduled to play at the Barby Club in Tel Aviv. They came under heavy pressure by the pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, and finally decided to cancel the concert – after a debate which according to Biafra "deeply tore at the fabric of our band ... This whole controversy has been one of the most intense situations of my life – and I thrive on intense situations".
Biafra then decided to travel to Israel and the Palestinian Occupied Territories, at his own expense, and talk with Israeli and Palestinian activists as well as with fans disappointed at his cancellation. In the article stating his conclusions he wrote:
"I will not perform in Israel unless it is a pro-human rights, anti-occupation event, that does not violate the spirit of the boycott. Each musician, artist, etc. must decide this for themselves. I am staying away for now, but am also really creeped out by the attitudes of some of the hardliners and hope some day to find a way to contribute something positive here. I will not march or sign on with anyone who runs around calling people Zionazis and is more interested in making threats than making friends."
Personal life
Biafra married Theresa Soder, a.k.a. Ninotchka, lead singer of San Francisco-area punk band the Situations, on October 31, 1981. The wedding was conducted by Flipper vocalist/bassist Bruce Loose, who became a Universal Life Church minister just to conduct the ceremony, which took place in a graveyard. The wedding reception, which members of Flipper, Black Flag, and D.O.A. attended, was held at director Joe Rees' Target Video studios. The marriage ended in 1986. Biafra generally does not discuss his private life. He lives in San Francisco, California.
Selected discography
For a more complete list, see the Jello Biafra discography.
Dead Kennedys
1980 – Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables
1981 – In God We Trust, Inc.
1982 – Plastic Surgery Disasters
1985 – Frankenchrist
1986 – Bedtime for Democracy
1987 – Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death
Spoken word
1987 – No More Cocoons
1989 – High Priest of Harmful Matter: Tales From the Trial
1991 – I Blow Minds for a Living
1994 – Beyond the Valley of the Gift Police
1998 – If Evolution Is Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Evolve
2000 – Become the Media
2002 – The Big Ka-Boom, Pt. 1
2002 – Machine Gun in the Clown's Hand
2006 – In the Grip of Official Treason
Lard
1989 – The Power of Lard
1990 – The Last Temptation of Reid
1997 – Pure Chewing Satisfaction
2000 – 70's Rock Must Die
Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine
2009 – The Audacity of Hype
2011 – Enhanced Methods of Questioning
2012 – SHOCK-U-PY
2013 – White People and the Damage Done
2020 – Tea Party Revenge Porn
Collaborations
Filmography
1977 – This Is America, Pt. 2
1981 – Urgh! A Music War
1983 – Anarchism in America
1986 – Lovedolls Superstar, directed by Dave Markey
1987 – Household Affairs, directed & filmed by Allen Ginsberg
1988 – Tapeheads, directed by Bill Fishman
1990 – Terminal City Ricochet
1991 – Highway 61, directed by Bruce McDonald
1994 – Skulhedface, directed by Melanie Mandl
1997 – Mary Jane's Not a Virgin Anymore, directed by Sarah Jacobson
1999 – The Widower
1999 – Virtue
2001 – Plaster Caster
2002 – Bikini Bandits, directed by Steve and Peter Grasse
2004 – Death and Texas
2004 – Punk: Attitude
2005 – We Jam Econo: The Story of the Minutemen
2006 – Punk's Not Dead, directed by Susan Dynner
2006 – Whose War?, directed by Donald Farmer
2007 – American Drug War: The Last White Hope, directed by Kevin Booth
2008 – Nerdcore Rising, directed by Negin Farsad
2009 – Open Your Mouth and Say Mr. Chi Pig, directed by Sean Patrick Shaul
2010 – A Man Within, directed by Yony Leyser
2011 – I Love You ... I Am the Porn Queen, short film directed by Ani Kyd
2014 – Heino: Made in Germany, directed by Oliver Schwabe
2014 – Portlandia, season 4, episode 4 – "Pull-Out King"
2018 – Bathtubs Over Broadway, directed by Dava Whisenant (as himself)
2018 – Boiled Angels: The Trial of Mike Diana, directed by Frank Henenlotter (narrator)
2019 – The Last Black Man in San Francisco, directed by Joe Talbot
Notes
References
External links
Jello Biafra on Alternative Tentacles
1958 births
Living people
20th-century American politicians
Candidates in the 2000 United States presidential election
Alternative Tentacles
Alternative Tentacles artists
American anti–Iraq War activists
American anti-war activists
American human rights activists
American male film actors
American people of Jewish descent
American punk rock singers
American satirists
American male singer-songwriters
American spoken word artists
Anti-consumerists
Anti-corporate activists
Anti-globalization activists
Boulder High School alumni
California Greens
Dead Kennedys members
Finance fraud
Green Party of the United States politicians
Hardcore punk musicians
Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine members
Lard (band) members
Male actors from Boulder, Colorado
Musicians from Boulder, Colorado
Pigface members
Pranksters
Teenage Time Killers members
Singer-songwriters from Colorado | false | [
"Radio Biafra, also known as Voice of Biafra, is a radio station that was founded by the government of the Republic of Biafra. It is now operated by Mazi Nnamdi Kanu. It is believed to have its first transmission before the Nigeria-Biafra war, the radio station was instrumental in the broadcast of speeches and propaganda by Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu to the people of the Republic of Biafra.\n\nTransmission\nNow based in the United Kingdom, Radio Biafra transmits via the internet and shortwave broadcast targeted to the Eastern Nigeria. Radio Biafra claims to be broadcasting the ideology of Biafra –\"Freedom of the Biafran people\".\n\nControversy\nRadio Biafra has been met with mixed reactions. While some critics have criticized the station for \"inciting war\" through its programmes and \"preaching hate messages\" against Nigeria which it refers to as a “zoo”, an editor for Sahara Reporters wrote in defence of the radio station after he compared Radio Biafra with the British Broadcasting Corporation Hausa service.\n\nOn 14 July 2015, it was reported in the media that the radio station had been jammed because it did not have a broadcast licence from the Nigerian Broadcasting Commission. However, the radio station in a swift reaction labelled such claims as \"lies\" and went on to release its new frequency details to the public.\n\nReferences\n\nBiafra\nUrban contemporary radio stations",
"This is a survey of the postage stamps and postal history of Biafra.\n\nThe Republic of Biafra was a secessionist state in south-eastern Nigeria which existed from 30 May 1967 to 15 January 1970. The secession was led by the Igbo people following economic, ethnic, cultural and religious tensions among the various peoples of Nigeria and contributed to the causes for the Nigerian Civil War, also known as the Nigerian-Biafran War. Biafra was recognized by Gabon, Haiti, Côte d'Ivoire, Tanzania and Zambia.\n\nThe authorities in Biafra issued banknotes and postage stamps in order to assert their claim to sovereignty. The postage stamps were used mainly on internal mail within the region but also on some external mail sent by air via Libreville in Gabon. The stamps are not recognised as legitimate by all stamp catalogues.\n\nFirst stamps\nAfter independence, the Post Office in Biafra continued to use Nigerian stamps until they ran out when a \"postage paid\" cachet was applied instead until the first stamps were issued.\n\nThe first stamps of Biafra were issued on 5 February 1968 and consisted of three values to mark Biafran \"independence\".\n\nOverprints\nOn 1 April 1968 thirteen stamps of Nigeria from the 1965 issue were issued overprinted with the Biafran coat of arms and the words SOVEREIGN BIAFRA. The 1/2d and 1d values from the same 1965 Nigeria series also exist surcharged with new values and overprinted BIAFRA-FRANCE FRIENDSHIP 1968 SOVEREIGN BIAFRA but these stamps are not believed to have been used for postage.\n\nLater issues\nA number of further stamps were issued in 1968 and 1969 inscribed BIAFRA or REPUBLIC OF BIAFRA, including miniature sheets, further overprints and stamps ostensibly issued to raise funds for charity.\n\nSee also \nWikiBooks\nBiafran pound\nPostage stamps and postal history of Nigeria\nWest Africa Study Circle\n\nReferences\n\nFurther reading \nPrestedge, Dudley. Biafra: The Stamps, History & Postal History of the Rebel State During the Nigerian Civil War. Dronfield: West Africa Study Circle, 2000. , 114p.\nPrestedge, Dudley Herbert. A First Philatelic Study of Biafra. United Kingdom: West Africa Study Circle, 1970\n\nExternal links\nhttps://web.archive.org/web/20110718202453/http://www.biafra.de/\nList of stamps of Biafra (commercial site)\n Republic of Biafra Official Mail and Postal Stamps\nStamps of Nigeria overprinted for Biafra\n\nBiafra\nPhilately of Nigeria"
]
|
[
"Jello Biafra",
"Lawsuit and reunion activities",
"Why did he have a lawsuit?",
"three former members of the Dead Kennedys sued Biafra for nonpayment of royalties.",
"Was the lawsuit settled?",
"In May 2000, a jury found Biafra and Alternative Tentacles \"guilty of malice, oppression and fraud",
"Did he have to pay the back royalties?",
"Biafra was ordered to pay $200,000, including $20,000 in punitive damages.",
"Did he have to serve jail time?",
"I don't know.",
"What was the reunion like?",
"Now in control of the Dead Kennedys name, Biafra's former bandmates went on tour with a new lead vocalist.",
"Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?",
"Furthermore, the plaintiffs were awarded the rights to most of Dead Kennedys recorded works",
"How did Biafra react to this?",
"I don't know."
]
| C_f6fb62c57f214974b44a408134a9d048_0 | Were there any other activities with the reunion? | 8 | Aside from the Dead Kennedy's going on tour with a new lead vocalist, were there any other activities with the reunion? | Jello Biafra | In October 1998, three former members of the Dead Kennedys sued Biafra for nonpayment of royalties. The other members of Dead Kennedys alleged that after Biafra, in his capacity as the head of Alternative Tentacles records, discovered an accounting error amounting to some $75,000 in unpaid royalties over almost a decade. Rather than informing his bandmates of this mistake, the suit alleged, Biafra knowingly concealed the information until a whistleblower employee at the record label notified the band. According to Biafra, the suit resulted from his refusal to allow one of the band's most well-known singles, "Holiday in Cambodia", to be used in a commercial for Levi's Dockers; Biafra opposes Levi's because of his claim that they use unfair business practices and sweatshop labor. Biafra maintained that he had never denied them royalties, and that he himself had not even received royalties for re-releases of their albums or "posthumous" live albums which had been licensed to other labels by the Decay Music partnership. Decay Music denied this charge and have posted what they say are his cashed royalty checks, written to his legal name of Eric Boucher. Biafra also complained about the songwriting credits in new reissues and archival live albums of songs, alleging that he was the sole composer of songs that were wrongly credited to the entire band. In May 2000, a jury found Biafra and Alternative Tentacles "guilty of malice, oppression and fraud" by not promptly informing his former bandmates of the accounting error and instead withholding the information during subsequent discussions and contractual negotiations. Biafra was ordered to pay $200,000, including $20,000 in punitive damages. After an appeal by Biafra's lawyers, in June 2003, the California Court of Appeal unanimously upheld all the conditions of the 2000 verdict against Biafra and Alternative Tentacles. Furthermore, the plaintiffs were awarded the rights to most of Dead Kennedys recorded works -- which accounted for about half the sales for Alternative Tentacles. Now in control of the Dead Kennedys name, Biafra's former bandmates went on tour with a new lead vocalist. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Eric Reed Boucher (born June 17, 1958), better known by his professional name Jello Biafra, is an American singer and spoken word artist. He is the former lead singer and songwriter for the San Francisco punk rock band Dead Kennedys.
Initially active from 1979 to 1986, Dead Kennedys were known for rapid-fire music topped with Biafra's sardonic lyrics and biting social commentary, delivered in his "unique quiver of a voice". When the band broke up in 1986, he took over the influential independent record label Alternative Tentacles, which he had founded in 1979 with Dead Kennedys bandmate East Bay Ray. In a 2000 lawsuit, upheld on appeal in 2003 by the California Supreme Court, Biafra was found liable for breach of contract, fraud and malice in withholding a decade's worth of royalties from his former bandmates and ordered to pay over $200,000 in compensation and punitive damages; the band subsequently reformed without Biafra. Although now focused primarily on spoken word performances, Biafra has continued as a musician in numerous collaborations. He has also occasionally appeared in cameo roles in films.
Politically, Biafra is a member of the Green Party of the United States and supports various political causes. He ran for the party's presidential nomination in the 2000 presidential election, finishing a distant second to Ralph Nader. In 1979 he ran for mayor of San Francisco, California. He is a staunch believer in a free society, and utilizes shock value and advocates direct action and pranksterism in the name of political causes. Biafra is known to use absurdist media tactics, in the leftist tradition of the Yippies, to highlight issues of civil rights and social justice.
Early life
Eric Reed Boucher was born in Boulder, Colorado, the son of Virginia (née Parker), a librarian, and Stanley Wayne Boucher, a psychiatric social worker and poet. His sister, Julie J. Boucher, was Associate Director of the Library Research Service at the Colorado State Library; she died in a mountain-climbing accident on October 12, 1996. Biafra has a Jewish great grandparent, but was unaware of this until the mid-2000s. He grew up in a secular household and has said that he is "not really Jewish".
As a child, Boucher developed an interest in international politics that was encouraged by his parents. An avid news watcher, one of his earliest memories was of the John F. Kennedy assassination. Biafra says he has been a fan of rock music since first hearing it in 1965, when his parents accidentally tuned in to a rock radio station. Boucher ignored his high school guidance counselor's advice that he spend his adolescence preparing to become a dental hygienist.
He began his career in music in January 1977 as a roadie for the punk rock band The Ravers (who later changed their name to The Nails), soon joining his friend John Greenway in a band called The Healers. The Healers became well known locally for their mainly improvised lyrics and avant garde music. In the autumn of that year, he began attending the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Musical career
Dead Kennedys
In June 1978, Biafra responded to an advertisement placed in a store by guitarist East Bay Ray, stating "guitarist wants to form punk band", and together they formed the Dead Kennedys. He began performing with the band under the stage name Occupant, but soon began to use his current stage name, a combination of the brand name Jell-O and the short-lived African state Biafra. The band's lyrics were written by Biafra. The lyrics were mostly political in nature and displayed a sardonic, sometimes absurdist, sense of humor despite their serious subject matter. In the tradition of UK anarcho-punk bands like Crass and the Subhumans, the Dead Kennedys were one of the first US punk bands to write politically themed songs. The lyrics Biafra wrote helped popularize the use of humorous lyrics in punk and other types of hard-core music. Biafra cites Joey Ramone as the inspiration for his use of humor in his songs (as well as being the musician who made him interested in punk rock), noting in particular songs by the Ramones such as "Beat on the Brat" and "Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue".
Biafra initially attempted to compose music on guitar, but his lack of experience on the instrument and his own admission of being "a fumbler with my hands" led Dead Kennedys bassist Klaus Flouride to suggest that Biafra simply sing the parts he envisioned to the band. Biafra sang his riffs and melodies into a tape recorder, which he brought to the band's rehearsal and/or recording sessions. This later became a problem when the other members of the Dead Kennedys sued Biafra over royalties and publishing rights. By all accounts, including his own, Biafra is not a conventionally skilled musician, though he and his collaborators (Joey Shithead of D.O.A. in particular) attest that he is a skilled composer and his work, particularly with the Dead Kennedys, is highly respected by punk-oriented critics and fans.
Biafra's first popular song was the first single by the Dead Kennedys, "California über alles". The song, which spoofed California governor Jerry Brown, was the first of many political songs by the group and Biafra. The song's popularity resulted in its being covered by other musicians, such as The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy (who rewrote the lyrics to parody Pete Wilson), John Linnell of They Might Be Giants and Six Feet Under on their Graveyard Classics album of cover versions. Not long after, the Dead Kennedys had a second and bigger hit with "Holiday in Cambodia" from their debut album Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables. AllMusic cites this song as "possibly the most successful single of the American hardcore scene" and Biafra counts it as his personal favorite Dead Kennedy's song. Minor hits from the album included "Kill the Poor" (about potential abuse of the then-new neutron bomb) and a satirical cover of Elvis Presley's "Viva Las Vegas".
The Dead Kennedys received some controversy in the spring of 1981 over the single "Too Drunk to Fuck". The song became a hit in Britain, and the BBC feared that it would manage to be a big enough hit to appear among the top 30 songs on the national charts, requiring a mention on Top of the Pops. However, the single peaked at number 31 in the charts.
Later albums also contained memorable songs, but with less popularity than the earlier ones. The EP In God We Trust, Inc. contained the song "Nazi Punks Fuck Off!" as well as "We've Got A Bigger Problem Now", a rewritten version of "California über alles" about Ronald Reagan. Punk musician and scholar Vic Bondi considers the latter song to be the song that "defined the lyrical agenda of much of hardcore music, and represented its break with punk". The band's most controversial album, Frankenchrist, brought with it the song "MTV Get Off the Air," which accused MTV of promoting poor quality music and sedating the public. The album also contained a controversial poster by Swiss surrealist artist H. R. Giger entitled Penis Landscape.
The Dead Kennedys toured widely during their career, starting in the late 1970s. They began playing at San Francisco's Mabuhay Gardens (their home base) and other Bay Area venues, later branching out to shows in southern Californian clubs (most notably the Whisky a Go Go), but eventually they moved to major clubs across the country, including CBGB in New York. Later, they played to larger audiences such as at the 1980 Bay Area Music Awards (where they played the notorious "Pull My Strings" for the only time), and headlined the 1983 Rock Against Reagan festival.
On May 7, 1994, punk rock fans who believed Biafra was a "sell out" attacked him at the 924 Gilman Street club in Berkeley, California. Biafra claims that he was attacked by a man nicknamed Cretin, who crashed into him while moshing. The crash injured Biafra's leg, causing an argument between the two men. During the argument, Cretin pushed Biafra to the floor and five or six friends of Cretin assaulted Biafra while he was down, yelling "Sellout rock star, kick him", and attempting to pull out his hair. Biafra was later hospitalized with serious injuries. The attack derailed Biafra's plans for both a Canadian spoken-word tour and an accompanying album, and the production of Pure Chewing Satisfaction was halted. However, Biafra returned to the Gilman club a few months after the incident to perform a spoken-word performance as an act of reconciliation with the club.
Biafra has been a prominent figure of the Californian punk scene and was one of the third generation members of the San Francisco punk community. Many later hardcore bands have cited the Dead Kennedys as a major influence. Hardcore punk author Steven Blush describes Biafra as hardcore's "biggest star" who was a "powerful presence whose political insurgence and rabid fandom made him the father figure of a burgeoning subculture [and an] inspirational force [who] could also be a real prick ... Biafra was a visionary, incendiary [performer]."
After the Dead Kennedys disbanded, Biafra's new songs were recorded with other bands, and he released only spoken word albums as solo projects. These collaborations had less popularity than Biafra's earlier work. However, his song "That's Progress", originally recorded with D.O.A. for the album Last Scream of the Missing Neighbors, received considerable exposure when it appeared on the album Rock Against Bush, Vol. 1.
Obscenity prosecution
In April 1986, police officers raided Biafra's house in response to complaints by the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC). In June 1986, L.A. deputy city attorney Michael Guarino, working under City Attorney James Hahn, brought Biafra to trial in Los Angeles for distributing "harmful material to minors" in the Dead Kennedys album Frankenchrist. However, the dispute was about neither the music nor the lyrics from the album, but rather the print of the H. R. Giger poster Landscape XX (Penis Landscape) included with the album.
Music author Reebee Garofalo argued that Biafra and Alternative Tentacles may have been targeted because the label was a "small, self-managed and self-supported company that could ill afford a protracted legal battle." Facing the possible sentence of a year in jail and a $2,000 fine, Biafra, Dirk Dirksen, and Suzanne Stefanac founded the No More Censorship Defense Fund, a benefit featuring several punk rock bands, to help pay for his legal fees, which neither he nor his record label could afford. The jury deadlocked 5 to 7 in favor of acquittal, prompting a mistrial; despite a motion to re-try the case, the judge ordered all charges dropped. The Dead Kennedys disbanded during the trial, in December 1986, due to the mounting legal costs; in the wake of their disbandment, Biafra made a career of his spoken word performances.
Biafra has a cameo role in the 1988 film Tapeheads. He plays an FBI agent who arrests the two protagonists (played by Tim Robbins and John Cusack). While arresting them his character asks "Remember what we did to Jello Biafra?" lampooning the obscenity prosecution.
On March 25, 2005, Biafra appeared on the U.S. radio program This American Life, "Episode 285: Know Your Enemy", which featured a phone call between Jello Biafra and Michael Guarino, the prosecutor in the Frankenchrist trial.
Lawsuit and reunion activities
In October 1998, three former members of the Dead Kennedys sued Biafra for nonpayment of royalties. The other members of Dead Kennedys alleged that Biafra, in his capacity as the head of Alternative Tentacles records, discovered an accounting error amounting to some $75,000 in unpaid royalties over almost a decade. Rather than informing his bandmates of this mistake, the suit alleged, Biafra knowingly concealed the information until a whistleblower employee at the record label notified the band.
According to Biafra, the suit resulted from his refusal to allow one of the band's most well-known singles, "Holiday in Cambodia", to be used in a commercial for Levi's Dockers; Biafra opposes Levi's because of his belief that they use unfair business practices and sweatshop labor. Biafra maintained that he had never denied them royalties, and that he himself had not even received royalties for re-releases of their albums or "posthumous" live albums which had been licensed to other labels by the Decay Music partnership. Decay Music denied this charge and have posted what they say are his cashed royalty checks, written to his legal name of Eric Boucher. Biafra also complained about the songwriting credits in new reissues and archival live albums of songs, alleging that he was the sole composer of songs that were wrongly credited to the entire band.
In May 2000, a jury found Biafra and Alternative Tentacles liable by not promptly informing his former bandmates of the accounting error and instead withholding the information during subsequent discussions and contractual negotiations. Biafra was ordered to pay $200,000, including $20,000 in punitive damages. After an appeal by Biafra's lawyers, in June 2003, the California Court of Appeals unanimously upheld all the conditions of the 2000 verdict against Biafra and Alternative Tentacles. Furthermore, the plaintiffs were awarded the rights to most of Dead Kennedys recorded works—which accounted for about half the sales for Alternative Tentacles. Now in control of the Dead Kennedys name, Biafra's former bandmates went on tour with a new lead vocalist.
Other bands
In the early 1980s, Biafra collaborated with musicians Christian Lunch and Adrian Borland (of The Sound) and Morgan Fisher (of Mott the Hoople) for the electropunk musical project The Witch Trials, releasing one self-titled EP in its lifetime.
In 1988, Biafra, with Al Jourgensen and Paul Barker of the band Ministry, and Jeff Ward, formed Lard. The band became yet another side project for Ministry, with Biafra providing vocals and lyrics. According to a March 2009 interview with Jourgensen, he and Biafra are working on a new Lard album, which is being recorded in Jourgensen's El Paso studio. Jourgensen also claimed in 2021 that Biafra was in works of a new Lard album. While working on the film Terminal City Ricochet in 1989, Biafra did a song for the film's soundtrack with D.O.A.. As a result, Biafra worked with D.O.A. on the album Last Scream of the Missing Neighbors. Biafra also worked with Nomeansno on the soundtrack, which led to their collaboration on the album The Sky Is Falling and I Want My Mommy the following year. Biafra also provided lyrics for the song "Biotech is Godzilla" for Sepultura's 1993 album Chaos A.D..
In 1999, Biafra and other members of the anti-globalization movement protested the WTO Meeting of 1999 in Seattle. Along with other prominent West Coast musicians, he formed the short-lived band the No WTO Combo to help promote the movement's cause. The band was originally scheduled to play during the protest, but the performance was canceled due to riots. The band performed a short set the following night at the Showbox in downtown Seattle (outside the designated area), along with the hiphop group Spearhead. No WTO Combo later released a CD of recordings from the concert, entitled Live from the Battle in Seattle.
As of late 2005, Biafra was performing with the band The Melvins under the name "Jello Biafra and the Melvins", though fans sometimes refer to them as "The Jelvins". Together they have released two albums, and worked on material for a third collaborative release, much of which was premiered live at two concerts at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco during an event called Biafra Five-O, commemorating Biafra's 50th birthday, the 30th anniversary of the founding of the Dead Kennedys, and the beginning of legalized same-sex marriage in California. Biafra was also working with a band known as Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine, which included Ralph Spight of Victims Family on guitar and Billy Gould of Faith No More on bass. This group debuted during Biafra Five-O.
In 2011, Biafra appeared in a singular concert event with an all-star cast of Southern musicians including members from Cowboy Mouth, Dash Rip Rock, Mojo Nixon and Down entitled, "Jello Biafra and the New Orleans Raunch & Soul All Stars" who performed an array of classic Soul covers to a packed house at the 12-Bar in New Orleans, Louisiana. He would later reunite with many of the same musicians during the Carnival season 2014 to revisit many of these classics at Siberia, New Orleans. A live album from the 2011 performance, Walk on Jindal's Splinters, and a companion single, Fannie May/Just a Little Bit, were released in 2015.
Alternative Tentacles
In June 1979, Biafra co-founded the record label Alternative Tentacles, with which the Dead Kennedys released their first single, "California über alles". The label was created to allow the band to release albums without having to deal with pressure from major labels to change their music, although the major labels were not willing to sign the band due to their songs being deemed too controversial. After dealing with Cherry Red in the UK and IRS Records in the US for their first album Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, the band released all later albums, and later pressings of Fresh Fruit on Alternative Tentacles. The exception being live albums released after the band's break-up, which the other band members compiled from recordings in the band partnership's vaults without Biafra's input or endorsement.. Biafra has been the owner of the company since its founding, though he does not receive a salary for his position; Biafra has referred to his position in the company as "absentee thoughtlord".
Biafra is an ardent collector of unusual vinyl records of all kinds, from 1950s and 1960s ethno-pop recordings by the likes of Les Baxter and Esquivel to vanity pressings that have circulated regionally, to German crooner Heino (for whom he would later participate in the documentary Heino: Made In Germany); he cites his always growing collection as one of his biggest musical influences. In 1993 he gave an interview to RE/Search Publications for their second Incredibly Strange Music book focusing primarily on these records, and later participated in a two-part episode of Fuse TV's program Crate Diggers on the same subject. His interest in such recordings, often categorized as outsider music, led to his discovery of the prolific (and schizophrenic) singer/songwriter/artist Wesley Willis, whom he signed to Alternative Tentacles in 1994, preceding Willis' major label deal with American Recordings. His collection grew so large that on October 1, 2005, Biafra donated a portion of his collection to an annual yard sale co-promoted by Alternative Tentacles and held at their warehouse in Emeryville, California.
In 2006, along with Alternative Tentacles employee and The Frisk lead singer Jesse Luscious, Biafra began co-hosting The Alternative Tentacles Batcast, a downloadable podcast hosted by alternativetentacles.com. The show primarily focuses on interviews with artists and bands that are currently signed to the Alternative Tentacles label, although there are also occasional episodes where Biafra devoted the show to answering fan questions.
Spoken word
Biafra became a spoken word artist in January 1986 with a performance at University of California, Los Angeles. In his performance he combined humor with his political beliefs, much in the same way that he did with the lyrics to his songs. Despite his continued spoken word performances, he did not begin recording spoken word albums until after the disbanding of the Dead Kennedys.
His ninth spoken word album, In the Grip of Official Treason, was released in October 2006.
Biafra was also featured in the British band Pitchshifter's song As Seen on TV reciting the words of dystopian futuristic radio advertisements.
Politics
Biafra has resisted identifying with any particular political party or ideology, saying, "I don't label myself strictly an anarchist or a socialist or let alone a libertarian or something like that," In a 2012 interview, Biafra said "I'm very pro-tax as long as it goes for the right things. I don't mind paying more money as long as it's going to provide shelter for people sleeping in the street or getting the schools fixed back up, getting the infrastructure up to the standards of other countries, including a high speed rail system. I'm totally down with that."
Mayoral campaign
In the autumn of 1979, Biafra ran for mayor of San Francisco, using the Jell-O ad campaign catchphrase, "There's always room for Jello", as his campaign slogan. Having entered the race before creating a campaign platform, Biafra later wrote his platform on a napkin while attending a Pere Ubu concert where Dead Kennedys drummer Ted told Biafra, "Biafra, you have such a big mouth that you should run for Mayor." As he campaigned, Biafra wore campaign T-shirts from his opponent Quentin Kopp's previous campaign and at one point vacuumed leaves off the front lawn of another opponent, current U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, to mock her publicity stunt of sweeping streets in downtown San Francisco for a few hours. He also made a whistlestop campaign tour along the BART line. Supporters committed equally odd actions; two well known signs held by supporters said "If he doesn't win I'll kill myself" and "What if he does win?"
At the time, in San Francisco any individual could legally run for mayor if a petition was signed by 1500 people or if $1500 was paid. Biafra paid $900 and got signatures over time and eventually became a legal candidate, meaning he received statements put in voters' pamphlets and equal news coverage.
His platform included unconventional points such as forcing businessmen to wear clown suits within city limits, erecting statues of Dan White, who assassinated Mayor George Moscone and City Supervisor Harvey Milk in 1978, around the city and allowing the parks department to sell eggs and tomatoes with which people could pelt the statues, hiring workers who had lost their jobs due to a tax initiative to panhandle in wealthy neighborhoods (including Senator Dianne Feinstein's), and a citywide ban on cars. Biafra has expressed irritation that these parts of his platform attained such notoriety, preferring instead to be remembered for serious proposals such as legalizing squatting in vacant, tax-delinquent buildings and requiring police officers to run for election by the people of the neighborhoods they patrol.
He finished third out of a field of ten, receiving 3.79 percent of the vote (6,591 votes); the election ended in a runoff that did not involve him (Feinstein was declared the winner).
Presidential campaign
In 2000, the New York State Green Party drafted Biafra as a candidate for the Green Party presidential nomination, and a few supporters were elected to the party's nominating convention in Denver, Colorado. Biafra chose death row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal as his running mate. The party overwhelmingly chose Ralph Nader as the presidential candidate with 295 of the 319 delegate votes. Biafra received 10 votes.
Biafra, along with a camera crew (dubbed by Biafra as "The Camcorder Truth Jihad"), later reported for the Independent Media Center at the Republican and Democratic conventions.
Post-2000
After losing the 2000 nomination, Biafra became highly active in Nader's presidential campaign, as well as in 2004 and 2008. During the 2008 campaign Jello played at rallies and answered questions for journalists in support of Nader. When gay rights activists accused Nader of costing Al Gore the 2000 election, Biafra reminded them that Tipper Gore's Parents Music Resource Center wanted warning stickers on albums with content referencing homosexuality.
After Barack Obama won the general election, Biafra wrote an open letter making suggestions on how to run his term as president. Biafra criticized Obama during his term, stating that "Obama even won the award for best advertising campaign of 2008." Biafra dubbed Obama "Barackstar O'Bummer". Biafra refused to support Obama in 2012. Biafra has stated that he feels that Obama continued many of George W. Bush's policies, summarizing Obama's policies as containing "worse and worse laws against human rights and more and more illegal unconstitutional spying."
On September 18, 2015, it was announced that Biafra would be supporting Bernie Sanders in his campaign for the 2016 presidential election. He has strongly criticised the political position of Donald Trump, saying "how can people be so fucking stupid" on hearing the election result, and later adding "The last person we want with their finger on the nuclear button is somebody connected to this extreme Christianist doomsday cult."
On February 28, 2020, Jello announced that he would be supporting both Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders in the 2020 presidential election. “I personally like Warren slightly better than Bernie because: 1) She’s done her homework. Bernie too, but not to quite the same depth or degree. 2) Think about it — who really has a better chance of actually beating Trump, and helping flip Congress and state legislatures? It’s Elizabeth Warren, hands down.” He went on to say that he considered Joe Biden and Mike Bloomberg "almost as bad as Trump".
On April 12, 2020, Biafra expressed disappointment that Sanders had suspended his campaign for the 2020 Democratic nomination.
Boycott of Israel
In mid-2011 Jello Biafra and his band were scheduled to play at the Barby Club in Tel Aviv. They came under heavy pressure by the pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, and finally decided to cancel the concert – after a debate which according to Biafra "deeply tore at the fabric of our band ... This whole controversy has been one of the most intense situations of my life – and I thrive on intense situations".
Biafra then decided to travel to Israel and the Palestinian Occupied Territories, at his own expense, and talk with Israeli and Palestinian activists as well as with fans disappointed at his cancellation. In the article stating his conclusions he wrote:
"I will not perform in Israel unless it is a pro-human rights, anti-occupation event, that does not violate the spirit of the boycott. Each musician, artist, etc. must decide this for themselves. I am staying away for now, but am also really creeped out by the attitudes of some of the hardliners and hope some day to find a way to contribute something positive here. I will not march or sign on with anyone who runs around calling people Zionazis and is more interested in making threats than making friends."
Personal life
Biafra married Theresa Soder, a.k.a. Ninotchka, lead singer of San Francisco-area punk band the Situations, on October 31, 1981. The wedding was conducted by Flipper vocalist/bassist Bruce Loose, who became a Universal Life Church minister just to conduct the ceremony, which took place in a graveyard. The wedding reception, which members of Flipper, Black Flag, and D.O.A. attended, was held at director Joe Rees' Target Video studios. The marriage ended in 1986. Biafra generally does not discuss his private life. He lives in San Francisco, California.
Selected discography
For a more complete list, see the Jello Biafra discography.
Dead Kennedys
1980 – Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables
1981 – In God We Trust, Inc.
1982 – Plastic Surgery Disasters
1985 – Frankenchrist
1986 – Bedtime for Democracy
1987 – Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death
Spoken word
1987 – No More Cocoons
1989 – High Priest of Harmful Matter: Tales From the Trial
1991 – I Blow Minds for a Living
1994 – Beyond the Valley of the Gift Police
1998 – If Evolution Is Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Evolve
2000 – Become the Media
2002 – The Big Ka-Boom, Pt. 1
2002 – Machine Gun in the Clown's Hand
2006 – In the Grip of Official Treason
Lard
1989 – The Power of Lard
1990 – The Last Temptation of Reid
1997 – Pure Chewing Satisfaction
2000 – 70's Rock Must Die
Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine
2009 – The Audacity of Hype
2011 – Enhanced Methods of Questioning
2012 – SHOCK-U-PY
2013 – White People and the Damage Done
2020 – Tea Party Revenge Porn
Collaborations
Filmography
1977 – This Is America, Pt. 2
1981 – Urgh! A Music War
1983 – Anarchism in America
1986 – Lovedolls Superstar, directed by Dave Markey
1987 – Household Affairs, directed & filmed by Allen Ginsberg
1988 – Tapeheads, directed by Bill Fishman
1990 – Terminal City Ricochet
1991 – Highway 61, directed by Bruce McDonald
1994 – Skulhedface, directed by Melanie Mandl
1997 – Mary Jane's Not a Virgin Anymore, directed by Sarah Jacobson
1999 – The Widower
1999 – Virtue
2001 – Plaster Caster
2002 – Bikini Bandits, directed by Steve and Peter Grasse
2004 – Death and Texas
2004 – Punk: Attitude
2005 – We Jam Econo: The Story of the Minutemen
2006 – Punk's Not Dead, directed by Susan Dynner
2006 – Whose War?, directed by Donald Farmer
2007 – American Drug War: The Last White Hope, directed by Kevin Booth
2008 – Nerdcore Rising, directed by Negin Farsad
2009 – Open Your Mouth and Say Mr. Chi Pig, directed by Sean Patrick Shaul
2010 – A Man Within, directed by Yony Leyser
2011 – I Love You ... I Am the Porn Queen, short film directed by Ani Kyd
2014 – Heino: Made in Germany, directed by Oliver Schwabe
2014 – Portlandia, season 4, episode 4 – "Pull-Out King"
2018 – Bathtubs Over Broadway, directed by Dava Whisenant (as himself)
2018 – Boiled Angels: The Trial of Mike Diana, directed by Frank Henenlotter (narrator)
2019 – The Last Black Man in San Francisco, directed by Joe Talbot
Notes
References
External links
Jello Biafra on Alternative Tentacles
1958 births
Living people
20th-century American politicians
Candidates in the 2000 United States presidential election
Alternative Tentacles
Alternative Tentacles artists
American anti–Iraq War activists
American anti-war activists
American human rights activists
American male film actors
American people of Jewish descent
American punk rock singers
American satirists
American male singer-songwriters
American spoken word artists
Anti-consumerists
Anti-corporate activists
Anti-globalization activists
Boulder High School alumni
California Greens
Dead Kennedys members
Finance fraud
Green Party of the United States politicians
Hardcore punk musicians
Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine members
Lard (band) members
Male actors from Boulder, Colorado
Musicians from Boulder, Colorado
Pigface members
Pranksters
Teenage Time Killers members
Singer-songwriters from Colorado | false | [
"A family reunion is an occasion when many members of an extended family congregate. Sometimes reunions are held regularly, for example on the same date of every year.\n\nA typical family reunion will assemble for a meal, some recreation and discussion. The older attendees are generally grandparents, parents, siblings or first cousins while the youngest may be second, third or fourth cousins to each other. It is also not uncommon for regular family reunions to be sponsored by family organizations or family associations centered on a more distant common ancestor (often referred to as \"ancestral family organizations\") or a commonly shared surname (\"single surname family organizations\").\n\nFamily reunion programs\nFamily reunion programs are sponsored by Red Cross organizations. See the List of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) leads the international movement and which has special responsibilities under international humanitarian law.\n\nAdoption reunion movements\nMany adults using an adoption reunion registry are able to locate parents and siblings. Adoption Reunion groups offer search and support guidance for birth parents and adoptees. Adoption Reunion organizations help to uphold adoptee rights and support adoption reform. According to TRIADOPTION® Library which kept records on adoption search and reunion beginning in the 1970s, Jean Paton formed Orphan Voyage back in 1954 and is considered the grandmother of the adoption reunion movement. ALMA (Adoptees Liberty Movement Association) was formed in New York City in 1972, ISRR (International Soundex Reunion Registry) in 1975, CUB (Concerned United Birthparents) in 1976, and dozens more sprung up around the US, Canada and Australia. By 1985 there were over 500 search and support organizations worldwide. The adoption reunion movement grew rapidly from grass roots local organizations coming together under forming the AAC (American Adoption Congress) in 1979 at a conference held in Washington, DC. Groups from each region were instrumental in finding ways to help their members reunite with their birth families and surrendered/relinquished children.\n\nOne of the early groups was Yesterday's Children in Illinois founded by Donna Cullom. They were instrumental in filing the first class action suit in 1974 on behalf of adoptees having access to their original records and birth certificates. In Canada, Parent Finders was formed by Joan Vanstone. Philadelphia Forum, Adoptees In Search, Search Triad, Operation Identity and so many others held meetings, gave support, assisted in search and offered education in their communities. Like them WARM (Washington Adoption Reunion Movement) was a non-profit organization providing search, reunion and educational resources and support to the adult adoption community. WARM maintains a collection of Orphan memorials dedicated to adoptees and birthparents who died before being reunited.\n\nNational and international family history societies\nMany reunions are made possible by family history societies. The Federation of Family History Societies (FFHS) is an international organisation based in the UK which represents, advises and supports over 220 family history societies. The Federation of East European Family History Societies (FEEFHS) was organized in 1992 as an umbrella organization that promotes family research. The Canadian Federation of Genealogical (CanFed) and Family History Societies work with Canadian born families.\n\nInternational family reunification\n\nFamily reunification for third-country nationals remains a politically charged issue. The ICCPR (Art. 12.4) states openly the right of each person to enter in the country of her nationality. This statement has been open to variety of interpretation. Family reunification has become a controversial humanitarian and human rights issue as well as a much debated immigration policy issue. In 2015, North Korea have plan that program of family reunion with South Korea.\n\nGenealogy societies\nThe purpose of genealogical societies is to form a community of researchers and help its members create a library of families history resources.\nFGS was founded in 1976 and represents the members of more than 600 genealogical societies. \nOrganizations like the African American Genealogical Society of Northern California assist family members connect the branches of the family tree using genealogy and Internet resources.\n\nTraditional family reunion activities\n\nTraditional family reunion activities include an afternoon luncheon or early evening dinner and program featuring music, song, poetry reading, history recitals, honorary recognition of elders, community contributions and educational achievements.\n\nHistoric skits\nReenactments that highlight pivotal points in a family's history. Participants are introduced to the art of developing a timeline as well as period research with a focus on costume design, customs, dialogue and social, economic and technological developments.\n\nStory telling\nA fascinating art that brings to life tales of ancestors and their accomplishments. Along with stories of legends of the past, life lessons are taught. The meaning behind family traditions are shared while relaying important family history factoids and the ties that bind.\n\nGenealogy tours\nTakes the family on an exciting tour of important genealogical hot spots including the family homestead, the towns in which the family settled, the jobs they held, machines they worked, markets they traded and streets they walked as well as social activities they immersed themselves into.\n\nGenealogy presentations\nA Presentation of historic documents and vintage artifacts that identify timelines, economic status, historic events and locations of ancestors.\n\nAnnual proclamations and observances\n\nFamily Reunion Month\nA Proclamation in 1985 To raise awareness of a growing trend of runaway children and newly formed organizations to help reunite families of runaways the Congress, by House Joint Resolution 64, has designated the period between Mother's Day, May 12, and Father's Day, June 16, 1985, as \"Family Reunion Month\" and authorized and requested the President to issue a proclamation in observance of this period.\n\nNational Family Reunion Month\nWhile some commercial enterprises have dubbed August as National Family Reunion Month many social groups including churches observe National Family Reunion Month in the month of July.\n\nAnnual Family Reunion Planning Month\nA family awareness group with a focus on genealogy and traditional family reunion planning established \"Annual Family Reunion Planning Month\" to be observed in the month of November.\nMark A. Askew, group Administrator, and Founder, first announced \"Family Reunion Planning Month\" to international reunion planners group members, family magazines, corporations, and schools. (See Fimark's Family Reunion Planner Guidebook and Keepsake.)\n\nSee also\nFamily\nClass reunion\n\nReferences\n\nThomas, Willa J. \"May: Family Reunion Month.\" Reference Services Review 14, 3 (Fall 1986): 64-67\nAskew, Mark A. (2011) \"Fimark's Family Reunion Planner - A Reunion Planning Guide and Keepsake\" pg. 6\n\nExternal links \nProclamation 5351, President of the United States of America\nThe Federation of Family History Societies (FFHS)\nInternet History Resource\nFamily Reunion Planner\nFamily Reunion Games Guide\nPlaces to Go for Family Reunions\n\nFamily\nReunions",
"Réunion is not a separate territory but a region of France. France has a multi-party system, with numerous parties in which no one party often has a chance of gaining power alone, and parties must work with each other to form coalition governments.\n\nFor further details see the article: Politics of France.\n\nThe parties\n\nMost of the French political parties are active in Réunion.\n\nIn addition there are the following regional parties:\n\n Communist Party of Réunion (Parti communiste réunionnais, or PCR)\nFor Réunion (Pour La Réunion)\n\nSee also\n\n Lists of political parties\n\n \nPolitical parties\nReunion\n+Reunion\nReunion\nGovernment of Réunion\n\nPolitical parties"
]
|
[
"Napalm Death",
"Utilitarian and Apex Predator - Easy Meat (2011-2015)"
]
| C_1c93816f29aa4c889ff3aa3793569d09_0 | What was Easy Meat? | 1 | What was Easy Meat? | Napalm Death | In February 2011, Napalm Death appeared in an episode of E4's Skins. Napalm Death entered Parlour Studio in Kettering, with producer Russ Russell to begin working on a new album. Also in 2011, they recorded the single "Legacy Was Yesterday". Napalm Death released their fifteenth studio album, Utilitarian, on 27 February 2012 in Europe and 28 February in North America via Century Media. In March 2012, Napalm Death headlined the Metal Mayhem IV festival organized by "Defenders of Metal" in Nepal. This was the first time Napalm Death played in Nepal. Napalm Death were scheduled to play a special one-off show at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, on 22 March 2013. The show was eventually cancelled at the Victoria and Albert Museum, due to concerns that the noise levels could damage parts of the museum. The show was relocated to the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill, and was performed on 29 November 2013. The performance was a collaboration with ceramicist and Victoria and Albert Artist in Residence Keith Harrison. The show featured 10 large-scale wooden speakers filled with liquid clay that were left to solidify. When the band began to play, the clay inside the speakers was expected to vibrate, causing the speakers to crack and eventually explode. The actual performance was considered anticlimactic, as the speakers withstood the sonic vibration. In April 2014, the band released a cover of the Cardiacs' song "To Go Off and Things" via Bandcamp. All proceeds from the single went towards Cardiacs frontman Tim Smith's recovery from a simultaneous heart attack/stroke he suffered in 2008. The band announced on 5 November 2014, via Facebook that due to an illness in the family, Mitch Harris would be taking a hiatus from the band, to be replaced by various guitarists on their tour. Napalm Death's sixteenth studio album, Apex Predator - Easy Meat, was released on 26 January 2015. On 4 July, a Nepal Charity Event track from the Apex Predator sessions called "Earth Wire" was released on their page. CANNOTANSWER | Napalm Death's sixteenth studio album, Apex Predator - Easy Meat, was released on 26 January 2015. | Napalm Death are an English grindcore band formed in Meriden, West Midlands in 1981. While none of its original members remain in the group since December 1986, the lineup of vocalist Mark "Barney" Greenway, bassist Shane Embury, guitarist Mitch Harris and drummer Danny Herrera has remained consistent through most of the band's career since 1992's Utopia Banished, although, from 1989 to 2004, Napalm Death were a five-piece band after they added Jesse Pintado as the replacement of one-time guitarist Bill Steer; following Pintado's departure, the band reverted to a four-piece rather than replace him.
The band is credited as pioneers of the grindcore genre by incorporating elements of crust punk and death metal, using a noise-filled sound that uses heavily distorted, down-tuned guitars, grinding overdrive bass, high-speed tempo, blast beats, vocals which consist of incomprehensible growls or high-pitched shrieks, extremely short songs and sociopolitical lyrics. The band's debut album Scum, released in 1987 by Earache Records, proved substantially influential throughout the global metal community. According to the Guinness World Records, their song "You Suffer" is the shortest song ever recorded, at only 1.316 seconds long.
Napalm Death have released sixteen studio albums, and are listed by Nielsen SoundScan as the seventh-best-selling death metal band in the United States.
History
Early history (1981–1986)
Napalm Death were formed in the village of Meriden near Coventry, in the United Kingdom, in May 1981 by Nic Bullen and Miles Ratledge while the duo were still in their early teenage years. The duo had been playing in amateur bands since 1980 as an extension of their fanzine writing, and went through a number of names (including "Civil Defence", "The Mess", "Evasion", "Undead Hatred" and "Sonic Noise") before choosing Napalm Death in mid 1981. The band were initially inspired by the early wave of punk bands, particularly the anarcho-punk movement (a subgenre of punk music focused on anarchist politics), and associated groups such as Crass.
The first stable line-up of the group consisted of Nicholas Bullen on lead vocals and bass, Simon Oppenheimer on guitars, and Miles Ratledge on drums, and lasted from December 1981 to January 1982. Graham Robertson joined on bass in January 1982. Simon Oppenheimer left the group in August 1982 and was replaced by Darryl Fedeski who left the group in October 1982: at this point, Graham Robertson began to play guitar and Finbarr Quinn (ex-Curfew) joined on bass and backing vocals.
The group played concerts throughout 1982 (playing their first concert on 25 July 1982 at Atherstone Miners Club) and 1983 (sharing billing with anarcho-punk groups such as Amebix, The Apostles and Antisect), and made 4 demo recordings in 1982 and 1983, one of which contributed their first released recording to the Bullshit Detector Volume 3 compilation released by Crass Records in 1984.
The band entered a period of hiatus from the end of 1983 onwards, playing only one concert in 1984 (a benefit for striking mine workers) with additional vocalist Marian Williams (ex-Relevant POS, and sister of the drummer of the group Human Cabbages from Coventry, UK). During this period, Nic Bullen met Justin Broadrick, a guitarist from Birmingham with whom he shared an interest in the music of bands such as Killing Joke, Throbbing Gristle, Crass, Amebix, Swans, and the developing power electronics scene. Bullen joined Broadrick's Final project for a period in 1983.
In July 1985, Napalm Death briefly reformed in order to appear at a concert at the Mermaid in Birmingham which was also notable as the last concert by Final. The group consisted of a 4-piece line-up of Miles Ratledge - drums, Bullen - vocals, bass and guitar, Graham Robertson - guitar and bass, and Damien Errington - guitar. After this concert, Miles Ratledge and Bullen asked Broadrick to join Napalm Death as guitarist, with Bullen as vocalist and bass player. The band began to develop a musical style which blended elements of post-punk (particularly Killing Joke and Amebix), heavy hardcore punk in the vein of Discharge, and thrash metal (with particular reference to Possessed and extreme metal group Celtic Frost).
The group played their first concert as a trio on 31 August 1985 (playing 2 concerts on the same day: Telford with Chumbawamba and Blyth Power, and Birmingham with We've Got a Fuzzbox and We're Gonna Use It), and began to play regularly in the Birmingham area (particularly at The Mermaid public house in the Sparkhill area of Birmingham) with a wide range of musicians including Icons of Filth, Concrete Sox, The Varukers, Indecent Assault, Decadence Within, and The Groundhogs.
In September 1985, Peter Shaw (ex-Autism) joined on bass. The 4-piece line-up recorded Hatred Surge (the band's 5th demo recording) on 23 October 1985 which the band made available at their concerts and by mail. Following the recording of the demo, Bullen and Broadrick wished to extend their exploration of a more extreme musical style which created a split in the group with Ratledge: as a result, the group splintered and Mick Harris (a local fan) was asked to join as drummer in December 1985.
The trio – Bullen on vocals and bass, Broadrick on guitar and Harris on drums – made their first performance on 15 December 1985 and went on to play many concerts in 1986, predominantly in the Birmingham area, with musicians such as Amebix, Antisect, Chaos UK, Varukers, Disorder and Dirge.
The group recorded a 6th demo, From Enslavement to Obliteration, on 15 March 1986, which the group made available at their concerts and through mail, before making a 7th recording later that year, Scum, which was provisionally intended to form part of a split LP with the English hardcore band Atavistic on Manic Ears Records. This recording later became the first side of the band's debut album Scum in 1987.
The band then faced a number of line-up changes. Nic Bullen was becoming frustrated with the musical direction of the group, and began to lose interest as a whole: as a result, Jim Whiteley was asked to join as bass player. The band played a number of concerts as a four-piece before Justin Broadrick left the group to play the drums for local band Head of David. The group attempted to find a new guitarist by asking Shane Embury (ex-Unseen Terror and a fan of the group) to join and giving a trial period to Frank Healy (ex-Annihilator, later of Cerebral Fix and Sacrilege). After Broadrick's departure, Nic Bullen's dissatisfaction with the musical direction of the group led him to leave the group in December 1986 (in order to focus on his studies in English Literature and Philosophy at university), leaving the group without any of its original members.
Scum and From Enslavement to Obliteration (1987–1989)
With the departure of Broadrick and Bullen, the band had to look for new members. Guitarist Bill Steer played in a band based in Liverpool called Carcass, and given the affinity between the bands, he joined Napalm Death while still playing an active role in Carcass. The band asked a friend, Coventrian (Lee Dorrian), to join as vocalist due to his good relationship with the band (he had organised a number of concerts for the band), even though he had never been in a band before. This line-up recorded the B side of the Scum LP at Rich Bitch studios in May 1987, and the album was released through Earache Records.
The band promptly lost another member just after they undertook a short tour after the release of Scum. Jim Whiteley left the group (and subsequently joined Weston-Super-Mare based band Ripcord with whom the aforementioned tour had been shared) and Shane Embury (former drummer of Unseen Terror) moved to bass.
The band then appeared on two compilation records ('North Atlantic Noise Attack' and the 'Pathological Compilation'), recorded two Peel sessions and a split 7" with Japanese band S.O.B. They also returned to Rich Bitch studio once more and recorded their second album: From Enslavement to Obliteration.
A follow-up release to "Enslavement..." came in the form of the six song 12" EP "Mentally Murdered", which was to be the last recording with the Harris/Steer/Dorrian/Embury line-up. This EP was recorded at the Slaughterhouse Studios and took on a slightly different sound, blending grindcore with death metal. Following the release, Napalm Death were featured on national television in the United Kingdom in a heavy metal special by Arena (BBC 2).
The band continued to tour, but as soon as they came back home from Japan, in July 1989, Steer and Dorrian left the band: Steer decided to dedicate himself full-time to Carcass, while Dorrian formed the doom metal group Cathedral. The group recruited Jesse Pintado (ex-Terrorizer) on guitar and Mark "Barney" Greenway (ex-Benediction) as vocalist. This line-up took part in the Grindcrusher tour organised by Earache Records and featuring fellow label-mates Carcass, Bolt Thrower and Morbid Angel. The group recruited Mitch Harris (ex-Righteous Pigs) as second guitarist after the tour.
Rise to success (1990–1994)
In Florida, the group began work on Harmony Corruption. Corruption saw stylistic changes from the band, exhibiting blast beats and slower tempos. Death metal was a greater influence on Corruption than previous records. Following the record's release, Live Corruption, a live recording of the band's 30 June 1990 performance at the Salisbury Arts Centre, was released in 1992.
Negative fan reactions to Corruption and accusations of selling out, compelled the band to reconsider its stylistic changes. The group entered Eddie Van Dale's Violent Noise Experience Club in March 1991 to record six new tracks. The songs produced by this session and released on the "Mass Appeal Madness" 12" LP exhibited a much more "raw" quality, again finding favour with fans. This recording, along with the "Mentally Murdered" 12", the split 7" with S.O.B. and live tracks from Live Corruption, were released on Death by Manipulation.
Drummer Mick Harris - the only remaining member of the Scum lineup - eventually left Napalm Death due to conflicts with the rest of the group over changes in its stylistic direction. Danny Herrera, a close friend of Jesse Pintado, was brought in as the new drummer. Herrera's drumming style has been noted for its uniqueness; being described as "Euroblast", a variant of blast beat in which simultaneous eighth notes are played on the ride cymbal and kick drum, with alternate eighth notes added on the snare drum. The addition of Herrera would be the last major line-up change of the band, save for Jesse Pintado's future absence, which has yet to be filled (and vocalist Phil Vane never recorded with the band).
Napalm Death released the album Utopia Banished in 1992, produced by Colin Richardson. This release was a kind of "return to the roots" - grindcore. After recording The World Keeps Turning EP, the band toured Europe with Dismember and Obituary on the "Campaign for Musical Destruction" tour. They then toured the US with Sepultura, Sacred Reich and Sick of It All. The proceeds of Napalm Death's 1993 EP Nazi Punks Fuck Off were donated to anti-fascist organisations.
Their EP, Nazi Punks Fuck Off, was inspired by Napalm Death touring South Africa during 1993, which was particularly controversial given that the band faced a lot of opposition from many white supremacists following the end of Apartheid.
The band remixed the track "Mind of a Razor" by London-based hip hop crew Gunshot. The remixed version of the track appeared on the EP of the same name in 1992.
Thereafter, they went to the studio and recorded Fear, Emptiness, Despair, which was released on 31 May 1994. The album represented a stylistic transition for Napalm Death. Fear, Emptiness, Despair maintained the complex music structures of their previous albums Utopia Banished and Harmony Corruption, but there was a greater emphasis placed on incorporating elements of groove into the band's style, resulting in a wider use of mid-paced music. Bassist Shane Embury recounts that Helmet and their album Strap It On influenced the band's style at the time, as they did many other heavy metal bands during the 1990s. Live concerts with Entombed, Obituary and Machine Head followed the album's release.
Diatribes, Greenway's departure and return (1995–1999)
Their EP Greed Killing was released through Earache in December 1995, followed by the album Diatribes in January 1996. There was greater animosity between the band during this time, with a rift between Greenway and the remainder of the band, especially over the band's stylistic transition and the interference of background presences in the band, exemplifying the former when he stated that the band were "letting go of what made the band special". Greenway was hence expelled from the band later in 1996, and went to record with fellow grindcore act Extreme Noise Terror (ENT) on their release Damage 381. Greenway has stated that following his expulsion he was "devastated" and did not want to commit to ENT in fear of a repetition of the events that took place within Napalm Death.
ENT's vocalist Phil Vane replaced Greenway in Napalm Death. Alas, Shane Embury stated that Vane "couldn't pull off what was required. It was a hard day when I had to pull Phil aside and tell him it just wasn't working. We had been too much into doing our own thing to acknowledge all of the parts that made the Napalm machine tick. I quickly made the call and asked Barney if he would rejoin—time away certainly gave all of us the chance for reflection, regrets and hopes for the future. He was surprised by the material, as it was heavy and some of the songs were fast—I don't know what he really expected us to do!". Following Vane's departure, Greenway returned and the band released the album Inside the Torn Apart on 3 June 1997. An EP and music video were released for the album's track "Breed to Breathe" on 17 November 1997.
The album Words from the Exit Wound followed this, being released on 26 October 1998. The album was their last to be produced by Colin Richardson, who Embury believes hindered the album's creation, ultimately affecting the album's success. Embury has stated that bands such as Nasum influenced the album, and in Embury's view, this album represented a turning point in the band's sound, stating "it was also a turning point in us moving towards rediscovering our roots." Embury also mentioned that following the album's release, the band found it hard to tour due to restricted budgets from their record label, but Cradle of Filth and Nick Barker were able to alleviate this problem.
In 1999 the band made an appearance on Chris Evans' TFI Friday, playing three songs on a set lasting 59 seconds.
Departure from Earache and the departure of Pintado (2000–2004)
The band acrimoniously departed from Earache Records following Words from the Exit Wound and later released Enemy of the Music Business on the record label, Dream Catcher, on 25 September 2000; which showed the band's anger with the music industry and especially with Earache, whilst also incorporating a greater grindcore influence than on their previous few albums. The album was produced jointly by Simon Efemey and Russ Russell, the latter of whom has since been a long-time collaborator with Napalm Death.
Order of the Leech continued with the previous album's style, being released on 21 October 2002, also being produced jointly by Efemey and Russell. In 2003, Embury and Hererra formed the side-project Venomous Concept with Kevin Sharp and Buzz Osborne, and that group has since released four albums. In 2004, Napalm Death recorded a covers album called Leaders Not Followers: Part 2, the sequel to their earlier covers EP. It contains covers of old hardcore punk and heavy metal bands, including Cryptic Slaughter, Massacre, Kreator, Sepultura, Siege and Discharge. Due to personal problems, Jesse Pintado did not play on either Order of the Leech or Leaders Not Followers: Part 2, and left the band in early 2004. Nevertheless, Pintado stated that he left because he grew tired of Napalm Death and wanted to start something new. The two guitars that you hear is Mitch double-tracking.
The Code Is Red... and Time Waits for No Slave (2005–2010)
In April 2005, their next album The Code Is Red...Long Live the Code was released. It features guest appearances from Jeffrey Walker (Carcass), Jamey Jasta (Hatebreed vocalist) and Jello Biafra (formerly of Dead Kennedys, and Lard among many other bands). The album continued the band's progressive approach to their brutal brand of extreme metal, with their trademark grindcore sound retained. Also in 2005, Embury and Herrera joined the extreme metal band Anaal Nathrakh for one tour.
Napalm Death finished recording their follow-up album titled Smear Campaign in June 2006, and it was released on 15 September 2006 to strong reviews from fans and critics alike. The main lyrical focus is criticism of the United States Government and other governments who are strongly religious. The album features a guest appearance by Anneke van Giersbergen, vocalist for the Dutch rock band The Gathering. There is a limited edition digipak version of Smear Campaign, which has two new songs, "Call That an Option?" and "Atheist Runt". They played a series of headline shows in support of the release including the Koko in Camden with Gutworm.
In early 2006 Napalm Death headlined a tour with Kreator, A Perfect Murder, and Undying. On 27 August 2006, Jesse Pintado died in a hospital in the Netherlands due to liver failure, prompting Mitch Harris to express his sadness at the loss of someone he thought of as "a brother" on the band's official website. After the Smear Campaign tour, the band did a 2007 "World Domination Tour". Bassist Shane Embury is currently working on a project with Mick Kenney of Anaal Nathrakh, their work together will be released on FETO Records at the end of 2007. In November 2008, Napalm Death's fourteenth studio album, entitled Time Waits for No Slave, leaked onto the internet; it was officially released on 23 January 2009. Similar to Smear Campaign, Time Waits For No Slave also had a digipak version containing two extra songs ("Suppressed Hunger" and "Omnipresent Knife in Your Back").
Utilitarian and Apex Predator – Easy Meat (2011–2016)
In February 2011, Napalm Death appeared in an episode of E4's Skins. Napalm Death entered Parlour Studio in Kettering, with producer Russ Russell to begin working on a new album. Also in 2011, they recorded the single "Legacy Was Yesterday". Napalm Death released their fifteenth studio album, Utilitarian, on 27 February 2012 in Europe and 28 February in North America via Century Media. In March 2012, Napalm Death headlined the Metal Mayhem IV festival organized by "Defenders of Metal" in Nepal. This was the first time Napalm Death played in Nepal.
Napalm Death were scheduled to play a special one-off show at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, on 22 March 2013. The show was eventually cancelled at the Victoria and Albert Museum, due to concerns that the noise levels could damage parts of the museum. The show was relocated to the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill, and was performed on 29 November 2013. The performance was a collaboration with ceramicist and Victoria and Albert Artist in Residence Keith Harrison. The show featured 10 large-scale wooden speakers filled with liquid clay that were left to solidify. When the band began to play, the clay inside the speakers was expected to vibrate, causing the speakers to crack and eventually explode. The actual performance was considered anticlimactic, as the speakers withstood the sonic vibration.
In April 2014, the band released a cover of the Cardiacs' song "To Go Off and Things" via Bandcamp. All proceeds from the single went towards Cardiacs frontman Tim Smith's recovery from a simultaneous heart attack/stroke he suffered in 2008. The band announced on 5 November 2014, via Facebook that due to an illness in the family, Mitch Harris would be taking a hiatus from the band, to be replaced by various guitarists on their tour. Napalm Death's sixteenth studio album, Apex Predator – Easy Meat, was released on 26 January 2015. On 4 July, a Nepal Charity Event track from the Apex Predator sessions called "Earth Wire" was released on their page.
Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism (2017–present)
In August 2017, it was announced that Napalm Death entered the studio to begin recording their sixteenth studio album for an early 2018 release. In September, frontman Mark "Barney" Greenway spoke to Australia's Sticks for Stones condemning the announcement and stated that no material was being worked on at the moment but was in the "preliminary stages". He then said that it would not be released until later next year. In an interview at Download Festival in June 2018, Greenway confirmed that guitarist Mitch Harris would appear on the new album, which was not expected to be released until 2019, but did not know if he would tour with them again. Bassist Shane Embury confirmed in a March 2019 interview with Extreme Metal Festival News that Harris "did come over and record guitars on the new record" and Greenway has "nearly recorded all his vocal parts." He added, however, that the album will not be released before early 2020.
Napalm Death (along with Lamb of God, Anthrax, and Testament) opened for Slayer on their final North American tour in the summer of 2018. In October 2019, Shane Embury announced that he would be unable to join the band during their North American Tour. Vernon Blake was announced as substitute live bassist.
An EP titled Logic Ravaged by Brute Force was released on 7 February 2020. The band released their sixteenth studio album, Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism, in September 2020.
Political views
The band espouse anarchism, humanism, socialism and animal rights.
Napalm Death congratulated the president of Indonesia, Joko Widodo, a fan of the band, on their Facebook fan page; however, after the Bali Nine and the Lindsay Sandiford case, he came under fire from the band, as well as many others within the metal scene, after their appeals for clemency were ignored.
Inspired by the band's political stance, Professor Simon Springer wrote the conclusion to his 2016 book, The Discourse of Neoliberalism: An Anatomy of a Powerful Idea, by incorporating as many Napalm Death song and album titles into the text as he could.
Members
Current members
Shane Embury – bass, backing vocals (1987–present)
Danny Herrera – drums (1991–present)
Mark "Barney" Greenway – lead vocals (1989–1996, 1997–present)
Mitch Harris – guitars, backing vocals (1990–present)
Touring musicians
John Cooke – guitars, backing vocals (2014–2015, 2015–present)
Vernon Blake – bass (2015, 2019–2020)
Former members
Stephen Beddows - Drums*
Nicholas "Nik Napalm" Bullen – lead vocals, bass (1981–1986)
Miles "Rat" Ratledge – drums (1981–1985)
Simon "Si O" Oppenheimer – guitars (1981–1982)
Graham "Grayhard" Robertson – guitars, bass (1982–1985)
Daryl "Daz F" Fedeski – guitars (1982)
Finbar "Fin" Quinn – bass (1983–1984)
Marian Williams – lead vocals (1984)
Damien Errington – guitars (1985)
Justin Broadrick – guitars, backing and lead vocals (1985–1986)
Peter "P-Nut" Shaw – bass (1985)
Mick Harris – drums, backing vocals (1985–1991)
Jim Whitely – bass (1986–1987)
Frank Healy – guitars (1986)
Bill Steer – guitars (1987–1989)
Lee Dorrian – lead vocals (1987–1989)
Jesse Pintado – guitars (1989–2004; died 2006)
Phil Vane – lead vocals (1996–1997; died 2011)
Erik Burke - guitars (2015)
Jesper Liveröd – bass (2017)
Timeline
Discography
Studio albums
Scum (1987)
From Enslavement to Obliteration (1988)
Harmony Corruption (1990)
Utopia Banished (1992)
Fear, Emptiness, Despair (1994)
Diatribes (1996)
Inside the Torn Apart (1997)
Words from the Exit Wound (1998)
Enemy of the Music Business (2000)
Order of the Leech (2002)
The Code Is Red...Long Live the Code (2005)
Smear Campaign (2006)
Time Waits for No Slave (2009)
Utilitarian (2012)
Apex Predator – Easy Meat (2015)
Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism (2020)
Society and culture
Skins
In the E4 teen comedy-drama Skins, the seasons 5-6 character Rich Hardbeck (Alex Arnold) is a metalhead whose self-proclaimed favourite band is Napalm Death. In the show's fifth season finale, a special appearance from Napalm Death's Mark "Barney" Greenway featured a scene in which he and Rich have a heart-to-heart. Regarding the band's appearance, Barney stated, "One thing that bothers me about TV is the way that teenagers are portrayed. It's down to the f--king Daily Mail's war on teenagers. They stigmatize young kids and it's bulls--t. The thing I like about 'Skins' is it gives a genuine perspective on growing up. That's why we agreed to do this show."
Notes
References
Barcinski, André & Gomes, Silvio (1999). Sepultura: Toda a História. São Paulo: Ed. 34.
Mudrian, Albert (2004). Choosing Death: the Improbable History of Death Metal and Grindcore. Los Angeles, CA: Feral House.
External links
1981 establishments in England
Century Media Records artists
British crust and d-beat groups
Deathgrind musical groups
Earache Records artists
English death metal musical groups
English grindcore musical groups
Kerrang! Awards winners
Musical groups established in 1981
Musical groups from Birmingham, West Midlands
Musical quartets
Political music groups | false | [
"is a type of nabemono made with minke whale meat and mizuna. It is mainly found in the Kansai region, mostly in the Osaka metropolitan area. The name \"harihari\" is onomatopoeic and refers to the sound of chewing mizuna.\n\nThe dish is most often made with fat meat, called .\n\nWhen whaling was popular in Japan, whale meat was cheap and easy to get, and the dish was eaten by the masses. Once commercial whaling ended, whale meat became more difficult to obtain, so pork or duck were frequently substituted in for whale.\n\nVariations \nThere are variations of hari-hari nabe based on region and ingredient availability. If aburaage is used in place of whale meat, it is called . Some restaurants use horse meat in place of whale. Other variations include the addition of mushrooms or tofu.\n\nSee also \nNabemono\nJapanese cuisine\n List of Japanese soups and stews\n\nReferences \n\nJapanese soups and stews\nWhale dishes",
"Stoney & Meatloaf was a duet of singer Meat Loaf and Stoney (Shaun Murphy). They released one self-titled album in 1971. Meat Loaf and Murphy had met previously in the Detroit music scene, and then performed with the Detroit cast of Hair. Meat Loaf, whose name was styled \"Meatloaf\" on the album, had a minor hit \"What You See Is What You Get\".\n\nBreakup\nThe duo disbanded when the record company cut out their vocals to \"Who Is the Leader of the People?\" and replaced them with Edwin Starr's vocals instead. Meat Loaf was then released from the Motown contract by management, while Murphy was retained for a short period, and left on her own to pursue other offers.\n\nMeat Loaf went on to a successful solo career. He sang \"What You See Is What You Get\" live on his Live Around the World album in 1996.\n\nMurphy, known for her longtime association with Bob Seger, joined Eric Clapton's band, for Clapton's \"Behind the Sun Tour\" in 1985, prior to joining the L.A. based band, Little Feat, as a lead singer in 1993.\n\nThe album was released on CD in 2017. \"(I'd Love to Be) As Heavy as Jesus\" was released on a Gospel CD compilation, Key to the Kingdom. (According to Meat Loaf on his VH1 Storytellers live album, he auditioned for Jim Steinman with this song.) Both singles appear on CD as part of The Complete Motown Singles series, on volumes 11A: 1971 and 11B: 1971.\n\nReferences\n\nDiscography\nStoney & Meatloaf - 1971\nMeatloaf featuring Stoney & Meatloaf (re-release) - 1978 (many different variations)\n\n1971 establishments in Michigan\n1971 disestablishments in Michigan\nAmerican musical duos\nMotown artists\nMeat Loaf\nMusical groups established in 1971\nMusical groups disestablished in 1971"
]
|
[
"Napalm Death",
"Utilitarian and Apex Predator - Easy Meat (2011-2015)",
"What was Easy Meat?",
"Napalm Death's sixteenth studio album, Apex Predator - Easy Meat, was released on 26 January 2015."
]
| C_1c93816f29aa4c889ff3aa3793569d09_0 | How many copies did it sell? | 2 | How many copies did Easy Meat sell? | Napalm Death | In February 2011, Napalm Death appeared in an episode of E4's Skins. Napalm Death entered Parlour Studio in Kettering, with producer Russ Russell to begin working on a new album. Also in 2011, they recorded the single "Legacy Was Yesterday". Napalm Death released their fifteenth studio album, Utilitarian, on 27 February 2012 in Europe and 28 February in North America via Century Media. In March 2012, Napalm Death headlined the Metal Mayhem IV festival organized by "Defenders of Metal" in Nepal. This was the first time Napalm Death played in Nepal. Napalm Death were scheduled to play a special one-off show at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, on 22 March 2013. The show was eventually cancelled at the Victoria and Albert Museum, due to concerns that the noise levels could damage parts of the museum. The show was relocated to the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill, and was performed on 29 November 2013. The performance was a collaboration with ceramicist and Victoria and Albert Artist in Residence Keith Harrison. The show featured 10 large-scale wooden speakers filled with liquid clay that were left to solidify. When the band began to play, the clay inside the speakers was expected to vibrate, causing the speakers to crack and eventually explode. The actual performance was considered anticlimactic, as the speakers withstood the sonic vibration. In April 2014, the band released a cover of the Cardiacs' song "To Go Off and Things" via Bandcamp. All proceeds from the single went towards Cardiacs frontman Tim Smith's recovery from a simultaneous heart attack/stroke he suffered in 2008. The band announced on 5 November 2014, via Facebook that due to an illness in the family, Mitch Harris would be taking a hiatus from the band, to be replaced by various guitarists on their tour. Napalm Death's sixteenth studio album, Apex Predator - Easy Meat, was released on 26 January 2015. On 4 July, a Nepal Charity Event track from the Apex Predator sessions called "Earth Wire" was released on their page. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Napalm Death are an English grindcore band formed in Meriden, West Midlands in 1981. While none of its original members remain in the group since December 1986, the lineup of vocalist Mark "Barney" Greenway, bassist Shane Embury, guitarist Mitch Harris and drummer Danny Herrera has remained consistent through most of the band's career since 1992's Utopia Banished, although, from 1989 to 2004, Napalm Death were a five-piece band after they added Jesse Pintado as the replacement of one-time guitarist Bill Steer; following Pintado's departure, the band reverted to a four-piece rather than replace him.
The band is credited as pioneers of the grindcore genre by incorporating elements of crust punk and death metal, using a noise-filled sound that uses heavily distorted, down-tuned guitars, grinding overdrive bass, high-speed tempo, blast beats, vocals which consist of incomprehensible growls or high-pitched shrieks, extremely short songs and sociopolitical lyrics. The band's debut album Scum, released in 1987 by Earache Records, proved substantially influential throughout the global metal community. According to the Guinness World Records, their song "You Suffer" is the shortest song ever recorded, at only 1.316 seconds long.
Napalm Death have released sixteen studio albums, and are listed by Nielsen SoundScan as the seventh-best-selling death metal band in the United States.
History
Early history (1981–1986)
Napalm Death were formed in the village of Meriden near Coventry, in the United Kingdom, in May 1981 by Nic Bullen and Miles Ratledge while the duo were still in their early teenage years. The duo had been playing in amateur bands since 1980 as an extension of their fanzine writing, and went through a number of names (including "Civil Defence", "The Mess", "Evasion", "Undead Hatred" and "Sonic Noise") before choosing Napalm Death in mid 1981. The band were initially inspired by the early wave of punk bands, particularly the anarcho-punk movement (a subgenre of punk music focused on anarchist politics), and associated groups such as Crass.
The first stable line-up of the group consisted of Nicholas Bullen on lead vocals and bass, Simon Oppenheimer on guitars, and Miles Ratledge on drums, and lasted from December 1981 to January 1982. Graham Robertson joined on bass in January 1982. Simon Oppenheimer left the group in August 1982 and was replaced by Darryl Fedeski who left the group in October 1982: at this point, Graham Robertson began to play guitar and Finbarr Quinn (ex-Curfew) joined on bass and backing vocals.
The group played concerts throughout 1982 (playing their first concert on 25 July 1982 at Atherstone Miners Club) and 1983 (sharing billing with anarcho-punk groups such as Amebix, The Apostles and Antisect), and made 4 demo recordings in 1982 and 1983, one of which contributed their first released recording to the Bullshit Detector Volume 3 compilation released by Crass Records in 1984.
The band entered a period of hiatus from the end of 1983 onwards, playing only one concert in 1984 (a benefit for striking mine workers) with additional vocalist Marian Williams (ex-Relevant POS, and sister of the drummer of the group Human Cabbages from Coventry, UK). During this period, Nic Bullen met Justin Broadrick, a guitarist from Birmingham with whom he shared an interest in the music of bands such as Killing Joke, Throbbing Gristle, Crass, Amebix, Swans, and the developing power electronics scene. Bullen joined Broadrick's Final project for a period in 1983.
In July 1985, Napalm Death briefly reformed in order to appear at a concert at the Mermaid in Birmingham which was also notable as the last concert by Final. The group consisted of a 4-piece line-up of Miles Ratledge - drums, Bullen - vocals, bass and guitar, Graham Robertson - guitar and bass, and Damien Errington - guitar. After this concert, Miles Ratledge and Bullen asked Broadrick to join Napalm Death as guitarist, with Bullen as vocalist and bass player. The band began to develop a musical style which blended elements of post-punk (particularly Killing Joke and Amebix), heavy hardcore punk in the vein of Discharge, and thrash metal (with particular reference to Possessed and extreme metal group Celtic Frost).
The group played their first concert as a trio on 31 August 1985 (playing 2 concerts on the same day: Telford with Chumbawamba and Blyth Power, and Birmingham with We've Got a Fuzzbox and We're Gonna Use It), and began to play regularly in the Birmingham area (particularly at The Mermaid public house in the Sparkhill area of Birmingham) with a wide range of musicians including Icons of Filth, Concrete Sox, The Varukers, Indecent Assault, Decadence Within, and The Groundhogs.
In September 1985, Peter Shaw (ex-Autism) joined on bass. The 4-piece line-up recorded Hatred Surge (the band's 5th demo recording) on 23 October 1985 which the band made available at their concerts and by mail. Following the recording of the demo, Bullen and Broadrick wished to extend their exploration of a more extreme musical style which created a split in the group with Ratledge: as a result, the group splintered and Mick Harris (a local fan) was asked to join as drummer in December 1985.
The trio – Bullen on vocals and bass, Broadrick on guitar and Harris on drums – made their first performance on 15 December 1985 and went on to play many concerts in 1986, predominantly in the Birmingham area, with musicians such as Amebix, Antisect, Chaos UK, Varukers, Disorder and Dirge.
The group recorded a 6th demo, From Enslavement to Obliteration, on 15 March 1986, which the group made available at their concerts and through mail, before making a 7th recording later that year, Scum, which was provisionally intended to form part of a split LP with the English hardcore band Atavistic on Manic Ears Records. This recording later became the first side of the band's debut album Scum in 1987.
The band then faced a number of line-up changes. Nic Bullen was becoming frustrated with the musical direction of the group, and began to lose interest as a whole: as a result, Jim Whiteley was asked to join as bass player. The band played a number of concerts as a four-piece before Justin Broadrick left the group to play the drums for local band Head of David. The group attempted to find a new guitarist by asking Shane Embury (ex-Unseen Terror and a fan of the group) to join and giving a trial period to Frank Healy (ex-Annihilator, later of Cerebral Fix and Sacrilege). After Broadrick's departure, Nic Bullen's dissatisfaction with the musical direction of the group led him to leave the group in December 1986 (in order to focus on his studies in English Literature and Philosophy at university), leaving the group without any of its original members.
Scum and From Enslavement to Obliteration (1987–1989)
With the departure of Broadrick and Bullen, the band had to look for new members. Guitarist Bill Steer played in a band based in Liverpool called Carcass, and given the affinity between the bands, he joined Napalm Death while still playing an active role in Carcass. The band asked a friend, Coventrian (Lee Dorrian), to join as vocalist due to his good relationship with the band (he had organised a number of concerts for the band), even though he had never been in a band before. This line-up recorded the B side of the Scum LP at Rich Bitch studios in May 1987, and the album was released through Earache Records.
The band promptly lost another member just after they undertook a short tour after the release of Scum. Jim Whiteley left the group (and subsequently joined Weston-Super-Mare based band Ripcord with whom the aforementioned tour had been shared) and Shane Embury (former drummer of Unseen Terror) moved to bass.
The band then appeared on two compilation records ('North Atlantic Noise Attack' and the 'Pathological Compilation'), recorded two Peel sessions and a split 7" with Japanese band S.O.B. They also returned to Rich Bitch studio once more and recorded their second album: From Enslavement to Obliteration.
A follow-up release to "Enslavement..." came in the form of the six song 12" EP "Mentally Murdered", which was to be the last recording with the Harris/Steer/Dorrian/Embury line-up. This EP was recorded at the Slaughterhouse Studios and took on a slightly different sound, blending grindcore with death metal. Following the release, Napalm Death were featured on national television in the United Kingdom in a heavy metal special by Arena (BBC 2).
The band continued to tour, but as soon as they came back home from Japan, in July 1989, Steer and Dorrian left the band: Steer decided to dedicate himself full-time to Carcass, while Dorrian formed the doom metal group Cathedral. The group recruited Jesse Pintado (ex-Terrorizer) on guitar and Mark "Barney" Greenway (ex-Benediction) as vocalist. This line-up took part in the Grindcrusher tour organised by Earache Records and featuring fellow label-mates Carcass, Bolt Thrower and Morbid Angel. The group recruited Mitch Harris (ex-Righteous Pigs) as second guitarist after the tour.
Rise to success (1990–1994)
In Florida, the group began work on Harmony Corruption. Corruption saw stylistic changes from the band, exhibiting blast beats and slower tempos. Death metal was a greater influence on Corruption than previous records. Following the record's release, Live Corruption, a live recording of the band's 30 June 1990 performance at the Salisbury Arts Centre, was released in 1992.
Negative fan reactions to Corruption and accusations of selling out, compelled the band to reconsider its stylistic changes. The group entered Eddie Van Dale's Violent Noise Experience Club in March 1991 to record six new tracks. The songs produced by this session and released on the "Mass Appeal Madness" 12" LP exhibited a much more "raw" quality, again finding favour with fans. This recording, along with the "Mentally Murdered" 12", the split 7" with S.O.B. and live tracks from Live Corruption, were released on Death by Manipulation.
Drummer Mick Harris - the only remaining member of the Scum lineup - eventually left Napalm Death due to conflicts with the rest of the group over changes in its stylistic direction. Danny Herrera, a close friend of Jesse Pintado, was brought in as the new drummer. Herrera's drumming style has been noted for its uniqueness; being described as "Euroblast", a variant of blast beat in which simultaneous eighth notes are played on the ride cymbal and kick drum, with alternate eighth notes added on the snare drum. The addition of Herrera would be the last major line-up change of the band, save for Jesse Pintado's future absence, which has yet to be filled (and vocalist Phil Vane never recorded with the band).
Napalm Death released the album Utopia Banished in 1992, produced by Colin Richardson. This release was a kind of "return to the roots" - grindcore. After recording The World Keeps Turning EP, the band toured Europe with Dismember and Obituary on the "Campaign for Musical Destruction" tour. They then toured the US with Sepultura, Sacred Reich and Sick of It All. The proceeds of Napalm Death's 1993 EP Nazi Punks Fuck Off were donated to anti-fascist organisations.
Their EP, Nazi Punks Fuck Off, was inspired by Napalm Death touring South Africa during 1993, which was particularly controversial given that the band faced a lot of opposition from many white supremacists following the end of Apartheid.
The band remixed the track "Mind of a Razor" by London-based hip hop crew Gunshot. The remixed version of the track appeared on the EP of the same name in 1992.
Thereafter, they went to the studio and recorded Fear, Emptiness, Despair, which was released on 31 May 1994. The album represented a stylistic transition for Napalm Death. Fear, Emptiness, Despair maintained the complex music structures of their previous albums Utopia Banished and Harmony Corruption, but there was a greater emphasis placed on incorporating elements of groove into the band's style, resulting in a wider use of mid-paced music. Bassist Shane Embury recounts that Helmet and their album Strap It On influenced the band's style at the time, as they did many other heavy metal bands during the 1990s. Live concerts with Entombed, Obituary and Machine Head followed the album's release.
Diatribes, Greenway's departure and return (1995–1999)
Their EP Greed Killing was released through Earache in December 1995, followed by the album Diatribes in January 1996. There was greater animosity between the band during this time, with a rift between Greenway and the remainder of the band, especially over the band's stylistic transition and the interference of background presences in the band, exemplifying the former when he stated that the band were "letting go of what made the band special". Greenway was hence expelled from the band later in 1996, and went to record with fellow grindcore act Extreme Noise Terror (ENT) on their release Damage 381. Greenway has stated that following his expulsion he was "devastated" and did not want to commit to ENT in fear of a repetition of the events that took place within Napalm Death.
ENT's vocalist Phil Vane replaced Greenway in Napalm Death. Alas, Shane Embury stated that Vane "couldn't pull off what was required. It was a hard day when I had to pull Phil aside and tell him it just wasn't working. We had been too much into doing our own thing to acknowledge all of the parts that made the Napalm machine tick. I quickly made the call and asked Barney if he would rejoin—time away certainly gave all of us the chance for reflection, regrets and hopes for the future. He was surprised by the material, as it was heavy and some of the songs were fast—I don't know what he really expected us to do!". Following Vane's departure, Greenway returned and the band released the album Inside the Torn Apart on 3 June 1997. An EP and music video were released for the album's track "Breed to Breathe" on 17 November 1997.
The album Words from the Exit Wound followed this, being released on 26 October 1998. The album was their last to be produced by Colin Richardson, who Embury believes hindered the album's creation, ultimately affecting the album's success. Embury has stated that bands such as Nasum influenced the album, and in Embury's view, this album represented a turning point in the band's sound, stating "it was also a turning point in us moving towards rediscovering our roots." Embury also mentioned that following the album's release, the band found it hard to tour due to restricted budgets from their record label, but Cradle of Filth and Nick Barker were able to alleviate this problem.
In 1999 the band made an appearance on Chris Evans' TFI Friday, playing three songs on a set lasting 59 seconds.
Departure from Earache and the departure of Pintado (2000–2004)
The band acrimoniously departed from Earache Records following Words from the Exit Wound and later released Enemy of the Music Business on the record label, Dream Catcher, on 25 September 2000; which showed the band's anger with the music industry and especially with Earache, whilst also incorporating a greater grindcore influence than on their previous few albums. The album was produced jointly by Simon Efemey and Russ Russell, the latter of whom has since been a long-time collaborator with Napalm Death.
Order of the Leech continued with the previous album's style, being released on 21 October 2002, also being produced jointly by Efemey and Russell. In 2003, Embury and Hererra formed the side-project Venomous Concept with Kevin Sharp and Buzz Osborne, and that group has since released four albums. In 2004, Napalm Death recorded a covers album called Leaders Not Followers: Part 2, the sequel to their earlier covers EP. It contains covers of old hardcore punk and heavy metal bands, including Cryptic Slaughter, Massacre, Kreator, Sepultura, Siege and Discharge. Due to personal problems, Jesse Pintado did not play on either Order of the Leech or Leaders Not Followers: Part 2, and left the band in early 2004. Nevertheless, Pintado stated that he left because he grew tired of Napalm Death and wanted to start something new. The two guitars that you hear is Mitch double-tracking.
The Code Is Red... and Time Waits for No Slave (2005–2010)
In April 2005, their next album The Code Is Red...Long Live the Code was released. It features guest appearances from Jeffrey Walker (Carcass), Jamey Jasta (Hatebreed vocalist) and Jello Biafra (formerly of Dead Kennedys, and Lard among many other bands). The album continued the band's progressive approach to their brutal brand of extreme metal, with their trademark grindcore sound retained. Also in 2005, Embury and Herrera joined the extreme metal band Anaal Nathrakh for one tour.
Napalm Death finished recording their follow-up album titled Smear Campaign in June 2006, and it was released on 15 September 2006 to strong reviews from fans and critics alike. The main lyrical focus is criticism of the United States Government and other governments who are strongly religious. The album features a guest appearance by Anneke van Giersbergen, vocalist for the Dutch rock band The Gathering. There is a limited edition digipak version of Smear Campaign, which has two new songs, "Call That an Option?" and "Atheist Runt". They played a series of headline shows in support of the release including the Koko in Camden with Gutworm.
In early 2006 Napalm Death headlined a tour with Kreator, A Perfect Murder, and Undying. On 27 August 2006, Jesse Pintado died in a hospital in the Netherlands due to liver failure, prompting Mitch Harris to express his sadness at the loss of someone he thought of as "a brother" on the band's official website. After the Smear Campaign tour, the band did a 2007 "World Domination Tour". Bassist Shane Embury is currently working on a project with Mick Kenney of Anaal Nathrakh, their work together will be released on FETO Records at the end of 2007. In November 2008, Napalm Death's fourteenth studio album, entitled Time Waits for No Slave, leaked onto the internet; it was officially released on 23 January 2009. Similar to Smear Campaign, Time Waits For No Slave also had a digipak version containing two extra songs ("Suppressed Hunger" and "Omnipresent Knife in Your Back").
Utilitarian and Apex Predator – Easy Meat (2011–2016)
In February 2011, Napalm Death appeared in an episode of E4's Skins. Napalm Death entered Parlour Studio in Kettering, with producer Russ Russell to begin working on a new album. Also in 2011, they recorded the single "Legacy Was Yesterday". Napalm Death released their fifteenth studio album, Utilitarian, on 27 February 2012 in Europe and 28 February in North America via Century Media. In March 2012, Napalm Death headlined the Metal Mayhem IV festival organized by "Defenders of Metal" in Nepal. This was the first time Napalm Death played in Nepal.
Napalm Death were scheduled to play a special one-off show at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, on 22 March 2013. The show was eventually cancelled at the Victoria and Albert Museum, due to concerns that the noise levels could damage parts of the museum. The show was relocated to the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill, and was performed on 29 November 2013. The performance was a collaboration with ceramicist and Victoria and Albert Artist in Residence Keith Harrison. The show featured 10 large-scale wooden speakers filled with liquid clay that were left to solidify. When the band began to play, the clay inside the speakers was expected to vibrate, causing the speakers to crack and eventually explode. The actual performance was considered anticlimactic, as the speakers withstood the sonic vibration.
In April 2014, the band released a cover of the Cardiacs' song "To Go Off and Things" via Bandcamp. All proceeds from the single went towards Cardiacs frontman Tim Smith's recovery from a simultaneous heart attack/stroke he suffered in 2008. The band announced on 5 November 2014, via Facebook that due to an illness in the family, Mitch Harris would be taking a hiatus from the band, to be replaced by various guitarists on their tour. Napalm Death's sixteenth studio album, Apex Predator – Easy Meat, was released on 26 January 2015. On 4 July, a Nepal Charity Event track from the Apex Predator sessions called "Earth Wire" was released on their page.
Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism (2017–present)
In August 2017, it was announced that Napalm Death entered the studio to begin recording their sixteenth studio album for an early 2018 release. In September, frontman Mark "Barney" Greenway spoke to Australia's Sticks for Stones condemning the announcement and stated that no material was being worked on at the moment but was in the "preliminary stages". He then said that it would not be released until later next year. In an interview at Download Festival in June 2018, Greenway confirmed that guitarist Mitch Harris would appear on the new album, which was not expected to be released until 2019, but did not know if he would tour with them again. Bassist Shane Embury confirmed in a March 2019 interview with Extreme Metal Festival News that Harris "did come over and record guitars on the new record" and Greenway has "nearly recorded all his vocal parts." He added, however, that the album will not be released before early 2020.
Napalm Death (along with Lamb of God, Anthrax, and Testament) opened for Slayer on their final North American tour in the summer of 2018. In October 2019, Shane Embury announced that he would be unable to join the band during their North American Tour. Vernon Blake was announced as substitute live bassist.
An EP titled Logic Ravaged by Brute Force was released on 7 February 2020. The band released their sixteenth studio album, Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism, in September 2020.
Political views
The band espouse anarchism, humanism, socialism and animal rights.
Napalm Death congratulated the president of Indonesia, Joko Widodo, a fan of the band, on their Facebook fan page; however, after the Bali Nine and the Lindsay Sandiford case, he came under fire from the band, as well as many others within the metal scene, after their appeals for clemency were ignored.
Inspired by the band's political stance, Professor Simon Springer wrote the conclusion to his 2016 book, The Discourse of Neoliberalism: An Anatomy of a Powerful Idea, by incorporating as many Napalm Death song and album titles into the text as he could.
Members
Current members
Shane Embury – bass, backing vocals (1987–present)
Danny Herrera – drums (1991–present)
Mark "Barney" Greenway – lead vocals (1989–1996, 1997–present)
Mitch Harris – guitars, backing vocals (1990–present)
Touring musicians
John Cooke – guitars, backing vocals (2014–2015, 2015–present)
Vernon Blake – bass (2015, 2019–2020)
Former members
Stephen Beddows - Drums*
Nicholas "Nik Napalm" Bullen – lead vocals, bass (1981–1986)
Miles "Rat" Ratledge – drums (1981–1985)
Simon "Si O" Oppenheimer – guitars (1981–1982)
Graham "Grayhard" Robertson – guitars, bass (1982–1985)
Daryl "Daz F" Fedeski – guitars (1982)
Finbar "Fin" Quinn – bass (1983–1984)
Marian Williams – lead vocals (1984)
Damien Errington – guitars (1985)
Justin Broadrick – guitars, backing and lead vocals (1985–1986)
Peter "P-Nut" Shaw – bass (1985)
Mick Harris – drums, backing vocals (1985–1991)
Jim Whitely – bass (1986–1987)
Frank Healy – guitars (1986)
Bill Steer – guitars (1987–1989)
Lee Dorrian – lead vocals (1987–1989)
Jesse Pintado – guitars (1989–2004; died 2006)
Phil Vane – lead vocals (1996–1997; died 2011)
Erik Burke - guitars (2015)
Jesper Liveröd – bass (2017)
Timeline
Discography
Studio albums
Scum (1987)
From Enslavement to Obliteration (1988)
Harmony Corruption (1990)
Utopia Banished (1992)
Fear, Emptiness, Despair (1994)
Diatribes (1996)
Inside the Torn Apart (1997)
Words from the Exit Wound (1998)
Enemy of the Music Business (2000)
Order of the Leech (2002)
The Code Is Red...Long Live the Code (2005)
Smear Campaign (2006)
Time Waits for No Slave (2009)
Utilitarian (2012)
Apex Predator – Easy Meat (2015)
Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism (2020)
Society and culture
Skins
In the E4 teen comedy-drama Skins, the seasons 5-6 character Rich Hardbeck (Alex Arnold) is a metalhead whose self-proclaimed favourite band is Napalm Death. In the show's fifth season finale, a special appearance from Napalm Death's Mark "Barney" Greenway featured a scene in which he and Rich have a heart-to-heart. Regarding the band's appearance, Barney stated, "One thing that bothers me about TV is the way that teenagers are portrayed. It's down to the f--king Daily Mail's war on teenagers. They stigmatize young kids and it's bulls--t. The thing I like about 'Skins' is it gives a genuine perspective on growing up. That's why we agreed to do this show."
Notes
References
Barcinski, André & Gomes, Silvio (1999). Sepultura: Toda a História. São Paulo: Ed. 34.
Mudrian, Albert (2004). Choosing Death: the Improbable History of Death Metal and Grindcore. Los Angeles, CA: Feral House.
External links
1981 establishments in England
Century Media Records artists
British crust and d-beat groups
Deathgrind musical groups
Earache Records artists
English death metal musical groups
English grindcore musical groups
Kerrang! Awards winners
Musical groups established in 1981
Musical groups from Birmingham, West Midlands
Musical quartets
Political music groups | false | [
"My So-Called Life is the second and final album by the Chicago-based nu metal music group From Zero. The album was released on May 6, 2003 via Arista Records. Due to a lack of promotion by Arista Records, poor reviews, and general changes in mainstream music tastes, the album did not sell many copies. The album features a cover of Phil Collins' \"I Don't Care Anymore\".\n\nTrack listing\n\nPersonnel\nJett – vocals, bass\nPete Capizzi – guitar, backing vocals\nJoe Pettinato – guitar\nKid – drums\n\nReferences\n\n2003 albums\nFrom Zero albums\nArista Records albums",
"is the third studio album and debut major Japanese release by South Korean girl group Kara. It was released on November 24, 2010 in four editions: CD+DVD, CD+Photobook (28-pages), CD-Only First Press coming with Korean versions of the songs \"Sweet Days\", \"Love Is\", and \"Binks\" and a CD-Only Normal Press coming with no bonus tracks. The album has topped the Oricon Weekly Album Charts several times and was eventually certified as Double Platinum by the RIAJ.\n\nComposition \nThe album contains two original Japanese songs. There are five songs that were included on the group's fourth Korean mini-album Jumping (2010) including \"Sweet Days\" which was titled \"With\" on the mini-album and the second single Jumping. There are two songs which was previously released in Korean on their third mini-album Lupin (2010) and these are \"Lupin\" and \"Umbrella\". The debut single, Mister was previously released in Korean on their second studio album Revolution (2009).\n\nChart performance \n\nGirl's Talk had sold over 107,000 copies which placed on number 2 at the Oricon Weekly Album charts, behind Hikaru Utada's Utada Hikaru Single Collection Vol. 2, which sold over 231,000 copies in the same week. This is the first time in 6 years and 9 months for a foreign Asian girl group to sell over 100,000 copies on its first week in Japan since Twelve Girls Band did back in March 2004 with the release of their album Kikō: Shining Energy. The album's first week sales doubles that of Kara Best 2007–2010 first week sales (51,000 copies) which was released back in September.\n\nThe album spent 14 weeks in the Top 10 spot of the Oricon Weekly Album charts. It was eventually certified Platinum by the RIAJ. On February 12, 2011, the album eventually peaked at number one after spending over 12 weeks in the charts, making it their first number-one album. The album managed to sell over 300,000 copies making them the first foreign female group to sell over 300,000 copies since Destiny's Child's #1's (2005). On November 18, 2011, it was announced that the album had already sold over 500,000 copies.\n\nTrack listings\n\nCharts\n\nOricon\n\nSingles and other songs charted\n\nCertifications\n\nSources \n\n2010 albums\nDance-pop albums by South Korean artists\nKara (South Korean band) albums\nUniversal Records albums\nJapanese-language albums"
]
|
[
"Napalm Death",
"Utilitarian and Apex Predator - Easy Meat (2011-2015)",
"What was Easy Meat?",
"Napalm Death's sixteenth studio album, Apex Predator - Easy Meat, was released on 26 January 2015.",
"How many copies did it sell?",
"I don't know."
]
| C_1c93816f29aa4c889ff3aa3793569d09_0 | Did it have any hits? | 3 | Did Easy Meat have any hits? | Napalm Death | In February 2011, Napalm Death appeared in an episode of E4's Skins. Napalm Death entered Parlour Studio in Kettering, with producer Russ Russell to begin working on a new album. Also in 2011, they recorded the single "Legacy Was Yesterday". Napalm Death released their fifteenth studio album, Utilitarian, on 27 February 2012 in Europe and 28 February in North America via Century Media. In March 2012, Napalm Death headlined the Metal Mayhem IV festival organized by "Defenders of Metal" in Nepal. This was the first time Napalm Death played in Nepal. Napalm Death were scheduled to play a special one-off show at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, on 22 March 2013. The show was eventually cancelled at the Victoria and Albert Museum, due to concerns that the noise levels could damage parts of the museum. The show was relocated to the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill, and was performed on 29 November 2013. The performance was a collaboration with ceramicist and Victoria and Albert Artist in Residence Keith Harrison. The show featured 10 large-scale wooden speakers filled with liquid clay that were left to solidify. When the band began to play, the clay inside the speakers was expected to vibrate, causing the speakers to crack and eventually explode. The actual performance was considered anticlimactic, as the speakers withstood the sonic vibration. In April 2014, the band released a cover of the Cardiacs' song "To Go Off and Things" via Bandcamp. All proceeds from the single went towards Cardiacs frontman Tim Smith's recovery from a simultaneous heart attack/stroke he suffered in 2008. The band announced on 5 November 2014, via Facebook that due to an illness in the family, Mitch Harris would be taking a hiatus from the band, to be replaced by various guitarists on their tour. Napalm Death's sixteenth studio album, Apex Predator - Easy Meat, was released on 26 January 2015. On 4 July, a Nepal Charity Event track from the Apex Predator sessions called "Earth Wire" was released on their page. CANNOTANSWER | On 4 July, a Nepal Charity Event track from the Apex Predator sessions called "Earth Wire" was released on their page. | Napalm Death are an English grindcore band formed in Meriden, West Midlands in 1981. While none of its original members remain in the group since December 1986, the lineup of vocalist Mark "Barney" Greenway, bassist Shane Embury, guitarist Mitch Harris and drummer Danny Herrera has remained consistent through most of the band's career since 1992's Utopia Banished, although, from 1989 to 2004, Napalm Death were a five-piece band after they added Jesse Pintado as the replacement of one-time guitarist Bill Steer; following Pintado's departure, the band reverted to a four-piece rather than replace him.
The band is credited as pioneers of the grindcore genre by incorporating elements of crust punk and death metal, using a noise-filled sound that uses heavily distorted, down-tuned guitars, grinding overdrive bass, high-speed tempo, blast beats, vocals which consist of incomprehensible growls or high-pitched shrieks, extremely short songs and sociopolitical lyrics. The band's debut album Scum, released in 1987 by Earache Records, proved substantially influential throughout the global metal community. According to the Guinness World Records, their song "You Suffer" is the shortest song ever recorded, at only 1.316 seconds long.
Napalm Death have released sixteen studio albums, and are listed by Nielsen SoundScan as the seventh-best-selling death metal band in the United States.
History
Early history (1981–1986)
Napalm Death were formed in the village of Meriden near Coventry, in the United Kingdom, in May 1981 by Nic Bullen and Miles Ratledge while the duo were still in their early teenage years. The duo had been playing in amateur bands since 1980 as an extension of their fanzine writing, and went through a number of names (including "Civil Defence", "The Mess", "Evasion", "Undead Hatred" and "Sonic Noise") before choosing Napalm Death in mid 1981. The band were initially inspired by the early wave of punk bands, particularly the anarcho-punk movement (a subgenre of punk music focused on anarchist politics), and associated groups such as Crass.
The first stable line-up of the group consisted of Nicholas Bullen on lead vocals and bass, Simon Oppenheimer on guitars, and Miles Ratledge on drums, and lasted from December 1981 to January 1982. Graham Robertson joined on bass in January 1982. Simon Oppenheimer left the group in August 1982 and was replaced by Darryl Fedeski who left the group in October 1982: at this point, Graham Robertson began to play guitar and Finbarr Quinn (ex-Curfew) joined on bass and backing vocals.
The group played concerts throughout 1982 (playing their first concert on 25 July 1982 at Atherstone Miners Club) and 1983 (sharing billing with anarcho-punk groups such as Amebix, The Apostles and Antisect), and made 4 demo recordings in 1982 and 1983, one of which contributed their first released recording to the Bullshit Detector Volume 3 compilation released by Crass Records in 1984.
The band entered a period of hiatus from the end of 1983 onwards, playing only one concert in 1984 (a benefit for striking mine workers) with additional vocalist Marian Williams (ex-Relevant POS, and sister of the drummer of the group Human Cabbages from Coventry, UK). During this period, Nic Bullen met Justin Broadrick, a guitarist from Birmingham with whom he shared an interest in the music of bands such as Killing Joke, Throbbing Gristle, Crass, Amebix, Swans, and the developing power electronics scene. Bullen joined Broadrick's Final project for a period in 1983.
In July 1985, Napalm Death briefly reformed in order to appear at a concert at the Mermaid in Birmingham which was also notable as the last concert by Final. The group consisted of a 4-piece line-up of Miles Ratledge - drums, Bullen - vocals, bass and guitar, Graham Robertson - guitar and bass, and Damien Errington - guitar. After this concert, Miles Ratledge and Bullen asked Broadrick to join Napalm Death as guitarist, with Bullen as vocalist and bass player. The band began to develop a musical style which blended elements of post-punk (particularly Killing Joke and Amebix), heavy hardcore punk in the vein of Discharge, and thrash metal (with particular reference to Possessed and extreme metal group Celtic Frost).
The group played their first concert as a trio on 31 August 1985 (playing 2 concerts on the same day: Telford with Chumbawamba and Blyth Power, and Birmingham with We've Got a Fuzzbox and We're Gonna Use It), and began to play regularly in the Birmingham area (particularly at The Mermaid public house in the Sparkhill area of Birmingham) with a wide range of musicians including Icons of Filth, Concrete Sox, The Varukers, Indecent Assault, Decadence Within, and The Groundhogs.
In September 1985, Peter Shaw (ex-Autism) joined on bass. The 4-piece line-up recorded Hatred Surge (the band's 5th demo recording) on 23 October 1985 which the band made available at their concerts and by mail. Following the recording of the demo, Bullen and Broadrick wished to extend their exploration of a more extreme musical style which created a split in the group with Ratledge: as a result, the group splintered and Mick Harris (a local fan) was asked to join as drummer in December 1985.
The trio – Bullen on vocals and bass, Broadrick on guitar and Harris on drums – made their first performance on 15 December 1985 and went on to play many concerts in 1986, predominantly in the Birmingham area, with musicians such as Amebix, Antisect, Chaos UK, Varukers, Disorder and Dirge.
The group recorded a 6th demo, From Enslavement to Obliteration, on 15 March 1986, which the group made available at their concerts and through mail, before making a 7th recording later that year, Scum, which was provisionally intended to form part of a split LP with the English hardcore band Atavistic on Manic Ears Records. This recording later became the first side of the band's debut album Scum in 1987.
The band then faced a number of line-up changes. Nic Bullen was becoming frustrated with the musical direction of the group, and began to lose interest as a whole: as a result, Jim Whiteley was asked to join as bass player. The band played a number of concerts as a four-piece before Justin Broadrick left the group to play the drums for local band Head of David. The group attempted to find a new guitarist by asking Shane Embury (ex-Unseen Terror and a fan of the group) to join and giving a trial period to Frank Healy (ex-Annihilator, later of Cerebral Fix and Sacrilege). After Broadrick's departure, Nic Bullen's dissatisfaction with the musical direction of the group led him to leave the group in December 1986 (in order to focus on his studies in English Literature and Philosophy at university), leaving the group without any of its original members.
Scum and From Enslavement to Obliteration (1987–1989)
With the departure of Broadrick and Bullen, the band had to look for new members. Guitarist Bill Steer played in a band based in Liverpool called Carcass, and given the affinity between the bands, he joined Napalm Death while still playing an active role in Carcass. The band asked a friend, Coventrian (Lee Dorrian), to join as vocalist due to his good relationship with the band (he had organised a number of concerts for the band), even though he had never been in a band before. This line-up recorded the B side of the Scum LP at Rich Bitch studios in May 1987, and the album was released through Earache Records.
The band promptly lost another member just after they undertook a short tour after the release of Scum. Jim Whiteley left the group (and subsequently joined Weston-Super-Mare based band Ripcord with whom the aforementioned tour had been shared) and Shane Embury (former drummer of Unseen Terror) moved to bass.
The band then appeared on two compilation records ('North Atlantic Noise Attack' and the 'Pathological Compilation'), recorded two Peel sessions and a split 7" with Japanese band S.O.B. They also returned to Rich Bitch studio once more and recorded their second album: From Enslavement to Obliteration.
A follow-up release to "Enslavement..." came in the form of the six song 12" EP "Mentally Murdered", which was to be the last recording with the Harris/Steer/Dorrian/Embury line-up. This EP was recorded at the Slaughterhouse Studios and took on a slightly different sound, blending grindcore with death metal. Following the release, Napalm Death were featured on national television in the United Kingdom in a heavy metal special by Arena (BBC 2).
The band continued to tour, but as soon as they came back home from Japan, in July 1989, Steer and Dorrian left the band: Steer decided to dedicate himself full-time to Carcass, while Dorrian formed the doom metal group Cathedral. The group recruited Jesse Pintado (ex-Terrorizer) on guitar and Mark "Barney" Greenway (ex-Benediction) as vocalist. This line-up took part in the Grindcrusher tour organised by Earache Records and featuring fellow label-mates Carcass, Bolt Thrower and Morbid Angel. The group recruited Mitch Harris (ex-Righteous Pigs) as second guitarist after the tour.
Rise to success (1990–1994)
In Florida, the group began work on Harmony Corruption. Corruption saw stylistic changes from the band, exhibiting blast beats and slower tempos. Death metal was a greater influence on Corruption than previous records. Following the record's release, Live Corruption, a live recording of the band's 30 June 1990 performance at the Salisbury Arts Centre, was released in 1992.
Negative fan reactions to Corruption and accusations of selling out, compelled the band to reconsider its stylistic changes. The group entered Eddie Van Dale's Violent Noise Experience Club in March 1991 to record six new tracks. The songs produced by this session and released on the "Mass Appeal Madness" 12" LP exhibited a much more "raw" quality, again finding favour with fans. This recording, along with the "Mentally Murdered" 12", the split 7" with S.O.B. and live tracks from Live Corruption, were released on Death by Manipulation.
Drummer Mick Harris - the only remaining member of the Scum lineup - eventually left Napalm Death due to conflicts with the rest of the group over changes in its stylistic direction. Danny Herrera, a close friend of Jesse Pintado, was brought in as the new drummer. Herrera's drumming style has been noted for its uniqueness; being described as "Euroblast", a variant of blast beat in which simultaneous eighth notes are played on the ride cymbal and kick drum, with alternate eighth notes added on the snare drum. The addition of Herrera would be the last major line-up change of the band, save for Jesse Pintado's future absence, which has yet to be filled (and vocalist Phil Vane never recorded with the band).
Napalm Death released the album Utopia Banished in 1992, produced by Colin Richardson. This release was a kind of "return to the roots" - grindcore. After recording The World Keeps Turning EP, the band toured Europe with Dismember and Obituary on the "Campaign for Musical Destruction" tour. They then toured the US with Sepultura, Sacred Reich and Sick of It All. The proceeds of Napalm Death's 1993 EP Nazi Punks Fuck Off were donated to anti-fascist organisations.
Their EP, Nazi Punks Fuck Off, was inspired by Napalm Death touring South Africa during 1993, which was particularly controversial given that the band faced a lot of opposition from many white supremacists following the end of Apartheid.
The band remixed the track "Mind of a Razor" by London-based hip hop crew Gunshot. The remixed version of the track appeared on the EP of the same name in 1992.
Thereafter, they went to the studio and recorded Fear, Emptiness, Despair, which was released on 31 May 1994. The album represented a stylistic transition for Napalm Death. Fear, Emptiness, Despair maintained the complex music structures of their previous albums Utopia Banished and Harmony Corruption, but there was a greater emphasis placed on incorporating elements of groove into the band's style, resulting in a wider use of mid-paced music. Bassist Shane Embury recounts that Helmet and their album Strap It On influenced the band's style at the time, as they did many other heavy metal bands during the 1990s. Live concerts with Entombed, Obituary and Machine Head followed the album's release.
Diatribes, Greenway's departure and return (1995–1999)
Their EP Greed Killing was released through Earache in December 1995, followed by the album Diatribes in January 1996. There was greater animosity between the band during this time, with a rift between Greenway and the remainder of the band, especially over the band's stylistic transition and the interference of background presences in the band, exemplifying the former when he stated that the band were "letting go of what made the band special". Greenway was hence expelled from the band later in 1996, and went to record with fellow grindcore act Extreme Noise Terror (ENT) on their release Damage 381. Greenway has stated that following his expulsion he was "devastated" and did not want to commit to ENT in fear of a repetition of the events that took place within Napalm Death.
ENT's vocalist Phil Vane replaced Greenway in Napalm Death. Alas, Shane Embury stated that Vane "couldn't pull off what was required. It was a hard day when I had to pull Phil aside and tell him it just wasn't working. We had been too much into doing our own thing to acknowledge all of the parts that made the Napalm machine tick. I quickly made the call and asked Barney if he would rejoin—time away certainly gave all of us the chance for reflection, regrets and hopes for the future. He was surprised by the material, as it was heavy and some of the songs were fast—I don't know what he really expected us to do!". Following Vane's departure, Greenway returned and the band released the album Inside the Torn Apart on 3 June 1997. An EP and music video were released for the album's track "Breed to Breathe" on 17 November 1997.
The album Words from the Exit Wound followed this, being released on 26 October 1998. The album was their last to be produced by Colin Richardson, who Embury believes hindered the album's creation, ultimately affecting the album's success. Embury has stated that bands such as Nasum influenced the album, and in Embury's view, this album represented a turning point in the band's sound, stating "it was also a turning point in us moving towards rediscovering our roots." Embury also mentioned that following the album's release, the band found it hard to tour due to restricted budgets from their record label, but Cradle of Filth and Nick Barker were able to alleviate this problem.
In 1999 the band made an appearance on Chris Evans' TFI Friday, playing three songs on a set lasting 59 seconds.
Departure from Earache and the departure of Pintado (2000–2004)
The band acrimoniously departed from Earache Records following Words from the Exit Wound and later released Enemy of the Music Business on the record label, Dream Catcher, on 25 September 2000; which showed the band's anger with the music industry and especially with Earache, whilst also incorporating a greater grindcore influence than on their previous few albums. The album was produced jointly by Simon Efemey and Russ Russell, the latter of whom has since been a long-time collaborator with Napalm Death.
Order of the Leech continued with the previous album's style, being released on 21 October 2002, also being produced jointly by Efemey and Russell. In 2003, Embury and Hererra formed the side-project Venomous Concept with Kevin Sharp and Buzz Osborne, and that group has since released four albums. In 2004, Napalm Death recorded a covers album called Leaders Not Followers: Part 2, the sequel to their earlier covers EP. It contains covers of old hardcore punk and heavy metal bands, including Cryptic Slaughter, Massacre, Kreator, Sepultura, Siege and Discharge. Due to personal problems, Jesse Pintado did not play on either Order of the Leech or Leaders Not Followers: Part 2, and left the band in early 2004. Nevertheless, Pintado stated that he left because he grew tired of Napalm Death and wanted to start something new. The two guitars that you hear is Mitch double-tracking.
The Code Is Red... and Time Waits for No Slave (2005–2010)
In April 2005, their next album The Code Is Red...Long Live the Code was released. It features guest appearances from Jeffrey Walker (Carcass), Jamey Jasta (Hatebreed vocalist) and Jello Biafra (formerly of Dead Kennedys, and Lard among many other bands). The album continued the band's progressive approach to their brutal brand of extreme metal, with their trademark grindcore sound retained. Also in 2005, Embury and Herrera joined the extreme metal band Anaal Nathrakh for one tour.
Napalm Death finished recording their follow-up album titled Smear Campaign in June 2006, and it was released on 15 September 2006 to strong reviews from fans and critics alike. The main lyrical focus is criticism of the United States Government and other governments who are strongly religious. The album features a guest appearance by Anneke van Giersbergen, vocalist for the Dutch rock band The Gathering. There is a limited edition digipak version of Smear Campaign, which has two new songs, "Call That an Option?" and "Atheist Runt". They played a series of headline shows in support of the release including the Koko in Camden with Gutworm.
In early 2006 Napalm Death headlined a tour with Kreator, A Perfect Murder, and Undying. On 27 August 2006, Jesse Pintado died in a hospital in the Netherlands due to liver failure, prompting Mitch Harris to express his sadness at the loss of someone he thought of as "a brother" on the band's official website. After the Smear Campaign tour, the band did a 2007 "World Domination Tour". Bassist Shane Embury is currently working on a project with Mick Kenney of Anaal Nathrakh, their work together will be released on FETO Records at the end of 2007. In November 2008, Napalm Death's fourteenth studio album, entitled Time Waits for No Slave, leaked onto the internet; it was officially released on 23 January 2009. Similar to Smear Campaign, Time Waits For No Slave also had a digipak version containing two extra songs ("Suppressed Hunger" and "Omnipresent Knife in Your Back").
Utilitarian and Apex Predator – Easy Meat (2011–2016)
In February 2011, Napalm Death appeared in an episode of E4's Skins. Napalm Death entered Parlour Studio in Kettering, with producer Russ Russell to begin working on a new album. Also in 2011, they recorded the single "Legacy Was Yesterday". Napalm Death released their fifteenth studio album, Utilitarian, on 27 February 2012 in Europe and 28 February in North America via Century Media. In March 2012, Napalm Death headlined the Metal Mayhem IV festival organized by "Defenders of Metal" in Nepal. This was the first time Napalm Death played in Nepal.
Napalm Death were scheduled to play a special one-off show at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, on 22 March 2013. The show was eventually cancelled at the Victoria and Albert Museum, due to concerns that the noise levels could damage parts of the museum. The show was relocated to the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill, and was performed on 29 November 2013. The performance was a collaboration with ceramicist and Victoria and Albert Artist in Residence Keith Harrison. The show featured 10 large-scale wooden speakers filled with liquid clay that were left to solidify. When the band began to play, the clay inside the speakers was expected to vibrate, causing the speakers to crack and eventually explode. The actual performance was considered anticlimactic, as the speakers withstood the sonic vibration.
In April 2014, the band released a cover of the Cardiacs' song "To Go Off and Things" via Bandcamp. All proceeds from the single went towards Cardiacs frontman Tim Smith's recovery from a simultaneous heart attack/stroke he suffered in 2008. The band announced on 5 November 2014, via Facebook that due to an illness in the family, Mitch Harris would be taking a hiatus from the band, to be replaced by various guitarists on their tour. Napalm Death's sixteenth studio album, Apex Predator – Easy Meat, was released on 26 January 2015. On 4 July, a Nepal Charity Event track from the Apex Predator sessions called "Earth Wire" was released on their page.
Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism (2017–present)
In August 2017, it was announced that Napalm Death entered the studio to begin recording their sixteenth studio album for an early 2018 release. In September, frontman Mark "Barney" Greenway spoke to Australia's Sticks for Stones condemning the announcement and stated that no material was being worked on at the moment but was in the "preliminary stages". He then said that it would not be released until later next year. In an interview at Download Festival in June 2018, Greenway confirmed that guitarist Mitch Harris would appear on the new album, which was not expected to be released until 2019, but did not know if he would tour with them again. Bassist Shane Embury confirmed in a March 2019 interview with Extreme Metal Festival News that Harris "did come over and record guitars on the new record" and Greenway has "nearly recorded all his vocal parts." He added, however, that the album will not be released before early 2020.
Napalm Death (along with Lamb of God, Anthrax, and Testament) opened for Slayer on their final North American tour in the summer of 2018. In October 2019, Shane Embury announced that he would be unable to join the band during their North American Tour. Vernon Blake was announced as substitute live bassist.
An EP titled Logic Ravaged by Brute Force was released on 7 February 2020. The band released their sixteenth studio album, Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism, in September 2020.
Political views
The band espouse anarchism, humanism, socialism and animal rights.
Napalm Death congratulated the president of Indonesia, Joko Widodo, a fan of the band, on their Facebook fan page; however, after the Bali Nine and the Lindsay Sandiford case, he came under fire from the band, as well as many others within the metal scene, after their appeals for clemency were ignored.
Inspired by the band's political stance, Professor Simon Springer wrote the conclusion to his 2016 book, The Discourse of Neoliberalism: An Anatomy of a Powerful Idea, by incorporating as many Napalm Death song and album titles into the text as he could.
Members
Current members
Shane Embury – bass, backing vocals (1987–present)
Danny Herrera – drums (1991–present)
Mark "Barney" Greenway – lead vocals (1989–1996, 1997–present)
Mitch Harris – guitars, backing vocals (1990–present)
Touring musicians
John Cooke – guitars, backing vocals (2014–2015, 2015–present)
Vernon Blake – bass (2015, 2019–2020)
Former members
Stephen Beddows - Drums*
Nicholas "Nik Napalm" Bullen – lead vocals, bass (1981–1986)
Miles "Rat" Ratledge – drums (1981–1985)
Simon "Si O" Oppenheimer – guitars (1981–1982)
Graham "Grayhard" Robertson – guitars, bass (1982–1985)
Daryl "Daz F" Fedeski – guitars (1982)
Finbar "Fin" Quinn – bass (1983–1984)
Marian Williams – lead vocals (1984)
Damien Errington – guitars (1985)
Justin Broadrick – guitars, backing and lead vocals (1985–1986)
Peter "P-Nut" Shaw – bass (1985)
Mick Harris – drums, backing vocals (1985–1991)
Jim Whitely – bass (1986–1987)
Frank Healy – guitars (1986)
Bill Steer – guitars (1987–1989)
Lee Dorrian – lead vocals (1987–1989)
Jesse Pintado – guitars (1989–2004; died 2006)
Phil Vane – lead vocals (1996–1997; died 2011)
Erik Burke - guitars (2015)
Jesper Liveröd – bass (2017)
Timeline
Discography
Studio albums
Scum (1987)
From Enslavement to Obliteration (1988)
Harmony Corruption (1990)
Utopia Banished (1992)
Fear, Emptiness, Despair (1994)
Diatribes (1996)
Inside the Torn Apart (1997)
Words from the Exit Wound (1998)
Enemy of the Music Business (2000)
Order of the Leech (2002)
The Code Is Red...Long Live the Code (2005)
Smear Campaign (2006)
Time Waits for No Slave (2009)
Utilitarian (2012)
Apex Predator – Easy Meat (2015)
Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism (2020)
Society and culture
Skins
In the E4 teen comedy-drama Skins, the seasons 5-6 character Rich Hardbeck (Alex Arnold) is a metalhead whose self-proclaimed favourite band is Napalm Death. In the show's fifth season finale, a special appearance from Napalm Death's Mark "Barney" Greenway featured a scene in which he and Rich have a heart-to-heart. Regarding the band's appearance, Barney stated, "One thing that bothers me about TV is the way that teenagers are portrayed. It's down to the f--king Daily Mail's war on teenagers. They stigmatize young kids and it's bulls--t. The thing I like about 'Skins' is it gives a genuine perspective on growing up. That's why we agreed to do this show."
Notes
References
Barcinski, André & Gomes, Silvio (1999). Sepultura: Toda a História. São Paulo: Ed. 34.
Mudrian, Albert (2004). Choosing Death: the Improbable History of Death Metal and Grindcore. Los Angeles, CA: Feral House.
External links
1981 establishments in England
Century Media Records artists
British crust and d-beat groups
Deathgrind musical groups
Earache Records artists
English death metal musical groups
English grindcore musical groups
Kerrang! Awards winners
Musical groups established in 1981
Musical groups from Birmingham, West Midlands
Musical quartets
Political music groups | true | [
"Donna Cruz Sings Her Greatest Hits is the second compilation album by the Filipino singer Donna Cruz, released in the Philippines in 2001 by Viva Records. The album was Cruz's first album not to receive a PARI certification; all of her studio albums and a previous compilation album, The Best of Donna, were certified either gold or platinum. Though it was labeled as a greatest hits compilation, several songs on the track listing had not been released as singles, and some of Cruz's singles did not appear on the album.\n\nBackground\nReleased during Cruz's break from the entertainment industry, Donna Cruz Sings Her Greatest Hits did not include any newly recorded material. Cruz's version of \"Jubilee Song\", which was not found on any of Cruz's albums (as she never recorded studio albums after Hulog Ng Langit in 1999) was included. It was seen as an updated version of Cruz's greatest hits as it included her latest singles \"Hulog ng Langit\" and \"Ikaw Pala 'Yon\".\n\nTrack listing\n\nReferences\n\n2001 compilation albums\nViva Records (Philippines) compilation albums\nDonna Cruz albums",
"In baseball statistics, home run per hit (HR/H) is the percentage of hits that are home runs. It is loosely related to isolated power, which is the ability to hit for extra-base hits, including home runs. Power hitters, players who readily hit many home runs tend to have higher HR/H than contact hitters. A player hitting 30 home runs and have 150 hits in a season would have HR/H of .200, while a player who hit 8 home runs and have 200 hits in a season would have H/HR of .040.\n\nHR/H ratio has gotten higher over time. From 1959 to 2007, HR/H for leading power hitters in MLB was .3312, with the ratio being the highest from 1995 to 2001. The highest HR/H ratio of any player was Mark McGwire at .3585 or 2.8 hits per home run.\n\nReferences \n\nBaseball statistics"
]
|
[
"Napalm Death",
"Utilitarian and Apex Predator - Easy Meat (2011-2015)",
"What was Easy Meat?",
"Napalm Death's sixteenth studio album, Apex Predator - Easy Meat, was released on 26 January 2015.",
"How many copies did it sell?",
"I don't know.",
"Did it have any hits?",
"On 4 July, a Nepal Charity Event track from the Apex Predator sessions called \"Earth Wire\" was released on their page."
]
| C_1c93816f29aa4c889ff3aa3793569d09_0 | How much did it raise for charity? | 4 | How much did Easy Meat raise for charity? | Napalm Death | In February 2011, Napalm Death appeared in an episode of E4's Skins. Napalm Death entered Parlour Studio in Kettering, with producer Russ Russell to begin working on a new album. Also in 2011, they recorded the single "Legacy Was Yesterday". Napalm Death released their fifteenth studio album, Utilitarian, on 27 February 2012 in Europe and 28 February in North America via Century Media. In March 2012, Napalm Death headlined the Metal Mayhem IV festival organized by "Defenders of Metal" in Nepal. This was the first time Napalm Death played in Nepal. Napalm Death were scheduled to play a special one-off show at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, on 22 March 2013. The show was eventually cancelled at the Victoria and Albert Museum, due to concerns that the noise levels could damage parts of the museum. The show was relocated to the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill, and was performed on 29 November 2013. The performance was a collaboration with ceramicist and Victoria and Albert Artist in Residence Keith Harrison. The show featured 10 large-scale wooden speakers filled with liquid clay that were left to solidify. When the band began to play, the clay inside the speakers was expected to vibrate, causing the speakers to crack and eventually explode. The actual performance was considered anticlimactic, as the speakers withstood the sonic vibration. In April 2014, the band released a cover of the Cardiacs' song "To Go Off and Things" via Bandcamp. All proceeds from the single went towards Cardiacs frontman Tim Smith's recovery from a simultaneous heart attack/stroke he suffered in 2008. The band announced on 5 November 2014, via Facebook that due to an illness in the family, Mitch Harris would be taking a hiatus from the band, to be replaced by various guitarists on their tour. Napalm Death's sixteenth studio album, Apex Predator - Easy Meat, was released on 26 January 2015. On 4 July, a Nepal Charity Event track from the Apex Predator sessions called "Earth Wire" was released on their page. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Napalm Death are an English grindcore band formed in Meriden, West Midlands in 1981. While none of its original members remain in the group since December 1986, the lineup of vocalist Mark "Barney" Greenway, bassist Shane Embury, guitarist Mitch Harris and drummer Danny Herrera has remained consistent through most of the band's career since 1992's Utopia Banished, although, from 1989 to 2004, Napalm Death were a five-piece band after they added Jesse Pintado as the replacement of one-time guitarist Bill Steer; following Pintado's departure, the band reverted to a four-piece rather than replace him.
The band is credited as pioneers of the grindcore genre by incorporating elements of crust punk and death metal, using a noise-filled sound that uses heavily distorted, down-tuned guitars, grinding overdrive bass, high-speed tempo, blast beats, vocals which consist of incomprehensible growls or high-pitched shrieks, extremely short songs and sociopolitical lyrics. The band's debut album Scum, released in 1987 by Earache Records, proved substantially influential throughout the global metal community. According to the Guinness World Records, their song "You Suffer" is the shortest song ever recorded, at only 1.316 seconds long.
Napalm Death have released sixteen studio albums, and are listed by Nielsen SoundScan as the seventh-best-selling death metal band in the United States.
History
Early history (1981–1986)
Napalm Death were formed in the village of Meriden near Coventry, in the United Kingdom, in May 1981 by Nic Bullen and Miles Ratledge while the duo were still in their early teenage years. The duo had been playing in amateur bands since 1980 as an extension of their fanzine writing, and went through a number of names (including "Civil Defence", "The Mess", "Evasion", "Undead Hatred" and "Sonic Noise") before choosing Napalm Death in mid 1981. The band were initially inspired by the early wave of punk bands, particularly the anarcho-punk movement (a subgenre of punk music focused on anarchist politics), and associated groups such as Crass.
The first stable line-up of the group consisted of Nicholas Bullen on lead vocals and bass, Simon Oppenheimer on guitars, and Miles Ratledge on drums, and lasted from December 1981 to January 1982. Graham Robertson joined on bass in January 1982. Simon Oppenheimer left the group in August 1982 and was replaced by Darryl Fedeski who left the group in October 1982: at this point, Graham Robertson began to play guitar and Finbarr Quinn (ex-Curfew) joined on bass and backing vocals.
The group played concerts throughout 1982 (playing their first concert on 25 July 1982 at Atherstone Miners Club) and 1983 (sharing billing with anarcho-punk groups such as Amebix, The Apostles and Antisect), and made 4 demo recordings in 1982 and 1983, one of which contributed their first released recording to the Bullshit Detector Volume 3 compilation released by Crass Records in 1984.
The band entered a period of hiatus from the end of 1983 onwards, playing only one concert in 1984 (a benefit for striking mine workers) with additional vocalist Marian Williams (ex-Relevant POS, and sister of the drummer of the group Human Cabbages from Coventry, UK). During this period, Nic Bullen met Justin Broadrick, a guitarist from Birmingham with whom he shared an interest in the music of bands such as Killing Joke, Throbbing Gristle, Crass, Amebix, Swans, and the developing power electronics scene. Bullen joined Broadrick's Final project for a period in 1983.
In July 1985, Napalm Death briefly reformed in order to appear at a concert at the Mermaid in Birmingham which was also notable as the last concert by Final. The group consisted of a 4-piece line-up of Miles Ratledge - drums, Bullen - vocals, bass and guitar, Graham Robertson - guitar and bass, and Damien Errington - guitar. After this concert, Miles Ratledge and Bullen asked Broadrick to join Napalm Death as guitarist, with Bullen as vocalist and bass player. The band began to develop a musical style which blended elements of post-punk (particularly Killing Joke and Amebix), heavy hardcore punk in the vein of Discharge, and thrash metal (with particular reference to Possessed and extreme metal group Celtic Frost).
The group played their first concert as a trio on 31 August 1985 (playing 2 concerts on the same day: Telford with Chumbawamba and Blyth Power, and Birmingham with We've Got a Fuzzbox and We're Gonna Use It), and began to play regularly in the Birmingham area (particularly at The Mermaid public house in the Sparkhill area of Birmingham) with a wide range of musicians including Icons of Filth, Concrete Sox, The Varukers, Indecent Assault, Decadence Within, and The Groundhogs.
In September 1985, Peter Shaw (ex-Autism) joined on bass. The 4-piece line-up recorded Hatred Surge (the band's 5th demo recording) on 23 October 1985 which the band made available at their concerts and by mail. Following the recording of the demo, Bullen and Broadrick wished to extend their exploration of a more extreme musical style which created a split in the group with Ratledge: as a result, the group splintered and Mick Harris (a local fan) was asked to join as drummer in December 1985.
The trio – Bullen on vocals and bass, Broadrick on guitar and Harris on drums – made their first performance on 15 December 1985 and went on to play many concerts in 1986, predominantly in the Birmingham area, with musicians such as Amebix, Antisect, Chaos UK, Varukers, Disorder and Dirge.
The group recorded a 6th demo, From Enslavement to Obliteration, on 15 March 1986, which the group made available at their concerts and through mail, before making a 7th recording later that year, Scum, which was provisionally intended to form part of a split LP with the English hardcore band Atavistic on Manic Ears Records. This recording later became the first side of the band's debut album Scum in 1987.
The band then faced a number of line-up changes. Nic Bullen was becoming frustrated with the musical direction of the group, and began to lose interest as a whole: as a result, Jim Whiteley was asked to join as bass player. The band played a number of concerts as a four-piece before Justin Broadrick left the group to play the drums for local band Head of David. The group attempted to find a new guitarist by asking Shane Embury (ex-Unseen Terror and a fan of the group) to join and giving a trial period to Frank Healy (ex-Annihilator, later of Cerebral Fix and Sacrilege). After Broadrick's departure, Nic Bullen's dissatisfaction with the musical direction of the group led him to leave the group in December 1986 (in order to focus on his studies in English Literature and Philosophy at university), leaving the group without any of its original members.
Scum and From Enslavement to Obliteration (1987–1989)
With the departure of Broadrick and Bullen, the band had to look for new members. Guitarist Bill Steer played in a band based in Liverpool called Carcass, and given the affinity between the bands, he joined Napalm Death while still playing an active role in Carcass. The band asked a friend, Coventrian (Lee Dorrian), to join as vocalist due to his good relationship with the band (he had organised a number of concerts for the band), even though he had never been in a band before. This line-up recorded the B side of the Scum LP at Rich Bitch studios in May 1987, and the album was released through Earache Records.
The band promptly lost another member just after they undertook a short tour after the release of Scum. Jim Whiteley left the group (and subsequently joined Weston-Super-Mare based band Ripcord with whom the aforementioned tour had been shared) and Shane Embury (former drummer of Unseen Terror) moved to bass.
The band then appeared on two compilation records ('North Atlantic Noise Attack' and the 'Pathological Compilation'), recorded two Peel sessions and a split 7" with Japanese band S.O.B. They also returned to Rich Bitch studio once more and recorded their second album: From Enslavement to Obliteration.
A follow-up release to "Enslavement..." came in the form of the six song 12" EP "Mentally Murdered", which was to be the last recording with the Harris/Steer/Dorrian/Embury line-up. This EP was recorded at the Slaughterhouse Studios and took on a slightly different sound, blending grindcore with death metal. Following the release, Napalm Death were featured on national television in the United Kingdom in a heavy metal special by Arena (BBC 2).
The band continued to tour, but as soon as they came back home from Japan, in July 1989, Steer and Dorrian left the band: Steer decided to dedicate himself full-time to Carcass, while Dorrian formed the doom metal group Cathedral. The group recruited Jesse Pintado (ex-Terrorizer) on guitar and Mark "Barney" Greenway (ex-Benediction) as vocalist. This line-up took part in the Grindcrusher tour organised by Earache Records and featuring fellow label-mates Carcass, Bolt Thrower and Morbid Angel. The group recruited Mitch Harris (ex-Righteous Pigs) as second guitarist after the tour.
Rise to success (1990–1994)
In Florida, the group began work on Harmony Corruption. Corruption saw stylistic changes from the band, exhibiting blast beats and slower tempos. Death metal was a greater influence on Corruption than previous records. Following the record's release, Live Corruption, a live recording of the band's 30 June 1990 performance at the Salisbury Arts Centre, was released in 1992.
Negative fan reactions to Corruption and accusations of selling out, compelled the band to reconsider its stylistic changes. The group entered Eddie Van Dale's Violent Noise Experience Club in March 1991 to record six new tracks. The songs produced by this session and released on the "Mass Appeal Madness" 12" LP exhibited a much more "raw" quality, again finding favour with fans. This recording, along with the "Mentally Murdered" 12", the split 7" with S.O.B. and live tracks from Live Corruption, were released on Death by Manipulation.
Drummer Mick Harris - the only remaining member of the Scum lineup - eventually left Napalm Death due to conflicts with the rest of the group over changes in its stylistic direction. Danny Herrera, a close friend of Jesse Pintado, was brought in as the new drummer. Herrera's drumming style has been noted for its uniqueness; being described as "Euroblast", a variant of blast beat in which simultaneous eighth notes are played on the ride cymbal and kick drum, with alternate eighth notes added on the snare drum. The addition of Herrera would be the last major line-up change of the band, save for Jesse Pintado's future absence, which has yet to be filled (and vocalist Phil Vane never recorded with the band).
Napalm Death released the album Utopia Banished in 1992, produced by Colin Richardson. This release was a kind of "return to the roots" - grindcore. After recording The World Keeps Turning EP, the band toured Europe with Dismember and Obituary on the "Campaign for Musical Destruction" tour. They then toured the US with Sepultura, Sacred Reich and Sick of It All. The proceeds of Napalm Death's 1993 EP Nazi Punks Fuck Off were donated to anti-fascist organisations.
Their EP, Nazi Punks Fuck Off, was inspired by Napalm Death touring South Africa during 1993, which was particularly controversial given that the band faced a lot of opposition from many white supremacists following the end of Apartheid.
The band remixed the track "Mind of a Razor" by London-based hip hop crew Gunshot. The remixed version of the track appeared on the EP of the same name in 1992.
Thereafter, they went to the studio and recorded Fear, Emptiness, Despair, which was released on 31 May 1994. The album represented a stylistic transition for Napalm Death. Fear, Emptiness, Despair maintained the complex music structures of their previous albums Utopia Banished and Harmony Corruption, but there was a greater emphasis placed on incorporating elements of groove into the band's style, resulting in a wider use of mid-paced music. Bassist Shane Embury recounts that Helmet and their album Strap It On influenced the band's style at the time, as they did many other heavy metal bands during the 1990s. Live concerts with Entombed, Obituary and Machine Head followed the album's release.
Diatribes, Greenway's departure and return (1995–1999)
Their EP Greed Killing was released through Earache in December 1995, followed by the album Diatribes in January 1996. There was greater animosity between the band during this time, with a rift between Greenway and the remainder of the band, especially over the band's stylistic transition and the interference of background presences in the band, exemplifying the former when he stated that the band were "letting go of what made the band special". Greenway was hence expelled from the band later in 1996, and went to record with fellow grindcore act Extreme Noise Terror (ENT) on their release Damage 381. Greenway has stated that following his expulsion he was "devastated" and did not want to commit to ENT in fear of a repetition of the events that took place within Napalm Death.
ENT's vocalist Phil Vane replaced Greenway in Napalm Death. Alas, Shane Embury stated that Vane "couldn't pull off what was required. It was a hard day when I had to pull Phil aside and tell him it just wasn't working. We had been too much into doing our own thing to acknowledge all of the parts that made the Napalm machine tick. I quickly made the call and asked Barney if he would rejoin—time away certainly gave all of us the chance for reflection, regrets and hopes for the future. He was surprised by the material, as it was heavy and some of the songs were fast—I don't know what he really expected us to do!". Following Vane's departure, Greenway returned and the band released the album Inside the Torn Apart on 3 June 1997. An EP and music video were released for the album's track "Breed to Breathe" on 17 November 1997.
The album Words from the Exit Wound followed this, being released on 26 October 1998. The album was their last to be produced by Colin Richardson, who Embury believes hindered the album's creation, ultimately affecting the album's success. Embury has stated that bands such as Nasum influenced the album, and in Embury's view, this album represented a turning point in the band's sound, stating "it was also a turning point in us moving towards rediscovering our roots." Embury also mentioned that following the album's release, the band found it hard to tour due to restricted budgets from their record label, but Cradle of Filth and Nick Barker were able to alleviate this problem.
In 1999 the band made an appearance on Chris Evans' TFI Friday, playing three songs on a set lasting 59 seconds.
Departure from Earache and the departure of Pintado (2000–2004)
The band acrimoniously departed from Earache Records following Words from the Exit Wound and later released Enemy of the Music Business on the record label, Dream Catcher, on 25 September 2000; which showed the band's anger with the music industry and especially with Earache, whilst also incorporating a greater grindcore influence than on their previous few albums. The album was produced jointly by Simon Efemey and Russ Russell, the latter of whom has since been a long-time collaborator with Napalm Death.
Order of the Leech continued with the previous album's style, being released on 21 October 2002, also being produced jointly by Efemey and Russell. In 2003, Embury and Hererra formed the side-project Venomous Concept with Kevin Sharp and Buzz Osborne, and that group has since released four albums. In 2004, Napalm Death recorded a covers album called Leaders Not Followers: Part 2, the sequel to their earlier covers EP. It contains covers of old hardcore punk and heavy metal bands, including Cryptic Slaughter, Massacre, Kreator, Sepultura, Siege and Discharge. Due to personal problems, Jesse Pintado did not play on either Order of the Leech or Leaders Not Followers: Part 2, and left the band in early 2004. Nevertheless, Pintado stated that he left because he grew tired of Napalm Death and wanted to start something new. The two guitars that you hear is Mitch double-tracking.
The Code Is Red... and Time Waits for No Slave (2005–2010)
In April 2005, their next album The Code Is Red...Long Live the Code was released. It features guest appearances from Jeffrey Walker (Carcass), Jamey Jasta (Hatebreed vocalist) and Jello Biafra (formerly of Dead Kennedys, and Lard among many other bands). The album continued the band's progressive approach to their brutal brand of extreme metal, with their trademark grindcore sound retained. Also in 2005, Embury and Herrera joined the extreme metal band Anaal Nathrakh for one tour.
Napalm Death finished recording their follow-up album titled Smear Campaign in June 2006, and it was released on 15 September 2006 to strong reviews from fans and critics alike. The main lyrical focus is criticism of the United States Government and other governments who are strongly religious. The album features a guest appearance by Anneke van Giersbergen, vocalist for the Dutch rock band The Gathering. There is a limited edition digipak version of Smear Campaign, which has two new songs, "Call That an Option?" and "Atheist Runt". They played a series of headline shows in support of the release including the Koko in Camden with Gutworm.
In early 2006 Napalm Death headlined a tour with Kreator, A Perfect Murder, and Undying. On 27 August 2006, Jesse Pintado died in a hospital in the Netherlands due to liver failure, prompting Mitch Harris to express his sadness at the loss of someone he thought of as "a brother" on the band's official website. After the Smear Campaign tour, the band did a 2007 "World Domination Tour". Bassist Shane Embury is currently working on a project with Mick Kenney of Anaal Nathrakh, their work together will be released on FETO Records at the end of 2007. In November 2008, Napalm Death's fourteenth studio album, entitled Time Waits for No Slave, leaked onto the internet; it was officially released on 23 January 2009. Similar to Smear Campaign, Time Waits For No Slave also had a digipak version containing two extra songs ("Suppressed Hunger" and "Omnipresent Knife in Your Back").
Utilitarian and Apex Predator – Easy Meat (2011–2016)
In February 2011, Napalm Death appeared in an episode of E4's Skins. Napalm Death entered Parlour Studio in Kettering, with producer Russ Russell to begin working on a new album. Also in 2011, they recorded the single "Legacy Was Yesterday". Napalm Death released their fifteenth studio album, Utilitarian, on 27 February 2012 in Europe and 28 February in North America via Century Media. In March 2012, Napalm Death headlined the Metal Mayhem IV festival organized by "Defenders of Metal" in Nepal. This was the first time Napalm Death played in Nepal.
Napalm Death were scheduled to play a special one-off show at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, on 22 March 2013. The show was eventually cancelled at the Victoria and Albert Museum, due to concerns that the noise levels could damage parts of the museum. The show was relocated to the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill, and was performed on 29 November 2013. The performance was a collaboration with ceramicist and Victoria and Albert Artist in Residence Keith Harrison. The show featured 10 large-scale wooden speakers filled with liquid clay that were left to solidify. When the band began to play, the clay inside the speakers was expected to vibrate, causing the speakers to crack and eventually explode. The actual performance was considered anticlimactic, as the speakers withstood the sonic vibration.
In April 2014, the band released a cover of the Cardiacs' song "To Go Off and Things" via Bandcamp. All proceeds from the single went towards Cardiacs frontman Tim Smith's recovery from a simultaneous heart attack/stroke he suffered in 2008. The band announced on 5 November 2014, via Facebook that due to an illness in the family, Mitch Harris would be taking a hiatus from the band, to be replaced by various guitarists on their tour. Napalm Death's sixteenth studio album, Apex Predator – Easy Meat, was released on 26 January 2015. On 4 July, a Nepal Charity Event track from the Apex Predator sessions called "Earth Wire" was released on their page.
Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism (2017–present)
In August 2017, it was announced that Napalm Death entered the studio to begin recording their sixteenth studio album for an early 2018 release. In September, frontman Mark "Barney" Greenway spoke to Australia's Sticks for Stones condemning the announcement and stated that no material was being worked on at the moment but was in the "preliminary stages". He then said that it would not be released until later next year. In an interview at Download Festival in June 2018, Greenway confirmed that guitarist Mitch Harris would appear on the new album, which was not expected to be released until 2019, but did not know if he would tour with them again. Bassist Shane Embury confirmed in a March 2019 interview with Extreme Metal Festival News that Harris "did come over and record guitars on the new record" and Greenway has "nearly recorded all his vocal parts." He added, however, that the album will not be released before early 2020.
Napalm Death (along with Lamb of God, Anthrax, and Testament) opened for Slayer on their final North American tour in the summer of 2018. In October 2019, Shane Embury announced that he would be unable to join the band during their North American Tour. Vernon Blake was announced as substitute live bassist.
An EP titled Logic Ravaged by Brute Force was released on 7 February 2020. The band released their sixteenth studio album, Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism, in September 2020.
Political views
The band espouse anarchism, humanism, socialism and animal rights.
Napalm Death congratulated the president of Indonesia, Joko Widodo, a fan of the band, on their Facebook fan page; however, after the Bali Nine and the Lindsay Sandiford case, he came under fire from the band, as well as many others within the metal scene, after their appeals for clemency were ignored.
Inspired by the band's political stance, Professor Simon Springer wrote the conclusion to his 2016 book, The Discourse of Neoliberalism: An Anatomy of a Powerful Idea, by incorporating as many Napalm Death song and album titles into the text as he could.
Members
Current members
Shane Embury – bass, backing vocals (1987–present)
Danny Herrera – drums (1991–present)
Mark "Barney" Greenway – lead vocals (1989–1996, 1997–present)
Mitch Harris – guitars, backing vocals (1990–present)
Touring musicians
John Cooke – guitars, backing vocals (2014–2015, 2015–present)
Vernon Blake – bass (2015, 2019–2020)
Former members
Stephen Beddows - Drums*
Nicholas "Nik Napalm" Bullen – lead vocals, bass (1981–1986)
Miles "Rat" Ratledge – drums (1981–1985)
Simon "Si O" Oppenheimer – guitars (1981–1982)
Graham "Grayhard" Robertson – guitars, bass (1982–1985)
Daryl "Daz F" Fedeski – guitars (1982)
Finbar "Fin" Quinn – bass (1983–1984)
Marian Williams – lead vocals (1984)
Damien Errington – guitars (1985)
Justin Broadrick – guitars, backing and lead vocals (1985–1986)
Peter "P-Nut" Shaw – bass (1985)
Mick Harris – drums, backing vocals (1985–1991)
Jim Whitely – bass (1986–1987)
Frank Healy – guitars (1986)
Bill Steer – guitars (1987–1989)
Lee Dorrian – lead vocals (1987–1989)
Jesse Pintado – guitars (1989–2004; died 2006)
Phil Vane – lead vocals (1996–1997; died 2011)
Erik Burke - guitars (2015)
Jesper Liveröd – bass (2017)
Timeline
Discography
Studio albums
Scum (1987)
From Enslavement to Obliteration (1988)
Harmony Corruption (1990)
Utopia Banished (1992)
Fear, Emptiness, Despair (1994)
Diatribes (1996)
Inside the Torn Apart (1997)
Words from the Exit Wound (1998)
Enemy of the Music Business (2000)
Order of the Leech (2002)
The Code Is Red...Long Live the Code (2005)
Smear Campaign (2006)
Time Waits for No Slave (2009)
Utilitarian (2012)
Apex Predator – Easy Meat (2015)
Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism (2020)
Society and culture
Skins
In the E4 teen comedy-drama Skins, the seasons 5-6 character Rich Hardbeck (Alex Arnold) is a metalhead whose self-proclaimed favourite band is Napalm Death. In the show's fifth season finale, a special appearance from Napalm Death's Mark "Barney" Greenway featured a scene in which he and Rich have a heart-to-heart. Regarding the band's appearance, Barney stated, "One thing that bothers me about TV is the way that teenagers are portrayed. It's down to the f--king Daily Mail's war on teenagers. They stigmatize young kids and it's bulls--t. The thing I like about 'Skins' is it gives a genuine perspective on growing up. That's why we agreed to do this show."
Notes
References
Barcinski, André & Gomes, Silvio (1999). Sepultura: Toda a História. São Paulo: Ed. 34.
Mudrian, Albert (2004). Choosing Death: the Improbable History of Death Metal and Grindcore. Los Angeles, CA: Feral House.
External links
1981 establishments in England
Century Media Records artists
British crust and d-beat groups
Deathgrind musical groups
Earache Records artists
English death metal musical groups
English grindcore musical groups
Kerrang! Awards winners
Musical groups established in 1981
Musical groups from Birmingham, West Midlands
Musical quartets
Political music groups | false | [
"Children with Cancer UK (formerly Children with Leukaemia) is a United Kingdom-based charity dedicated to raising money for research and providing care for children with cancer and their families. The aims of their research projects are to understand what causes children to get cancer and to develop improved treatments. The charity also organises days out and parties for families affected by childhood cancer.\n\nHistory \nChildren with Cancer UK was established in 1987 by Eddie and Marion O’Gorman and their family in memory of their son, Paul, who died from leukaemia. The initial aim was to raise £100,000 for research and support. The O’Gormans lost a second child, their daughter Jean, to cancer shortly after their first fundraising event (The Paul O’Gorman Banquet and Ball). Subsequently, Diana, Princess of Wales became involved in the charity, which she inaugurated in 1988. In January 2022, Phil Hall was appointed as a trustee of the charity.\n\nFundraising \nSince 1987, Children With Cancer UK has raised over £290 million, which is used to support research into the causes and treatment of cancer in children and clinical trials. The charity also funds research centres, such as the Northern Institute for Cancer Research. and respite accommodation for affected families. In 2007, they provided funding for a new £40 million biomedical research lab at the UCL Cancer Institute, named after the deceased Paul O'Gorman.\n\nIn the early 2000s, the charity co-funded elements of clinical trial that improved outcomes for children with leukaemia. The trial involved development of a test called the Minimal Residual Disease (MRD) test, which measures how much leukaemia remains after treatment and how likely it is that a child will relapse. In 2017 the charity funded into the development of precision medicine as treatment, which involves the genetic profiling of children with cancer and their tumours in order to personalise their treatment plans.\n\nSupport \nThe charity was supported by a range of organisations in the UK including Mr Men Little Miss, who lent their characters to the vests worn the charity's London Marathon entrants.\n\nFor his services to charity Eddie O’Gorman was appointed an OBE in 2009. In November 2018, he was presented with the Pride of Britain 'Lifetime Achievement' award.\n\nIn 2019 it became the sponsor of League One football club Sunderland AFC. During the same season, BETDAQ donated its front-of-shirt sponsorship to the charity for its teams Sunderland AFC and Charlton Athletic F.C.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n\n Official website\n\nChildren's charities based in England\nCancer organisations based in the United Kingdom\nChildren's health-related organizations\nHealth charities in England",
"A banger rally is a rally in a scrap or low value car on public roads. The event is a non-racing variant of banger racing. A banger rally may also be a charity rally where the teams taking part in the event also raise money for charity. \nBanger rallies chiefly appear to be a United Kingdom-based phenomenon and most involve driving through Europe to various destinations where the cars are environmentally scrapped, sold or auctioned for charity. Some events have a limit on how much a participant can spend on buying a car or the size of the engine. Participants in the events often decorate their vehicles with the stickers of sponsors or customising to a theme from popular culture.\n\nEvents\n\nPlymouth Dakar\nThe banger rally first appeared when Julian Nowill took a group of sub £100 vehicles to Dakar over the Christmas and New Year of 2002/2003. The event was called the 'Plymouth Dakar' as a play on the name of the famous Paris Dakar rally. The event is now known as the Plymouth-Banjul Challenge.\n\nStaples2Naples\nA variation of the Dakar appeared in 2003 in the form of Staples2Naples, Banger Rally for Wage Slaves. This event developed into the much copied European Banger Rally style which continues to this day.\n\nReferences \n\nRally competitions in the United Kingdom\nRoad rallying\nAutomotive events"
]
|
[
"Napalm Death",
"Utilitarian and Apex Predator - Easy Meat (2011-2015)",
"What was Easy Meat?",
"Napalm Death's sixteenth studio album, Apex Predator - Easy Meat, was released on 26 January 2015.",
"How many copies did it sell?",
"I don't know.",
"Did it have any hits?",
"On 4 July, a Nepal Charity Event track from the Apex Predator sessions called \"Earth Wire\" was released on their page.",
"How much did it raise for charity?",
"I don't know."
]
| C_1c93816f29aa4c889ff3aa3793569d09_0 | Did the band tour for the album? | 5 | Did the band Napalm Death tour for the album Easy Meat? | Napalm Death | In February 2011, Napalm Death appeared in an episode of E4's Skins. Napalm Death entered Parlour Studio in Kettering, with producer Russ Russell to begin working on a new album. Also in 2011, they recorded the single "Legacy Was Yesterday". Napalm Death released their fifteenth studio album, Utilitarian, on 27 February 2012 in Europe and 28 February in North America via Century Media. In March 2012, Napalm Death headlined the Metal Mayhem IV festival organized by "Defenders of Metal" in Nepal. This was the first time Napalm Death played in Nepal. Napalm Death were scheduled to play a special one-off show at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, on 22 March 2013. The show was eventually cancelled at the Victoria and Albert Museum, due to concerns that the noise levels could damage parts of the museum. The show was relocated to the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill, and was performed on 29 November 2013. The performance was a collaboration with ceramicist and Victoria and Albert Artist in Residence Keith Harrison. The show featured 10 large-scale wooden speakers filled with liquid clay that were left to solidify. When the band began to play, the clay inside the speakers was expected to vibrate, causing the speakers to crack and eventually explode. The actual performance was considered anticlimactic, as the speakers withstood the sonic vibration. In April 2014, the band released a cover of the Cardiacs' song "To Go Off and Things" via Bandcamp. All proceeds from the single went towards Cardiacs frontman Tim Smith's recovery from a simultaneous heart attack/stroke he suffered in 2008. The band announced on 5 November 2014, via Facebook that due to an illness in the family, Mitch Harris would be taking a hiatus from the band, to be replaced by various guitarists on their tour. Napalm Death's sixteenth studio album, Apex Predator - Easy Meat, was released on 26 January 2015. On 4 July, a Nepal Charity Event track from the Apex Predator sessions called "Earth Wire" was released on their page. CANNOTANSWER | In March 2012, Napalm Death headlined the Metal Mayhem IV festival organized by "Defenders of Metal" in Nepal. This was the first time Napalm Death played in Nepal. | Napalm Death are an English grindcore band formed in Meriden, West Midlands in 1981. While none of its original members remain in the group since December 1986, the lineup of vocalist Mark "Barney" Greenway, bassist Shane Embury, guitarist Mitch Harris and drummer Danny Herrera has remained consistent through most of the band's career since 1992's Utopia Banished, although, from 1989 to 2004, Napalm Death were a five-piece band after they added Jesse Pintado as the replacement of one-time guitarist Bill Steer; following Pintado's departure, the band reverted to a four-piece rather than replace him.
The band is credited as pioneers of the grindcore genre by incorporating elements of crust punk and death metal, using a noise-filled sound that uses heavily distorted, down-tuned guitars, grinding overdrive bass, high-speed tempo, blast beats, vocals which consist of incomprehensible growls or high-pitched shrieks, extremely short songs and sociopolitical lyrics. The band's debut album Scum, released in 1987 by Earache Records, proved substantially influential throughout the global metal community. According to the Guinness World Records, their song "You Suffer" is the shortest song ever recorded, at only 1.316 seconds long.
Napalm Death have released sixteen studio albums, and are listed by Nielsen SoundScan as the seventh-best-selling death metal band in the United States.
History
Early history (1981–1986)
Napalm Death were formed in the village of Meriden near Coventry, in the United Kingdom, in May 1981 by Nic Bullen and Miles Ratledge while the duo were still in their early teenage years. The duo had been playing in amateur bands since 1980 as an extension of their fanzine writing, and went through a number of names (including "Civil Defence", "The Mess", "Evasion", "Undead Hatred" and "Sonic Noise") before choosing Napalm Death in mid 1981. The band were initially inspired by the early wave of punk bands, particularly the anarcho-punk movement (a subgenre of punk music focused on anarchist politics), and associated groups such as Crass.
The first stable line-up of the group consisted of Nicholas Bullen on lead vocals and bass, Simon Oppenheimer on guitars, and Miles Ratledge on drums, and lasted from December 1981 to January 1982. Graham Robertson joined on bass in January 1982. Simon Oppenheimer left the group in August 1982 and was replaced by Darryl Fedeski who left the group in October 1982: at this point, Graham Robertson began to play guitar and Finbarr Quinn (ex-Curfew) joined on bass and backing vocals.
The group played concerts throughout 1982 (playing their first concert on 25 July 1982 at Atherstone Miners Club) and 1983 (sharing billing with anarcho-punk groups such as Amebix, The Apostles and Antisect), and made 4 demo recordings in 1982 and 1983, one of which contributed their first released recording to the Bullshit Detector Volume 3 compilation released by Crass Records in 1984.
The band entered a period of hiatus from the end of 1983 onwards, playing only one concert in 1984 (a benefit for striking mine workers) with additional vocalist Marian Williams (ex-Relevant POS, and sister of the drummer of the group Human Cabbages from Coventry, UK). During this period, Nic Bullen met Justin Broadrick, a guitarist from Birmingham with whom he shared an interest in the music of bands such as Killing Joke, Throbbing Gristle, Crass, Amebix, Swans, and the developing power electronics scene. Bullen joined Broadrick's Final project for a period in 1983.
In July 1985, Napalm Death briefly reformed in order to appear at a concert at the Mermaid in Birmingham which was also notable as the last concert by Final. The group consisted of a 4-piece line-up of Miles Ratledge - drums, Bullen - vocals, bass and guitar, Graham Robertson - guitar and bass, and Damien Errington - guitar. After this concert, Miles Ratledge and Bullen asked Broadrick to join Napalm Death as guitarist, with Bullen as vocalist and bass player. The band began to develop a musical style which blended elements of post-punk (particularly Killing Joke and Amebix), heavy hardcore punk in the vein of Discharge, and thrash metal (with particular reference to Possessed and extreme metal group Celtic Frost).
The group played their first concert as a trio on 31 August 1985 (playing 2 concerts on the same day: Telford with Chumbawamba and Blyth Power, and Birmingham with We've Got a Fuzzbox and We're Gonna Use It), and began to play regularly in the Birmingham area (particularly at The Mermaid public house in the Sparkhill area of Birmingham) with a wide range of musicians including Icons of Filth, Concrete Sox, The Varukers, Indecent Assault, Decadence Within, and The Groundhogs.
In September 1985, Peter Shaw (ex-Autism) joined on bass. The 4-piece line-up recorded Hatred Surge (the band's 5th demo recording) on 23 October 1985 which the band made available at their concerts and by mail. Following the recording of the demo, Bullen and Broadrick wished to extend their exploration of a more extreme musical style which created a split in the group with Ratledge: as a result, the group splintered and Mick Harris (a local fan) was asked to join as drummer in December 1985.
The trio – Bullen on vocals and bass, Broadrick on guitar and Harris on drums – made their first performance on 15 December 1985 and went on to play many concerts in 1986, predominantly in the Birmingham area, with musicians such as Amebix, Antisect, Chaos UK, Varukers, Disorder and Dirge.
The group recorded a 6th demo, From Enslavement to Obliteration, on 15 March 1986, which the group made available at their concerts and through mail, before making a 7th recording later that year, Scum, which was provisionally intended to form part of a split LP with the English hardcore band Atavistic on Manic Ears Records. This recording later became the first side of the band's debut album Scum in 1987.
The band then faced a number of line-up changes. Nic Bullen was becoming frustrated with the musical direction of the group, and began to lose interest as a whole: as a result, Jim Whiteley was asked to join as bass player. The band played a number of concerts as a four-piece before Justin Broadrick left the group to play the drums for local band Head of David. The group attempted to find a new guitarist by asking Shane Embury (ex-Unseen Terror and a fan of the group) to join and giving a trial period to Frank Healy (ex-Annihilator, later of Cerebral Fix and Sacrilege). After Broadrick's departure, Nic Bullen's dissatisfaction with the musical direction of the group led him to leave the group in December 1986 (in order to focus on his studies in English Literature and Philosophy at university), leaving the group without any of its original members.
Scum and From Enslavement to Obliteration (1987–1989)
With the departure of Broadrick and Bullen, the band had to look for new members. Guitarist Bill Steer played in a band based in Liverpool called Carcass, and given the affinity between the bands, he joined Napalm Death while still playing an active role in Carcass. The band asked a friend, Coventrian (Lee Dorrian), to join as vocalist due to his good relationship with the band (he had organised a number of concerts for the band), even though he had never been in a band before. This line-up recorded the B side of the Scum LP at Rich Bitch studios in May 1987, and the album was released through Earache Records.
The band promptly lost another member just after they undertook a short tour after the release of Scum. Jim Whiteley left the group (and subsequently joined Weston-Super-Mare based band Ripcord with whom the aforementioned tour had been shared) and Shane Embury (former drummer of Unseen Terror) moved to bass.
The band then appeared on two compilation records ('North Atlantic Noise Attack' and the 'Pathological Compilation'), recorded two Peel sessions and a split 7" with Japanese band S.O.B. They also returned to Rich Bitch studio once more and recorded their second album: From Enslavement to Obliteration.
A follow-up release to "Enslavement..." came in the form of the six song 12" EP "Mentally Murdered", which was to be the last recording with the Harris/Steer/Dorrian/Embury line-up. This EP was recorded at the Slaughterhouse Studios and took on a slightly different sound, blending grindcore with death metal. Following the release, Napalm Death were featured on national television in the United Kingdom in a heavy metal special by Arena (BBC 2).
The band continued to tour, but as soon as they came back home from Japan, in July 1989, Steer and Dorrian left the band: Steer decided to dedicate himself full-time to Carcass, while Dorrian formed the doom metal group Cathedral. The group recruited Jesse Pintado (ex-Terrorizer) on guitar and Mark "Barney" Greenway (ex-Benediction) as vocalist. This line-up took part in the Grindcrusher tour organised by Earache Records and featuring fellow label-mates Carcass, Bolt Thrower and Morbid Angel. The group recruited Mitch Harris (ex-Righteous Pigs) as second guitarist after the tour.
Rise to success (1990–1994)
In Florida, the group began work on Harmony Corruption. Corruption saw stylistic changes from the band, exhibiting blast beats and slower tempos. Death metal was a greater influence on Corruption than previous records. Following the record's release, Live Corruption, a live recording of the band's 30 June 1990 performance at the Salisbury Arts Centre, was released in 1992.
Negative fan reactions to Corruption and accusations of selling out, compelled the band to reconsider its stylistic changes. The group entered Eddie Van Dale's Violent Noise Experience Club in March 1991 to record six new tracks. The songs produced by this session and released on the "Mass Appeal Madness" 12" LP exhibited a much more "raw" quality, again finding favour with fans. This recording, along with the "Mentally Murdered" 12", the split 7" with S.O.B. and live tracks from Live Corruption, were released on Death by Manipulation.
Drummer Mick Harris - the only remaining member of the Scum lineup - eventually left Napalm Death due to conflicts with the rest of the group over changes in its stylistic direction. Danny Herrera, a close friend of Jesse Pintado, was brought in as the new drummer. Herrera's drumming style has been noted for its uniqueness; being described as "Euroblast", a variant of blast beat in which simultaneous eighth notes are played on the ride cymbal and kick drum, with alternate eighth notes added on the snare drum. The addition of Herrera would be the last major line-up change of the band, save for Jesse Pintado's future absence, which has yet to be filled (and vocalist Phil Vane never recorded with the band).
Napalm Death released the album Utopia Banished in 1992, produced by Colin Richardson. This release was a kind of "return to the roots" - grindcore. After recording The World Keeps Turning EP, the band toured Europe with Dismember and Obituary on the "Campaign for Musical Destruction" tour. They then toured the US with Sepultura, Sacred Reich and Sick of It All. The proceeds of Napalm Death's 1993 EP Nazi Punks Fuck Off were donated to anti-fascist organisations.
Their EP, Nazi Punks Fuck Off, was inspired by Napalm Death touring South Africa during 1993, which was particularly controversial given that the band faced a lot of opposition from many white supremacists following the end of Apartheid.
The band remixed the track "Mind of a Razor" by London-based hip hop crew Gunshot. The remixed version of the track appeared on the EP of the same name in 1992.
Thereafter, they went to the studio and recorded Fear, Emptiness, Despair, which was released on 31 May 1994. The album represented a stylistic transition for Napalm Death. Fear, Emptiness, Despair maintained the complex music structures of their previous albums Utopia Banished and Harmony Corruption, but there was a greater emphasis placed on incorporating elements of groove into the band's style, resulting in a wider use of mid-paced music. Bassist Shane Embury recounts that Helmet and their album Strap It On influenced the band's style at the time, as they did many other heavy metal bands during the 1990s. Live concerts with Entombed, Obituary and Machine Head followed the album's release.
Diatribes, Greenway's departure and return (1995–1999)
Their EP Greed Killing was released through Earache in December 1995, followed by the album Diatribes in January 1996. There was greater animosity between the band during this time, with a rift between Greenway and the remainder of the band, especially over the band's stylistic transition and the interference of background presences in the band, exemplifying the former when he stated that the band were "letting go of what made the band special". Greenway was hence expelled from the band later in 1996, and went to record with fellow grindcore act Extreme Noise Terror (ENT) on their release Damage 381. Greenway has stated that following his expulsion he was "devastated" and did not want to commit to ENT in fear of a repetition of the events that took place within Napalm Death.
ENT's vocalist Phil Vane replaced Greenway in Napalm Death. Alas, Shane Embury stated that Vane "couldn't pull off what was required. It was a hard day when I had to pull Phil aside and tell him it just wasn't working. We had been too much into doing our own thing to acknowledge all of the parts that made the Napalm machine tick. I quickly made the call and asked Barney if he would rejoin—time away certainly gave all of us the chance for reflection, regrets and hopes for the future. He was surprised by the material, as it was heavy and some of the songs were fast—I don't know what he really expected us to do!". Following Vane's departure, Greenway returned and the band released the album Inside the Torn Apart on 3 June 1997. An EP and music video were released for the album's track "Breed to Breathe" on 17 November 1997.
The album Words from the Exit Wound followed this, being released on 26 October 1998. The album was their last to be produced by Colin Richardson, who Embury believes hindered the album's creation, ultimately affecting the album's success. Embury has stated that bands such as Nasum influenced the album, and in Embury's view, this album represented a turning point in the band's sound, stating "it was also a turning point in us moving towards rediscovering our roots." Embury also mentioned that following the album's release, the band found it hard to tour due to restricted budgets from their record label, but Cradle of Filth and Nick Barker were able to alleviate this problem.
In 1999 the band made an appearance on Chris Evans' TFI Friday, playing three songs on a set lasting 59 seconds.
Departure from Earache and the departure of Pintado (2000–2004)
The band acrimoniously departed from Earache Records following Words from the Exit Wound and later released Enemy of the Music Business on the record label, Dream Catcher, on 25 September 2000; which showed the band's anger with the music industry and especially with Earache, whilst also incorporating a greater grindcore influence than on their previous few albums. The album was produced jointly by Simon Efemey and Russ Russell, the latter of whom has since been a long-time collaborator with Napalm Death.
Order of the Leech continued with the previous album's style, being released on 21 October 2002, also being produced jointly by Efemey and Russell. In 2003, Embury and Hererra formed the side-project Venomous Concept with Kevin Sharp and Buzz Osborne, and that group has since released four albums. In 2004, Napalm Death recorded a covers album called Leaders Not Followers: Part 2, the sequel to their earlier covers EP. It contains covers of old hardcore punk and heavy metal bands, including Cryptic Slaughter, Massacre, Kreator, Sepultura, Siege and Discharge. Due to personal problems, Jesse Pintado did not play on either Order of the Leech or Leaders Not Followers: Part 2, and left the band in early 2004. Nevertheless, Pintado stated that he left because he grew tired of Napalm Death and wanted to start something new. The two guitars that you hear is Mitch double-tracking.
The Code Is Red... and Time Waits for No Slave (2005–2010)
In April 2005, their next album The Code Is Red...Long Live the Code was released. It features guest appearances from Jeffrey Walker (Carcass), Jamey Jasta (Hatebreed vocalist) and Jello Biafra (formerly of Dead Kennedys, and Lard among many other bands). The album continued the band's progressive approach to their brutal brand of extreme metal, with their trademark grindcore sound retained. Also in 2005, Embury and Herrera joined the extreme metal band Anaal Nathrakh for one tour.
Napalm Death finished recording their follow-up album titled Smear Campaign in June 2006, and it was released on 15 September 2006 to strong reviews from fans and critics alike. The main lyrical focus is criticism of the United States Government and other governments who are strongly religious. The album features a guest appearance by Anneke van Giersbergen, vocalist for the Dutch rock band The Gathering. There is a limited edition digipak version of Smear Campaign, which has two new songs, "Call That an Option?" and "Atheist Runt". They played a series of headline shows in support of the release including the Koko in Camden with Gutworm.
In early 2006 Napalm Death headlined a tour with Kreator, A Perfect Murder, and Undying. On 27 August 2006, Jesse Pintado died in a hospital in the Netherlands due to liver failure, prompting Mitch Harris to express his sadness at the loss of someone he thought of as "a brother" on the band's official website. After the Smear Campaign tour, the band did a 2007 "World Domination Tour". Bassist Shane Embury is currently working on a project with Mick Kenney of Anaal Nathrakh, their work together will be released on FETO Records at the end of 2007. In November 2008, Napalm Death's fourteenth studio album, entitled Time Waits for No Slave, leaked onto the internet; it was officially released on 23 January 2009. Similar to Smear Campaign, Time Waits For No Slave also had a digipak version containing two extra songs ("Suppressed Hunger" and "Omnipresent Knife in Your Back").
Utilitarian and Apex Predator – Easy Meat (2011–2016)
In February 2011, Napalm Death appeared in an episode of E4's Skins. Napalm Death entered Parlour Studio in Kettering, with producer Russ Russell to begin working on a new album. Also in 2011, they recorded the single "Legacy Was Yesterday". Napalm Death released their fifteenth studio album, Utilitarian, on 27 February 2012 in Europe and 28 February in North America via Century Media. In March 2012, Napalm Death headlined the Metal Mayhem IV festival organized by "Defenders of Metal" in Nepal. This was the first time Napalm Death played in Nepal.
Napalm Death were scheduled to play a special one-off show at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, on 22 March 2013. The show was eventually cancelled at the Victoria and Albert Museum, due to concerns that the noise levels could damage parts of the museum. The show was relocated to the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill, and was performed on 29 November 2013. The performance was a collaboration with ceramicist and Victoria and Albert Artist in Residence Keith Harrison. The show featured 10 large-scale wooden speakers filled with liquid clay that were left to solidify. When the band began to play, the clay inside the speakers was expected to vibrate, causing the speakers to crack and eventually explode. The actual performance was considered anticlimactic, as the speakers withstood the sonic vibration.
In April 2014, the band released a cover of the Cardiacs' song "To Go Off and Things" via Bandcamp. All proceeds from the single went towards Cardiacs frontman Tim Smith's recovery from a simultaneous heart attack/stroke he suffered in 2008. The band announced on 5 November 2014, via Facebook that due to an illness in the family, Mitch Harris would be taking a hiatus from the band, to be replaced by various guitarists on their tour. Napalm Death's sixteenth studio album, Apex Predator – Easy Meat, was released on 26 January 2015. On 4 July, a Nepal Charity Event track from the Apex Predator sessions called "Earth Wire" was released on their page.
Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism (2017–present)
In August 2017, it was announced that Napalm Death entered the studio to begin recording their sixteenth studio album for an early 2018 release. In September, frontman Mark "Barney" Greenway spoke to Australia's Sticks for Stones condemning the announcement and stated that no material was being worked on at the moment but was in the "preliminary stages". He then said that it would not be released until later next year. In an interview at Download Festival in June 2018, Greenway confirmed that guitarist Mitch Harris would appear on the new album, which was not expected to be released until 2019, but did not know if he would tour with them again. Bassist Shane Embury confirmed in a March 2019 interview with Extreme Metal Festival News that Harris "did come over and record guitars on the new record" and Greenway has "nearly recorded all his vocal parts." He added, however, that the album will not be released before early 2020.
Napalm Death (along with Lamb of God, Anthrax, and Testament) opened for Slayer on their final North American tour in the summer of 2018. In October 2019, Shane Embury announced that he would be unable to join the band during their North American Tour. Vernon Blake was announced as substitute live bassist.
An EP titled Logic Ravaged by Brute Force was released on 7 February 2020. The band released their sixteenth studio album, Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism, in September 2020.
Political views
The band espouse anarchism, humanism, socialism and animal rights.
Napalm Death congratulated the president of Indonesia, Joko Widodo, a fan of the band, on their Facebook fan page; however, after the Bali Nine and the Lindsay Sandiford case, he came under fire from the band, as well as many others within the metal scene, after their appeals for clemency were ignored.
Inspired by the band's political stance, Professor Simon Springer wrote the conclusion to his 2016 book, The Discourse of Neoliberalism: An Anatomy of a Powerful Idea, by incorporating as many Napalm Death song and album titles into the text as he could.
Members
Current members
Shane Embury – bass, backing vocals (1987–present)
Danny Herrera – drums (1991–present)
Mark "Barney" Greenway – lead vocals (1989–1996, 1997–present)
Mitch Harris – guitars, backing vocals (1990–present)
Touring musicians
John Cooke – guitars, backing vocals (2014–2015, 2015–present)
Vernon Blake – bass (2015, 2019–2020)
Former members
Stephen Beddows - Drums*
Nicholas "Nik Napalm" Bullen – lead vocals, bass (1981–1986)
Miles "Rat" Ratledge – drums (1981–1985)
Simon "Si O" Oppenheimer – guitars (1981–1982)
Graham "Grayhard" Robertson – guitars, bass (1982–1985)
Daryl "Daz F" Fedeski – guitars (1982)
Finbar "Fin" Quinn – bass (1983–1984)
Marian Williams – lead vocals (1984)
Damien Errington – guitars (1985)
Justin Broadrick – guitars, backing and lead vocals (1985–1986)
Peter "P-Nut" Shaw – bass (1985)
Mick Harris – drums, backing vocals (1985–1991)
Jim Whitely – bass (1986–1987)
Frank Healy – guitars (1986)
Bill Steer – guitars (1987–1989)
Lee Dorrian – lead vocals (1987–1989)
Jesse Pintado – guitars (1989–2004; died 2006)
Phil Vane – lead vocals (1996–1997; died 2011)
Erik Burke - guitars (2015)
Jesper Liveröd – bass (2017)
Timeline
Discography
Studio albums
Scum (1987)
From Enslavement to Obliteration (1988)
Harmony Corruption (1990)
Utopia Banished (1992)
Fear, Emptiness, Despair (1994)
Diatribes (1996)
Inside the Torn Apart (1997)
Words from the Exit Wound (1998)
Enemy of the Music Business (2000)
Order of the Leech (2002)
The Code Is Red...Long Live the Code (2005)
Smear Campaign (2006)
Time Waits for No Slave (2009)
Utilitarian (2012)
Apex Predator – Easy Meat (2015)
Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism (2020)
Society and culture
Skins
In the E4 teen comedy-drama Skins, the seasons 5-6 character Rich Hardbeck (Alex Arnold) is a metalhead whose self-proclaimed favourite band is Napalm Death. In the show's fifth season finale, a special appearance from Napalm Death's Mark "Barney" Greenway featured a scene in which he and Rich have a heart-to-heart. Regarding the band's appearance, Barney stated, "One thing that bothers me about TV is the way that teenagers are portrayed. It's down to the f--king Daily Mail's war on teenagers. They stigmatize young kids and it's bulls--t. The thing I like about 'Skins' is it gives a genuine perspective on growing up. That's why we agreed to do this show."
Notes
References
Barcinski, André & Gomes, Silvio (1999). Sepultura: Toda a História. São Paulo: Ed. 34.
Mudrian, Albert (2004). Choosing Death: the Improbable History of Death Metal and Grindcore. Los Angeles, CA: Feral House.
External links
1981 establishments in England
Century Media Records artists
British crust and d-beat groups
Deathgrind musical groups
Earache Records artists
English death metal musical groups
English grindcore musical groups
Kerrang! Awards winners
Musical groups established in 1981
Musical groups from Birmingham, West Midlands
Musical quartets
Political music groups | true | [
"Travel III EP is the sixth album by the Christian rock band Future of Forestry, and the third in the \"Travel Series.\" The recording of the album “officially” started on February 11. It was released on June 29, 2010. Frontman Eric Owyoung wrote all of the songs for this EP and his wife, Tamara Owyoung, painted the cover art for the album. The band subsequently departed on what was called \"The 3 Tour\" to go along with the release. The tour was self-booked and took place in the West and Midwest regions of the United States starting on June 27, 2010 and ending on July 13, 2010.\n\nTrack listing\nThe names (and respective order) of the songs were released on the band's Myspace page leading up to the release of the CD, as they did for the rest of the Travel Series EPs. However, on Travel III, for the first time, Future of Forestry released the tracks out-of-order.\n\n \"Bold and Underlined\" - 4:04\n \"Working to Be Loved\" - 3:48\n \"Did You Lose Yourself\" - 4:47\n \"Protection\" - 4:14\n \"Horizon Rainfall\" - 2:53\n \"Your Day's Not Over\" - 5:00\n\nAwards\nThe album was nominated for a Dove Award for Rock Album of the Year at the 42nd GMA Dove Awards.\n\nReferences \n\n2010 EPs\nFuture of Forestry albums",
"Not by Choice is a Canadian punk rock band from Ajax. They have released two albums, Maybe One Day in 2002 (Linus Records/Warner Music Canada), and Secondhand Opinions (Maple Music Recordings/Universal Music Canada) in 2004.\n\nHistory\n\n2002-2003: Debut album and acclaim\nIn 2002, Not By Choice signed with Linus Entertainment. That same year, the band released their debut album, Maybe One Day. The band earned a MuchMusic Video Award for \"Best Independent Video\" (\"Now That You Are Leaving\"), a CASBY award for \"Best Independent Album\", and inclusion on two Big Shiny Tunes compilations (Now That You Are Leaving and Standing All Alone). In 2003, the band signed with MapleMusic Recordings. Maybe One Day was released in Japan in December 2003, selling over 25,000 records in the country.\n\n2004-2005: Second album, Bovaird departure\nThe band's October 2004 release of their second album, Secondhand Opinions, presented a different direction from the pop-punk roots of Maybe One Day with a more mature-sounding musical approach. The album was not well received by commercial radio, and did not meet the expectations set by the success of their first album. Despite a heavy push from Much Music with their video for the first single Days Go By, the band did not tour outside of Southern Ontario for more than a handful of sporadic dates. They were given the opening band slot for Avril Lavigne's 2005 summer tour in Southern Ontario, but the effort came almost 8 months after the release of Secondhand Opinions.\n\nThe band did prove to have a faithful following in Japan, and Secondhand Opinions did manage to receive a great deal of attention. The band was able to tour Japan in March 2005, performing a week of headlining shows followed by a week as the opening band for Simple Plan.\n\nAfter the departure of bassist AJ Bovaird during the summer of 2005, Not by Choice took a break from touring and began writing songs for a new album. However, the band later stopped progress on their third studio album and took an indefinite hiatus.\n\n2017-present: reunion\nOn April 10, 2017, Not By Choice announced that the classic lineup would be reuniting to play live as the main support for Simple Plan's No Pads, No Helmets...Just Balls 15th anniversary tour stop in Toronto. This show occurred on September 16, 2017.\n\nIn 2018, Not By Choice performed at the Sound of Music Festival in Burlington, Ontario.\n\nDiscography\n\nAlbums\n2002: Maybe One Day\n2004: Secondhand Opinions\n\nMusic videos\n\nMembers\n Mike Bilcox – guitar, lead vocals\n Glenn \"Chico\" Dunning – guitar, backing vocals\n Liam Killeen – drums\n AJ Bovaird – bass, backing vocals\n\nSingles\n2002: \"Standing All Alone\"\n2002: \"Now That You Are Leaving\"\n2004: \"Days Go By\"\n\nReferences\n\nMusical groups established in 1997\nMusical groups reestablished in 2017\nMusical groups from the Regional Municipality of Durham\nCanadian pop punk groups\nMapleMusic Recordings artists\n1997 establishments in Ontario"
]
|
[
"Napalm Death",
"Utilitarian and Apex Predator - Easy Meat (2011-2015)",
"What was Easy Meat?",
"Napalm Death's sixteenth studio album, Apex Predator - Easy Meat, was released on 26 January 2015.",
"How many copies did it sell?",
"I don't know.",
"Did it have any hits?",
"On 4 July, a Nepal Charity Event track from the Apex Predator sessions called \"Earth Wire\" was released on their page.",
"How much did it raise for charity?",
"I don't know.",
"Did the band tour for the album?",
"In March 2012, Napalm Death headlined the Metal Mayhem IV festival organized by \"Defenders of Metal\" in Nepal. This was the first time Napalm Death played in Nepal."
]
| C_1c93816f29aa4c889ff3aa3793569d09_0 | Was there anything else interesting about that album? | 6 | Was there anything else other than Napalm Death's tour interesting about the album Easy Meat? | Napalm Death | In February 2011, Napalm Death appeared in an episode of E4's Skins. Napalm Death entered Parlour Studio in Kettering, with producer Russ Russell to begin working on a new album. Also in 2011, they recorded the single "Legacy Was Yesterday". Napalm Death released their fifteenth studio album, Utilitarian, on 27 February 2012 in Europe and 28 February in North America via Century Media. In March 2012, Napalm Death headlined the Metal Mayhem IV festival organized by "Defenders of Metal" in Nepal. This was the first time Napalm Death played in Nepal. Napalm Death were scheduled to play a special one-off show at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, on 22 March 2013. The show was eventually cancelled at the Victoria and Albert Museum, due to concerns that the noise levels could damage parts of the museum. The show was relocated to the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill, and was performed on 29 November 2013. The performance was a collaboration with ceramicist and Victoria and Albert Artist in Residence Keith Harrison. The show featured 10 large-scale wooden speakers filled with liquid clay that were left to solidify. When the band began to play, the clay inside the speakers was expected to vibrate, causing the speakers to crack and eventually explode. The actual performance was considered anticlimactic, as the speakers withstood the sonic vibration. In April 2014, the band released a cover of the Cardiacs' song "To Go Off and Things" via Bandcamp. All proceeds from the single went towards Cardiacs frontman Tim Smith's recovery from a simultaneous heart attack/stroke he suffered in 2008. The band announced on 5 November 2014, via Facebook that due to an illness in the family, Mitch Harris would be taking a hiatus from the band, to be replaced by various guitarists on their tour. Napalm Death's sixteenth studio album, Apex Predator - Easy Meat, was released on 26 January 2015. On 4 July, a Nepal Charity Event track from the Apex Predator sessions called "Earth Wire" was released on their page. CANNOTANSWER | Napalm Death were scheduled to play a special one-off show at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, on 22 March 2013. | Napalm Death are an English grindcore band formed in Meriden, West Midlands in 1981. While none of its original members remain in the group since December 1986, the lineup of vocalist Mark "Barney" Greenway, bassist Shane Embury, guitarist Mitch Harris and drummer Danny Herrera has remained consistent through most of the band's career since 1992's Utopia Banished, although, from 1989 to 2004, Napalm Death were a five-piece band after they added Jesse Pintado as the replacement of one-time guitarist Bill Steer; following Pintado's departure, the band reverted to a four-piece rather than replace him.
The band is credited as pioneers of the grindcore genre by incorporating elements of crust punk and death metal, using a noise-filled sound that uses heavily distorted, down-tuned guitars, grinding overdrive bass, high-speed tempo, blast beats, vocals which consist of incomprehensible growls or high-pitched shrieks, extremely short songs and sociopolitical lyrics. The band's debut album Scum, released in 1987 by Earache Records, proved substantially influential throughout the global metal community. According to the Guinness World Records, their song "You Suffer" is the shortest song ever recorded, at only 1.316 seconds long.
Napalm Death have released sixteen studio albums, and are listed by Nielsen SoundScan as the seventh-best-selling death metal band in the United States.
History
Early history (1981–1986)
Napalm Death were formed in the village of Meriden near Coventry, in the United Kingdom, in May 1981 by Nic Bullen and Miles Ratledge while the duo were still in their early teenage years. The duo had been playing in amateur bands since 1980 as an extension of their fanzine writing, and went through a number of names (including "Civil Defence", "The Mess", "Evasion", "Undead Hatred" and "Sonic Noise") before choosing Napalm Death in mid 1981. The band were initially inspired by the early wave of punk bands, particularly the anarcho-punk movement (a subgenre of punk music focused on anarchist politics), and associated groups such as Crass.
The first stable line-up of the group consisted of Nicholas Bullen on lead vocals and bass, Simon Oppenheimer on guitars, and Miles Ratledge on drums, and lasted from December 1981 to January 1982. Graham Robertson joined on bass in January 1982. Simon Oppenheimer left the group in August 1982 and was replaced by Darryl Fedeski who left the group in October 1982: at this point, Graham Robertson began to play guitar and Finbarr Quinn (ex-Curfew) joined on bass and backing vocals.
The group played concerts throughout 1982 (playing their first concert on 25 July 1982 at Atherstone Miners Club) and 1983 (sharing billing with anarcho-punk groups such as Amebix, The Apostles and Antisect), and made 4 demo recordings in 1982 and 1983, one of which contributed their first released recording to the Bullshit Detector Volume 3 compilation released by Crass Records in 1984.
The band entered a period of hiatus from the end of 1983 onwards, playing only one concert in 1984 (a benefit for striking mine workers) with additional vocalist Marian Williams (ex-Relevant POS, and sister of the drummer of the group Human Cabbages from Coventry, UK). During this period, Nic Bullen met Justin Broadrick, a guitarist from Birmingham with whom he shared an interest in the music of bands such as Killing Joke, Throbbing Gristle, Crass, Amebix, Swans, and the developing power electronics scene. Bullen joined Broadrick's Final project for a period in 1983.
In July 1985, Napalm Death briefly reformed in order to appear at a concert at the Mermaid in Birmingham which was also notable as the last concert by Final. The group consisted of a 4-piece line-up of Miles Ratledge - drums, Bullen - vocals, bass and guitar, Graham Robertson - guitar and bass, and Damien Errington - guitar. After this concert, Miles Ratledge and Bullen asked Broadrick to join Napalm Death as guitarist, with Bullen as vocalist and bass player. The band began to develop a musical style which blended elements of post-punk (particularly Killing Joke and Amebix), heavy hardcore punk in the vein of Discharge, and thrash metal (with particular reference to Possessed and extreme metal group Celtic Frost).
The group played their first concert as a trio on 31 August 1985 (playing 2 concerts on the same day: Telford with Chumbawamba and Blyth Power, and Birmingham with We've Got a Fuzzbox and We're Gonna Use It), and began to play regularly in the Birmingham area (particularly at The Mermaid public house in the Sparkhill area of Birmingham) with a wide range of musicians including Icons of Filth, Concrete Sox, The Varukers, Indecent Assault, Decadence Within, and The Groundhogs.
In September 1985, Peter Shaw (ex-Autism) joined on bass. The 4-piece line-up recorded Hatred Surge (the band's 5th demo recording) on 23 October 1985 which the band made available at their concerts and by mail. Following the recording of the demo, Bullen and Broadrick wished to extend their exploration of a more extreme musical style which created a split in the group with Ratledge: as a result, the group splintered and Mick Harris (a local fan) was asked to join as drummer in December 1985.
The trio – Bullen on vocals and bass, Broadrick on guitar and Harris on drums – made their first performance on 15 December 1985 and went on to play many concerts in 1986, predominantly in the Birmingham area, with musicians such as Amebix, Antisect, Chaos UK, Varukers, Disorder and Dirge.
The group recorded a 6th demo, From Enslavement to Obliteration, on 15 March 1986, which the group made available at their concerts and through mail, before making a 7th recording later that year, Scum, which was provisionally intended to form part of a split LP with the English hardcore band Atavistic on Manic Ears Records. This recording later became the first side of the band's debut album Scum in 1987.
The band then faced a number of line-up changes. Nic Bullen was becoming frustrated with the musical direction of the group, and began to lose interest as a whole: as a result, Jim Whiteley was asked to join as bass player. The band played a number of concerts as a four-piece before Justin Broadrick left the group to play the drums for local band Head of David. The group attempted to find a new guitarist by asking Shane Embury (ex-Unseen Terror and a fan of the group) to join and giving a trial period to Frank Healy (ex-Annihilator, later of Cerebral Fix and Sacrilege). After Broadrick's departure, Nic Bullen's dissatisfaction with the musical direction of the group led him to leave the group in December 1986 (in order to focus on his studies in English Literature and Philosophy at university), leaving the group without any of its original members.
Scum and From Enslavement to Obliteration (1987–1989)
With the departure of Broadrick and Bullen, the band had to look for new members. Guitarist Bill Steer played in a band based in Liverpool called Carcass, and given the affinity between the bands, he joined Napalm Death while still playing an active role in Carcass. The band asked a friend, Coventrian (Lee Dorrian), to join as vocalist due to his good relationship with the band (he had organised a number of concerts for the band), even though he had never been in a band before. This line-up recorded the B side of the Scum LP at Rich Bitch studios in May 1987, and the album was released through Earache Records.
The band promptly lost another member just after they undertook a short tour after the release of Scum. Jim Whiteley left the group (and subsequently joined Weston-Super-Mare based band Ripcord with whom the aforementioned tour had been shared) and Shane Embury (former drummer of Unseen Terror) moved to bass.
The band then appeared on two compilation records ('North Atlantic Noise Attack' and the 'Pathological Compilation'), recorded two Peel sessions and a split 7" with Japanese band S.O.B. They also returned to Rich Bitch studio once more and recorded their second album: From Enslavement to Obliteration.
A follow-up release to "Enslavement..." came in the form of the six song 12" EP "Mentally Murdered", which was to be the last recording with the Harris/Steer/Dorrian/Embury line-up. This EP was recorded at the Slaughterhouse Studios and took on a slightly different sound, blending grindcore with death metal. Following the release, Napalm Death were featured on national television in the United Kingdom in a heavy metal special by Arena (BBC 2).
The band continued to tour, but as soon as they came back home from Japan, in July 1989, Steer and Dorrian left the band: Steer decided to dedicate himself full-time to Carcass, while Dorrian formed the doom metal group Cathedral. The group recruited Jesse Pintado (ex-Terrorizer) on guitar and Mark "Barney" Greenway (ex-Benediction) as vocalist. This line-up took part in the Grindcrusher tour organised by Earache Records and featuring fellow label-mates Carcass, Bolt Thrower and Morbid Angel. The group recruited Mitch Harris (ex-Righteous Pigs) as second guitarist after the tour.
Rise to success (1990–1994)
In Florida, the group began work on Harmony Corruption. Corruption saw stylistic changes from the band, exhibiting blast beats and slower tempos. Death metal was a greater influence on Corruption than previous records. Following the record's release, Live Corruption, a live recording of the band's 30 June 1990 performance at the Salisbury Arts Centre, was released in 1992.
Negative fan reactions to Corruption and accusations of selling out, compelled the band to reconsider its stylistic changes. The group entered Eddie Van Dale's Violent Noise Experience Club in March 1991 to record six new tracks. The songs produced by this session and released on the "Mass Appeal Madness" 12" LP exhibited a much more "raw" quality, again finding favour with fans. This recording, along with the "Mentally Murdered" 12", the split 7" with S.O.B. and live tracks from Live Corruption, were released on Death by Manipulation.
Drummer Mick Harris - the only remaining member of the Scum lineup - eventually left Napalm Death due to conflicts with the rest of the group over changes in its stylistic direction. Danny Herrera, a close friend of Jesse Pintado, was brought in as the new drummer. Herrera's drumming style has been noted for its uniqueness; being described as "Euroblast", a variant of blast beat in which simultaneous eighth notes are played on the ride cymbal and kick drum, with alternate eighth notes added on the snare drum. The addition of Herrera would be the last major line-up change of the band, save for Jesse Pintado's future absence, which has yet to be filled (and vocalist Phil Vane never recorded with the band).
Napalm Death released the album Utopia Banished in 1992, produced by Colin Richardson. This release was a kind of "return to the roots" - grindcore. After recording The World Keeps Turning EP, the band toured Europe with Dismember and Obituary on the "Campaign for Musical Destruction" tour. They then toured the US with Sepultura, Sacred Reich and Sick of It All. The proceeds of Napalm Death's 1993 EP Nazi Punks Fuck Off were donated to anti-fascist organisations.
Their EP, Nazi Punks Fuck Off, was inspired by Napalm Death touring South Africa during 1993, which was particularly controversial given that the band faced a lot of opposition from many white supremacists following the end of Apartheid.
The band remixed the track "Mind of a Razor" by London-based hip hop crew Gunshot. The remixed version of the track appeared on the EP of the same name in 1992.
Thereafter, they went to the studio and recorded Fear, Emptiness, Despair, which was released on 31 May 1994. The album represented a stylistic transition for Napalm Death. Fear, Emptiness, Despair maintained the complex music structures of their previous albums Utopia Banished and Harmony Corruption, but there was a greater emphasis placed on incorporating elements of groove into the band's style, resulting in a wider use of mid-paced music. Bassist Shane Embury recounts that Helmet and their album Strap It On influenced the band's style at the time, as they did many other heavy metal bands during the 1990s. Live concerts with Entombed, Obituary and Machine Head followed the album's release.
Diatribes, Greenway's departure and return (1995–1999)
Their EP Greed Killing was released through Earache in December 1995, followed by the album Diatribes in January 1996. There was greater animosity between the band during this time, with a rift between Greenway and the remainder of the band, especially over the band's stylistic transition and the interference of background presences in the band, exemplifying the former when he stated that the band were "letting go of what made the band special". Greenway was hence expelled from the band later in 1996, and went to record with fellow grindcore act Extreme Noise Terror (ENT) on their release Damage 381. Greenway has stated that following his expulsion he was "devastated" and did not want to commit to ENT in fear of a repetition of the events that took place within Napalm Death.
ENT's vocalist Phil Vane replaced Greenway in Napalm Death. Alas, Shane Embury stated that Vane "couldn't pull off what was required. It was a hard day when I had to pull Phil aside and tell him it just wasn't working. We had been too much into doing our own thing to acknowledge all of the parts that made the Napalm machine tick. I quickly made the call and asked Barney if he would rejoin—time away certainly gave all of us the chance for reflection, regrets and hopes for the future. He was surprised by the material, as it was heavy and some of the songs were fast—I don't know what he really expected us to do!". Following Vane's departure, Greenway returned and the band released the album Inside the Torn Apart on 3 June 1997. An EP and music video were released for the album's track "Breed to Breathe" on 17 November 1997.
The album Words from the Exit Wound followed this, being released on 26 October 1998. The album was their last to be produced by Colin Richardson, who Embury believes hindered the album's creation, ultimately affecting the album's success. Embury has stated that bands such as Nasum influenced the album, and in Embury's view, this album represented a turning point in the band's sound, stating "it was also a turning point in us moving towards rediscovering our roots." Embury also mentioned that following the album's release, the band found it hard to tour due to restricted budgets from their record label, but Cradle of Filth and Nick Barker were able to alleviate this problem.
In 1999 the band made an appearance on Chris Evans' TFI Friday, playing three songs on a set lasting 59 seconds.
Departure from Earache and the departure of Pintado (2000–2004)
The band acrimoniously departed from Earache Records following Words from the Exit Wound and later released Enemy of the Music Business on the record label, Dream Catcher, on 25 September 2000; which showed the band's anger with the music industry and especially with Earache, whilst also incorporating a greater grindcore influence than on their previous few albums. The album was produced jointly by Simon Efemey and Russ Russell, the latter of whom has since been a long-time collaborator with Napalm Death.
Order of the Leech continued with the previous album's style, being released on 21 October 2002, also being produced jointly by Efemey and Russell. In 2003, Embury and Hererra formed the side-project Venomous Concept with Kevin Sharp and Buzz Osborne, and that group has since released four albums. In 2004, Napalm Death recorded a covers album called Leaders Not Followers: Part 2, the sequel to their earlier covers EP. It contains covers of old hardcore punk and heavy metal bands, including Cryptic Slaughter, Massacre, Kreator, Sepultura, Siege and Discharge. Due to personal problems, Jesse Pintado did not play on either Order of the Leech or Leaders Not Followers: Part 2, and left the band in early 2004. Nevertheless, Pintado stated that he left because he grew tired of Napalm Death and wanted to start something new. The two guitars that you hear is Mitch double-tracking.
The Code Is Red... and Time Waits for No Slave (2005–2010)
In April 2005, their next album The Code Is Red...Long Live the Code was released. It features guest appearances from Jeffrey Walker (Carcass), Jamey Jasta (Hatebreed vocalist) and Jello Biafra (formerly of Dead Kennedys, and Lard among many other bands). The album continued the band's progressive approach to their brutal brand of extreme metal, with their trademark grindcore sound retained. Also in 2005, Embury and Herrera joined the extreme metal band Anaal Nathrakh for one tour.
Napalm Death finished recording their follow-up album titled Smear Campaign in June 2006, and it was released on 15 September 2006 to strong reviews from fans and critics alike. The main lyrical focus is criticism of the United States Government and other governments who are strongly religious. The album features a guest appearance by Anneke van Giersbergen, vocalist for the Dutch rock band The Gathering. There is a limited edition digipak version of Smear Campaign, which has two new songs, "Call That an Option?" and "Atheist Runt". They played a series of headline shows in support of the release including the Koko in Camden with Gutworm.
In early 2006 Napalm Death headlined a tour with Kreator, A Perfect Murder, and Undying. On 27 August 2006, Jesse Pintado died in a hospital in the Netherlands due to liver failure, prompting Mitch Harris to express his sadness at the loss of someone he thought of as "a brother" on the band's official website. After the Smear Campaign tour, the band did a 2007 "World Domination Tour". Bassist Shane Embury is currently working on a project with Mick Kenney of Anaal Nathrakh, their work together will be released on FETO Records at the end of 2007. In November 2008, Napalm Death's fourteenth studio album, entitled Time Waits for No Slave, leaked onto the internet; it was officially released on 23 January 2009. Similar to Smear Campaign, Time Waits For No Slave also had a digipak version containing two extra songs ("Suppressed Hunger" and "Omnipresent Knife in Your Back").
Utilitarian and Apex Predator – Easy Meat (2011–2016)
In February 2011, Napalm Death appeared in an episode of E4's Skins. Napalm Death entered Parlour Studio in Kettering, with producer Russ Russell to begin working on a new album. Also in 2011, they recorded the single "Legacy Was Yesterday". Napalm Death released their fifteenth studio album, Utilitarian, on 27 February 2012 in Europe and 28 February in North America via Century Media. In March 2012, Napalm Death headlined the Metal Mayhem IV festival organized by "Defenders of Metal" in Nepal. This was the first time Napalm Death played in Nepal.
Napalm Death were scheduled to play a special one-off show at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, on 22 March 2013. The show was eventually cancelled at the Victoria and Albert Museum, due to concerns that the noise levels could damage parts of the museum. The show was relocated to the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill, and was performed on 29 November 2013. The performance was a collaboration with ceramicist and Victoria and Albert Artist in Residence Keith Harrison. The show featured 10 large-scale wooden speakers filled with liquid clay that were left to solidify. When the band began to play, the clay inside the speakers was expected to vibrate, causing the speakers to crack and eventually explode. The actual performance was considered anticlimactic, as the speakers withstood the sonic vibration.
In April 2014, the band released a cover of the Cardiacs' song "To Go Off and Things" via Bandcamp. All proceeds from the single went towards Cardiacs frontman Tim Smith's recovery from a simultaneous heart attack/stroke he suffered in 2008. The band announced on 5 November 2014, via Facebook that due to an illness in the family, Mitch Harris would be taking a hiatus from the band, to be replaced by various guitarists on their tour. Napalm Death's sixteenth studio album, Apex Predator – Easy Meat, was released on 26 January 2015. On 4 July, a Nepal Charity Event track from the Apex Predator sessions called "Earth Wire" was released on their page.
Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism (2017–present)
In August 2017, it was announced that Napalm Death entered the studio to begin recording their sixteenth studio album for an early 2018 release. In September, frontman Mark "Barney" Greenway spoke to Australia's Sticks for Stones condemning the announcement and stated that no material was being worked on at the moment but was in the "preliminary stages". He then said that it would not be released until later next year. In an interview at Download Festival in June 2018, Greenway confirmed that guitarist Mitch Harris would appear on the new album, which was not expected to be released until 2019, but did not know if he would tour with them again. Bassist Shane Embury confirmed in a March 2019 interview with Extreme Metal Festival News that Harris "did come over and record guitars on the new record" and Greenway has "nearly recorded all his vocal parts." He added, however, that the album will not be released before early 2020.
Napalm Death (along with Lamb of God, Anthrax, and Testament) opened for Slayer on their final North American tour in the summer of 2018. In October 2019, Shane Embury announced that he would be unable to join the band during their North American Tour. Vernon Blake was announced as substitute live bassist.
An EP titled Logic Ravaged by Brute Force was released on 7 February 2020. The band released their sixteenth studio album, Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism, in September 2020.
Political views
The band espouse anarchism, humanism, socialism and animal rights.
Napalm Death congratulated the president of Indonesia, Joko Widodo, a fan of the band, on their Facebook fan page; however, after the Bali Nine and the Lindsay Sandiford case, he came under fire from the band, as well as many others within the metal scene, after their appeals for clemency were ignored.
Inspired by the band's political stance, Professor Simon Springer wrote the conclusion to his 2016 book, The Discourse of Neoliberalism: An Anatomy of a Powerful Idea, by incorporating as many Napalm Death song and album titles into the text as he could.
Members
Current members
Shane Embury – bass, backing vocals (1987–present)
Danny Herrera – drums (1991–present)
Mark "Barney" Greenway – lead vocals (1989–1996, 1997–present)
Mitch Harris – guitars, backing vocals (1990–present)
Touring musicians
John Cooke – guitars, backing vocals (2014–2015, 2015–present)
Vernon Blake – bass (2015, 2019–2020)
Former members
Stephen Beddows - Drums*
Nicholas "Nik Napalm" Bullen – lead vocals, bass (1981–1986)
Miles "Rat" Ratledge – drums (1981–1985)
Simon "Si O" Oppenheimer – guitars (1981–1982)
Graham "Grayhard" Robertson – guitars, bass (1982–1985)
Daryl "Daz F" Fedeski – guitars (1982)
Finbar "Fin" Quinn – bass (1983–1984)
Marian Williams – lead vocals (1984)
Damien Errington – guitars (1985)
Justin Broadrick – guitars, backing and lead vocals (1985–1986)
Peter "P-Nut" Shaw – bass (1985)
Mick Harris – drums, backing vocals (1985–1991)
Jim Whitely – bass (1986–1987)
Frank Healy – guitars (1986)
Bill Steer – guitars (1987–1989)
Lee Dorrian – lead vocals (1987–1989)
Jesse Pintado – guitars (1989–2004; died 2006)
Phil Vane – lead vocals (1996–1997; died 2011)
Erik Burke - guitars (2015)
Jesper Liveröd – bass (2017)
Timeline
Discography
Studio albums
Scum (1987)
From Enslavement to Obliteration (1988)
Harmony Corruption (1990)
Utopia Banished (1992)
Fear, Emptiness, Despair (1994)
Diatribes (1996)
Inside the Torn Apart (1997)
Words from the Exit Wound (1998)
Enemy of the Music Business (2000)
Order of the Leech (2002)
The Code Is Red...Long Live the Code (2005)
Smear Campaign (2006)
Time Waits for No Slave (2009)
Utilitarian (2012)
Apex Predator – Easy Meat (2015)
Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism (2020)
Society and culture
Skins
In the E4 teen comedy-drama Skins, the seasons 5-6 character Rich Hardbeck (Alex Arnold) is a metalhead whose self-proclaimed favourite band is Napalm Death. In the show's fifth season finale, a special appearance from Napalm Death's Mark "Barney" Greenway featured a scene in which he and Rich have a heart-to-heart. Regarding the band's appearance, Barney stated, "One thing that bothers me about TV is the way that teenagers are portrayed. It's down to the f--king Daily Mail's war on teenagers. They stigmatize young kids and it's bulls--t. The thing I like about 'Skins' is it gives a genuine perspective on growing up. That's why we agreed to do this show."
Notes
References
Barcinski, André & Gomes, Silvio (1999). Sepultura: Toda a História. São Paulo: Ed. 34.
Mudrian, Albert (2004). Choosing Death: the Improbable History of Death Metal and Grindcore. Los Angeles, CA: Feral House.
External links
1981 establishments in England
Century Media Records artists
British crust and d-beat groups
Deathgrind musical groups
Earache Records artists
English death metal musical groups
English grindcore musical groups
Kerrang! Awards winners
Musical groups established in 1981
Musical groups from Birmingham, West Midlands
Musical quartets
Political music groups | true | [
"\"How Interesting: A Tiny Man\" is a 2010 science fiction/magical realism short story by American writer Harlan Ellison. It was first published in Realms of Fantasy.\n\nPlot summary\nA scientist creates a tiny man. The tiny man is initially very popular, but then draws the hatred of the world, and so the tiny man must flee, together with the scientist (who is now likewise hated, for having created the tiny man).\n\nReception\n\"How Interesting: A Tiny Man\" won the 2010 Nebula Award for Best Short Story, tied with Kij Johnson's \"Ponies\". It was Ellison's final Nebula nomination and win, of his record-setting eight nominations and three wins.\n\nTor.com calls the story \"deceptively simple\", with \"execution (that) is flawless\" and a \"Geppetto-like\" narrator, while Publishers Weekly describes it as \"memorably depict(ing) humanity's smallness of spirit\". The SF Site, however, felt it was \"contrived and less than profound\".\n\nNick Mamatas compared \"How Interesting: A Tiny Man\" negatively to Ellison's other Nebula-winning short stories, and stated that the story's two mutually exclusive endings (in one, the tiny man is killed; in the other, he becomes God) are evocative of the process of writing short stories. Ben Peek considered it to be \"more allegory than (...) anything else\", and interpreted it as being about how the media \"give(s) everyone a voice\", and also about how Ellison was treated by science fiction fandom.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nAudio version of ''How Interesting: A Tiny Man, at StarShipSofa\nHow Interesting: A Tiny Man, at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database\n\nNebula Award for Best Short Story-winning works\nShort stories by Harlan Ellison",
"Anything Else but the Truth is the first full-length album by The Honorary Title. The album was originally released in 2004, but was later re-released with different album art in 2006.\n\nTrack listing\n\nRerelease album\nThe rerelease album comes with a second disk contained five bonus songs and music videos of \"Everything I Once Had\" and \"Bridge and Tunnel\".\n\nNotes\n\n2004 debut albums\nThe Honorary Title albums\nDoghouse Records albums"
]
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[
"Napalm Death",
"Utilitarian and Apex Predator - Easy Meat (2011-2015)",
"What was Easy Meat?",
"Napalm Death's sixteenth studio album, Apex Predator - Easy Meat, was released on 26 January 2015.",
"How many copies did it sell?",
"I don't know.",
"Did it have any hits?",
"On 4 July, a Nepal Charity Event track from the Apex Predator sessions called \"Earth Wire\" was released on their page.",
"How much did it raise for charity?",
"I don't know.",
"Did the band tour for the album?",
"In March 2012, Napalm Death headlined the Metal Mayhem IV festival organized by \"Defenders of Metal\" in Nepal. This was the first time Napalm Death played in Nepal.",
"Was there anything else interesting about that album?",
"Napalm Death were scheduled to play a special one-off show at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, on 22 March 2013."
]
| C_1c93816f29aa4c889ff3aa3793569d09_0 | Did that tour get cancelled? | 7 | Did the tour of Napalm Death in London in 2013 get cancelled? | Napalm Death | In February 2011, Napalm Death appeared in an episode of E4's Skins. Napalm Death entered Parlour Studio in Kettering, with producer Russ Russell to begin working on a new album. Also in 2011, they recorded the single "Legacy Was Yesterday". Napalm Death released their fifteenth studio album, Utilitarian, on 27 February 2012 in Europe and 28 February in North America via Century Media. In March 2012, Napalm Death headlined the Metal Mayhem IV festival organized by "Defenders of Metal" in Nepal. This was the first time Napalm Death played in Nepal. Napalm Death were scheduled to play a special one-off show at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, on 22 March 2013. The show was eventually cancelled at the Victoria and Albert Museum, due to concerns that the noise levels could damage parts of the museum. The show was relocated to the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill, and was performed on 29 November 2013. The performance was a collaboration with ceramicist and Victoria and Albert Artist in Residence Keith Harrison. The show featured 10 large-scale wooden speakers filled with liquid clay that were left to solidify. When the band began to play, the clay inside the speakers was expected to vibrate, causing the speakers to crack and eventually explode. The actual performance was considered anticlimactic, as the speakers withstood the sonic vibration. In April 2014, the band released a cover of the Cardiacs' song "To Go Off and Things" via Bandcamp. All proceeds from the single went towards Cardiacs frontman Tim Smith's recovery from a simultaneous heart attack/stroke he suffered in 2008. The band announced on 5 November 2014, via Facebook that due to an illness in the family, Mitch Harris would be taking a hiatus from the band, to be replaced by various guitarists on their tour. Napalm Death's sixteenth studio album, Apex Predator - Easy Meat, was released on 26 January 2015. On 4 July, a Nepal Charity Event track from the Apex Predator sessions called "Earth Wire" was released on their page. CANNOTANSWER | The show was eventually cancelled at the Victoria and Albert Museum, due to concerns that the noise levels could damage parts of the museum. | Napalm Death are an English grindcore band formed in Meriden, West Midlands in 1981. While none of its original members remain in the group since December 1986, the lineup of vocalist Mark "Barney" Greenway, bassist Shane Embury, guitarist Mitch Harris and drummer Danny Herrera has remained consistent through most of the band's career since 1992's Utopia Banished, although, from 1989 to 2004, Napalm Death were a five-piece band after they added Jesse Pintado as the replacement of one-time guitarist Bill Steer; following Pintado's departure, the band reverted to a four-piece rather than replace him.
The band is credited as pioneers of the grindcore genre by incorporating elements of crust punk and death metal, using a noise-filled sound that uses heavily distorted, down-tuned guitars, grinding overdrive bass, high-speed tempo, blast beats, vocals which consist of incomprehensible growls or high-pitched shrieks, extremely short songs and sociopolitical lyrics. The band's debut album Scum, released in 1987 by Earache Records, proved substantially influential throughout the global metal community. According to the Guinness World Records, their song "You Suffer" is the shortest song ever recorded, at only 1.316 seconds long.
Napalm Death have released sixteen studio albums, and are listed by Nielsen SoundScan as the seventh-best-selling death metal band in the United States.
History
Early history (1981–1986)
Napalm Death were formed in the village of Meriden near Coventry, in the United Kingdom, in May 1981 by Nic Bullen and Miles Ratledge while the duo were still in their early teenage years. The duo had been playing in amateur bands since 1980 as an extension of their fanzine writing, and went through a number of names (including "Civil Defence", "The Mess", "Evasion", "Undead Hatred" and "Sonic Noise") before choosing Napalm Death in mid 1981. The band were initially inspired by the early wave of punk bands, particularly the anarcho-punk movement (a subgenre of punk music focused on anarchist politics), and associated groups such as Crass.
The first stable line-up of the group consisted of Nicholas Bullen on lead vocals and bass, Simon Oppenheimer on guitars, and Miles Ratledge on drums, and lasted from December 1981 to January 1982. Graham Robertson joined on bass in January 1982. Simon Oppenheimer left the group in August 1982 and was replaced by Darryl Fedeski who left the group in October 1982: at this point, Graham Robertson began to play guitar and Finbarr Quinn (ex-Curfew) joined on bass and backing vocals.
The group played concerts throughout 1982 (playing their first concert on 25 July 1982 at Atherstone Miners Club) and 1983 (sharing billing with anarcho-punk groups such as Amebix, The Apostles and Antisect), and made 4 demo recordings in 1982 and 1983, one of which contributed their first released recording to the Bullshit Detector Volume 3 compilation released by Crass Records in 1984.
The band entered a period of hiatus from the end of 1983 onwards, playing only one concert in 1984 (a benefit for striking mine workers) with additional vocalist Marian Williams (ex-Relevant POS, and sister of the drummer of the group Human Cabbages from Coventry, UK). During this period, Nic Bullen met Justin Broadrick, a guitarist from Birmingham with whom he shared an interest in the music of bands such as Killing Joke, Throbbing Gristle, Crass, Amebix, Swans, and the developing power electronics scene. Bullen joined Broadrick's Final project for a period in 1983.
In July 1985, Napalm Death briefly reformed in order to appear at a concert at the Mermaid in Birmingham which was also notable as the last concert by Final. The group consisted of a 4-piece line-up of Miles Ratledge - drums, Bullen - vocals, bass and guitar, Graham Robertson - guitar and bass, and Damien Errington - guitar. After this concert, Miles Ratledge and Bullen asked Broadrick to join Napalm Death as guitarist, with Bullen as vocalist and bass player. The band began to develop a musical style which blended elements of post-punk (particularly Killing Joke and Amebix), heavy hardcore punk in the vein of Discharge, and thrash metal (with particular reference to Possessed and extreme metal group Celtic Frost).
The group played their first concert as a trio on 31 August 1985 (playing 2 concerts on the same day: Telford with Chumbawamba and Blyth Power, and Birmingham with We've Got a Fuzzbox and We're Gonna Use It), and began to play regularly in the Birmingham area (particularly at The Mermaid public house in the Sparkhill area of Birmingham) with a wide range of musicians including Icons of Filth, Concrete Sox, The Varukers, Indecent Assault, Decadence Within, and The Groundhogs.
In September 1985, Peter Shaw (ex-Autism) joined on bass. The 4-piece line-up recorded Hatred Surge (the band's 5th demo recording) on 23 October 1985 which the band made available at their concerts and by mail. Following the recording of the demo, Bullen and Broadrick wished to extend their exploration of a more extreme musical style which created a split in the group with Ratledge: as a result, the group splintered and Mick Harris (a local fan) was asked to join as drummer in December 1985.
The trio – Bullen on vocals and bass, Broadrick on guitar and Harris on drums – made their first performance on 15 December 1985 and went on to play many concerts in 1986, predominantly in the Birmingham area, with musicians such as Amebix, Antisect, Chaos UK, Varukers, Disorder and Dirge.
The group recorded a 6th demo, From Enslavement to Obliteration, on 15 March 1986, which the group made available at their concerts and through mail, before making a 7th recording later that year, Scum, which was provisionally intended to form part of a split LP with the English hardcore band Atavistic on Manic Ears Records. This recording later became the first side of the band's debut album Scum in 1987.
The band then faced a number of line-up changes. Nic Bullen was becoming frustrated with the musical direction of the group, and began to lose interest as a whole: as a result, Jim Whiteley was asked to join as bass player. The band played a number of concerts as a four-piece before Justin Broadrick left the group to play the drums for local band Head of David. The group attempted to find a new guitarist by asking Shane Embury (ex-Unseen Terror and a fan of the group) to join and giving a trial period to Frank Healy (ex-Annihilator, later of Cerebral Fix and Sacrilege). After Broadrick's departure, Nic Bullen's dissatisfaction with the musical direction of the group led him to leave the group in December 1986 (in order to focus on his studies in English Literature and Philosophy at university), leaving the group without any of its original members.
Scum and From Enslavement to Obliteration (1987–1989)
With the departure of Broadrick and Bullen, the band had to look for new members. Guitarist Bill Steer played in a band based in Liverpool called Carcass, and given the affinity between the bands, he joined Napalm Death while still playing an active role in Carcass. The band asked a friend, Coventrian (Lee Dorrian), to join as vocalist due to his good relationship with the band (he had organised a number of concerts for the band), even though he had never been in a band before. This line-up recorded the B side of the Scum LP at Rich Bitch studios in May 1987, and the album was released through Earache Records.
The band promptly lost another member just after they undertook a short tour after the release of Scum. Jim Whiteley left the group (and subsequently joined Weston-Super-Mare based band Ripcord with whom the aforementioned tour had been shared) and Shane Embury (former drummer of Unseen Terror) moved to bass.
The band then appeared on two compilation records ('North Atlantic Noise Attack' and the 'Pathological Compilation'), recorded two Peel sessions and a split 7" with Japanese band S.O.B. They also returned to Rich Bitch studio once more and recorded their second album: From Enslavement to Obliteration.
A follow-up release to "Enslavement..." came in the form of the six song 12" EP "Mentally Murdered", which was to be the last recording with the Harris/Steer/Dorrian/Embury line-up. This EP was recorded at the Slaughterhouse Studios and took on a slightly different sound, blending grindcore with death metal. Following the release, Napalm Death were featured on national television in the United Kingdom in a heavy metal special by Arena (BBC 2).
The band continued to tour, but as soon as they came back home from Japan, in July 1989, Steer and Dorrian left the band: Steer decided to dedicate himself full-time to Carcass, while Dorrian formed the doom metal group Cathedral. The group recruited Jesse Pintado (ex-Terrorizer) on guitar and Mark "Barney" Greenway (ex-Benediction) as vocalist. This line-up took part in the Grindcrusher tour organised by Earache Records and featuring fellow label-mates Carcass, Bolt Thrower and Morbid Angel. The group recruited Mitch Harris (ex-Righteous Pigs) as second guitarist after the tour.
Rise to success (1990–1994)
In Florida, the group began work on Harmony Corruption. Corruption saw stylistic changes from the band, exhibiting blast beats and slower tempos. Death metal was a greater influence on Corruption than previous records. Following the record's release, Live Corruption, a live recording of the band's 30 June 1990 performance at the Salisbury Arts Centre, was released in 1992.
Negative fan reactions to Corruption and accusations of selling out, compelled the band to reconsider its stylistic changes. The group entered Eddie Van Dale's Violent Noise Experience Club in March 1991 to record six new tracks. The songs produced by this session and released on the "Mass Appeal Madness" 12" LP exhibited a much more "raw" quality, again finding favour with fans. This recording, along with the "Mentally Murdered" 12", the split 7" with S.O.B. and live tracks from Live Corruption, were released on Death by Manipulation.
Drummer Mick Harris - the only remaining member of the Scum lineup - eventually left Napalm Death due to conflicts with the rest of the group over changes in its stylistic direction. Danny Herrera, a close friend of Jesse Pintado, was brought in as the new drummer. Herrera's drumming style has been noted for its uniqueness; being described as "Euroblast", a variant of blast beat in which simultaneous eighth notes are played on the ride cymbal and kick drum, with alternate eighth notes added on the snare drum. The addition of Herrera would be the last major line-up change of the band, save for Jesse Pintado's future absence, which has yet to be filled (and vocalist Phil Vane never recorded with the band).
Napalm Death released the album Utopia Banished in 1992, produced by Colin Richardson. This release was a kind of "return to the roots" - grindcore. After recording The World Keeps Turning EP, the band toured Europe with Dismember and Obituary on the "Campaign for Musical Destruction" tour. They then toured the US with Sepultura, Sacred Reich and Sick of It All. The proceeds of Napalm Death's 1993 EP Nazi Punks Fuck Off were donated to anti-fascist organisations.
Their EP, Nazi Punks Fuck Off, was inspired by Napalm Death touring South Africa during 1993, which was particularly controversial given that the band faced a lot of opposition from many white supremacists following the end of Apartheid.
The band remixed the track "Mind of a Razor" by London-based hip hop crew Gunshot. The remixed version of the track appeared on the EP of the same name in 1992.
Thereafter, they went to the studio and recorded Fear, Emptiness, Despair, which was released on 31 May 1994. The album represented a stylistic transition for Napalm Death. Fear, Emptiness, Despair maintained the complex music structures of their previous albums Utopia Banished and Harmony Corruption, but there was a greater emphasis placed on incorporating elements of groove into the band's style, resulting in a wider use of mid-paced music. Bassist Shane Embury recounts that Helmet and their album Strap It On influenced the band's style at the time, as they did many other heavy metal bands during the 1990s. Live concerts with Entombed, Obituary and Machine Head followed the album's release.
Diatribes, Greenway's departure and return (1995–1999)
Their EP Greed Killing was released through Earache in December 1995, followed by the album Diatribes in January 1996. There was greater animosity between the band during this time, with a rift between Greenway and the remainder of the band, especially over the band's stylistic transition and the interference of background presences in the band, exemplifying the former when he stated that the band were "letting go of what made the band special". Greenway was hence expelled from the band later in 1996, and went to record with fellow grindcore act Extreme Noise Terror (ENT) on their release Damage 381. Greenway has stated that following his expulsion he was "devastated" and did not want to commit to ENT in fear of a repetition of the events that took place within Napalm Death.
ENT's vocalist Phil Vane replaced Greenway in Napalm Death. Alas, Shane Embury stated that Vane "couldn't pull off what was required. It was a hard day when I had to pull Phil aside and tell him it just wasn't working. We had been too much into doing our own thing to acknowledge all of the parts that made the Napalm machine tick. I quickly made the call and asked Barney if he would rejoin—time away certainly gave all of us the chance for reflection, regrets and hopes for the future. He was surprised by the material, as it was heavy and some of the songs were fast—I don't know what he really expected us to do!". Following Vane's departure, Greenway returned and the band released the album Inside the Torn Apart on 3 June 1997. An EP and music video were released for the album's track "Breed to Breathe" on 17 November 1997.
The album Words from the Exit Wound followed this, being released on 26 October 1998. The album was their last to be produced by Colin Richardson, who Embury believes hindered the album's creation, ultimately affecting the album's success. Embury has stated that bands such as Nasum influenced the album, and in Embury's view, this album represented a turning point in the band's sound, stating "it was also a turning point in us moving towards rediscovering our roots." Embury also mentioned that following the album's release, the band found it hard to tour due to restricted budgets from their record label, but Cradle of Filth and Nick Barker were able to alleviate this problem.
In 1999 the band made an appearance on Chris Evans' TFI Friday, playing three songs on a set lasting 59 seconds.
Departure from Earache and the departure of Pintado (2000–2004)
The band acrimoniously departed from Earache Records following Words from the Exit Wound and later released Enemy of the Music Business on the record label, Dream Catcher, on 25 September 2000; which showed the band's anger with the music industry and especially with Earache, whilst also incorporating a greater grindcore influence than on their previous few albums. The album was produced jointly by Simon Efemey and Russ Russell, the latter of whom has since been a long-time collaborator with Napalm Death.
Order of the Leech continued with the previous album's style, being released on 21 October 2002, also being produced jointly by Efemey and Russell. In 2003, Embury and Hererra formed the side-project Venomous Concept with Kevin Sharp and Buzz Osborne, and that group has since released four albums. In 2004, Napalm Death recorded a covers album called Leaders Not Followers: Part 2, the sequel to their earlier covers EP. It contains covers of old hardcore punk and heavy metal bands, including Cryptic Slaughter, Massacre, Kreator, Sepultura, Siege and Discharge. Due to personal problems, Jesse Pintado did not play on either Order of the Leech or Leaders Not Followers: Part 2, and left the band in early 2004. Nevertheless, Pintado stated that he left because he grew tired of Napalm Death and wanted to start something new. The two guitars that you hear is Mitch double-tracking.
The Code Is Red... and Time Waits for No Slave (2005–2010)
In April 2005, their next album The Code Is Red...Long Live the Code was released. It features guest appearances from Jeffrey Walker (Carcass), Jamey Jasta (Hatebreed vocalist) and Jello Biafra (formerly of Dead Kennedys, and Lard among many other bands). The album continued the band's progressive approach to their brutal brand of extreme metal, with their trademark grindcore sound retained. Also in 2005, Embury and Herrera joined the extreme metal band Anaal Nathrakh for one tour.
Napalm Death finished recording their follow-up album titled Smear Campaign in June 2006, and it was released on 15 September 2006 to strong reviews from fans and critics alike. The main lyrical focus is criticism of the United States Government and other governments who are strongly religious. The album features a guest appearance by Anneke van Giersbergen, vocalist for the Dutch rock band The Gathering. There is a limited edition digipak version of Smear Campaign, which has two new songs, "Call That an Option?" and "Atheist Runt". They played a series of headline shows in support of the release including the Koko in Camden with Gutworm.
In early 2006 Napalm Death headlined a tour with Kreator, A Perfect Murder, and Undying. On 27 August 2006, Jesse Pintado died in a hospital in the Netherlands due to liver failure, prompting Mitch Harris to express his sadness at the loss of someone he thought of as "a brother" on the band's official website. After the Smear Campaign tour, the band did a 2007 "World Domination Tour". Bassist Shane Embury is currently working on a project with Mick Kenney of Anaal Nathrakh, their work together will be released on FETO Records at the end of 2007. In November 2008, Napalm Death's fourteenth studio album, entitled Time Waits for No Slave, leaked onto the internet; it was officially released on 23 January 2009. Similar to Smear Campaign, Time Waits For No Slave also had a digipak version containing two extra songs ("Suppressed Hunger" and "Omnipresent Knife in Your Back").
Utilitarian and Apex Predator – Easy Meat (2011–2016)
In February 2011, Napalm Death appeared in an episode of E4's Skins. Napalm Death entered Parlour Studio in Kettering, with producer Russ Russell to begin working on a new album. Also in 2011, they recorded the single "Legacy Was Yesterday". Napalm Death released their fifteenth studio album, Utilitarian, on 27 February 2012 in Europe and 28 February in North America via Century Media. In March 2012, Napalm Death headlined the Metal Mayhem IV festival organized by "Defenders of Metal" in Nepal. This was the first time Napalm Death played in Nepal.
Napalm Death were scheduled to play a special one-off show at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, on 22 March 2013. The show was eventually cancelled at the Victoria and Albert Museum, due to concerns that the noise levels could damage parts of the museum. The show was relocated to the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill, and was performed on 29 November 2013. The performance was a collaboration with ceramicist and Victoria and Albert Artist in Residence Keith Harrison. The show featured 10 large-scale wooden speakers filled with liquid clay that were left to solidify. When the band began to play, the clay inside the speakers was expected to vibrate, causing the speakers to crack and eventually explode. The actual performance was considered anticlimactic, as the speakers withstood the sonic vibration.
In April 2014, the band released a cover of the Cardiacs' song "To Go Off and Things" via Bandcamp. All proceeds from the single went towards Cardiacs frontman Tim Smith's recovery from a simultaneous heart attack/stroke he suffered in 2008. The band announced on 5 November 2014, via Facebook that due to an illness in the family, Mitch Harris would be taking a hiatus from the band, to be replaced by various guitarists on their tour. Napalm Death's sixteenth studio album, Apex Predator – Easy Meat, was released on 26 January 2015. On 4 July, a Nepal Charity Event track from the Apex Predator sessions called "Earth Wire" was released on their page.
Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism (2017–present)
In August 2017, it was announced that Napalm Death entered the studio to begin recording their sixteenth studio album for an early 2018 release. In September, frontman Mark "Barney" Greenway spoke to Australia's Sticks for Stones condemning the announcement and stated that no material was being worked on at the moment but was in the "preliminary stages". He then said that it would not be released until later next year. In an interview at Download Festival in June 2018, Greenway confirmed that guitarist Mitch Harris would appear on the new album, which was not expected to be released until 2019, but did not know if he would tour with them again. Bassist Shane Embury confirmed in a March 2019 interview with Extreme Metal Festival News that Harris "did come over and record guitars on the new record" and Greenway has "nearly recorded all his vocal parts." He added, however, that the album will not be released before early 2020.
Napalm Death (along with Lamb of God, Anthrax, and Testament) opened for Slayer on their final North American tour in the summer of 2018. In October 2019, Shane Embury announced that he would be unable to join the band during their North American Tour. Vernon Blake was announced as substitute live bassist.
An EP titled Logic Ravaged by Brute Force was released on 7 February 2020. The band released their sixteenth studio album, Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism, in September 2020.
Political views
The band espouse anarchism, humanism, socialism and animal rights.
Napalm Death congratulated the president of Indonesia, Joko Widodo, a fan of the band, on their Facebook fan page; however, after the Bali Nine and the Lindsay Sandiford case, he came under fire from the band, as well as many others within the metal scene, after their appeals for clemency were ignored.
Inspired by the band's political stance, Professor Simon Springer wrote the conclusion to his 2016 book, The Discourse of Neoliberalism: An Anatomy of a Powerful Idea, by incorporating as many Napalm Death song and album titles into the text as he could.
Members
Current members
Shane Embury – bass, backing vocals (1987–present)
Danny Herrera – drums (1991–present)
Mark "Barney" Greenway – lead vocals (1989–1996, 1997–present)
Mitch Harris – guitars, backing vocals (1990–present)
Touring musicians
John Cooke – guitars, backing vocals (2014–2015, 2015–present)
Vernon Blake – bass (2015, 2019–2020)
Former members
Stephen Beddows - Drums*
Nicholas "Nik Napalm" Bullen – lead vocals, bass (1981–1986)
Miles "Rat" Ratledge – drums (1981–1985)
Simon "Si O" Oppenheimer – guitars (1981–1982)
Graham "Grayhard" Robertson – guitars, bass (1982–1985)
Daryl "Daz F" Fedeski – guitars (1982)
Finbar "Fin" Quinn – bass (1983–1984)
Marian Williams – lead vocals (1984)
Damien Errington – guitars (1985)
Justin Broadrick – guitars, backing and lead vocals (1985–1986)
Peter "P-Nut" Shaw – bass (1985)
Mick Harris – drums, backing vocals (1985–1991)
Jim Whitely – bass (1986–1987)
Frank Healy – guitars (1986)
Bill Steer – guitars (1987–1989)
Lee Dorrian – lead vocals (1987–1989)
Jesse Pintado – guitars (1989–2004; died 2006)
Phil Vane – lead vocals (1996–1997; died 2011)
Erik Burke - guitars (2015)
Jesper Liveröd – bass (2017)
Timeline
Discography
Studio albums
Scum (1987)
From Enslavement to Obliteration (1988)
Harmony Corruption (1990)
Utopia Banished (1992)
Fear, Emptiness, Despair (1994)
Diatribes (1996)
Inside the Torn Apart (1997)
Words from the Exit Wound (1998)
Enemy of the Music Business (2000)
Order of the Leech (2002)
The Code Is Red...Long Live the Code (2005)
Smear Campaign (2006)
Time Waits for No Slave (2009)
Utilitarian (2012)
Apex Predator – Easy Meat (2015)
Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism (2020)
Society and culture
Skins
In the E4 teen comedy-drama Skins, the seasons 5-6 character Rich Hardbeck (Alex Arnold) is a metalhead whose self-proclaimed favourite band is Napalm Death. In the show's fifth season finale, a special appearance from Napalm Death's Mark "Barney" Greenway featured a scene in which he and Rich have a heart-to-heart. Regarding the band's appearance, Barney stated, "One thing that bothers me about TV is the way that teenagers are portrayed. It's down to the f--king Daily Mail's war on teenagers. They stigmatize young kids and it's bulls--t. The thing I like about 'Skins' is it gives a genuine perspective on growing up. That's why we agreed to do this show."
Notes
References
Barcinski, André & Gomes, Silvio (1999). Sepultura: Toda a História. São Paulo: Ed. 34.
Mudrian, Albert (2004). Choosing Death: the Improbable History of Death Metal and Grindcore. Los Angeles, CA: Feral House.
External links
1981 establishments in England
Century Media Records artists
British crust and d-beat groups
Deathgrind musical groups
Earache Records artists
English death metal musical groups
English grindcore musical groups
Kerrang! Awards winners
Musical groups established in 1981
Musical groups from Birmingham, West Midlands
Musical quartets
Political music groups | true | [
"The Mad Love Tour is the fourth concert tour by American recording artist JoJo. The tour supported her third studio album, Mad Love (2016).\n\nBackground\nJoJo announced that the tour would launch in early 2017, after a performance of \"No Apologies\" on Today. On November 29, 2016, dates for the Mad Love Tour were announced through JoJo's social media accounts and official website.\n\nDue to high demand for the initial date at KOKO, a second show was added in London, at Heaven on February 1. On February 14, 2017, JoJo announced during a Facebook live chat that the tour would expand to Canada with an additional 6 dates added to the tour. Pre-sale tickets were made available on Thursday, February 16 through her official website with general public tickets going on sale Friday, February 17.\n\nOn February 20, 2017, JoJo announced the cancellation of her San Luis Obispo, California tour stop due to a viral illness. JoJo performed the following date on February 21, 2017 in Los Angeles, California before cancelling and rescheduling several following dates due to a laryngitis infection.\n\nPromotion\nIn Europe, pre-sale and VIP tickets for the tour went on sale on November 30, 2016, with general public tickets going on sale on December 2, 2016. VIP packages for the tour included one General Admission ticket, access to a VIP meet and greet with JoJo, VIP exclusive poster, laminate, tote bag and wristband.\n\nSet list\nThis set list is representative of the performance on January 15, 2017. It is not representative of all concerts for the duration of the show.\n\n\"Clovers\"\n\"When Love Hurts\"\n\"Leave (Get Out)\"\n\"Vibe\"\n\"Say Love\"\n\"High Heels\"\n\"Like That/Like This\"\n\"Reckless\"\n\"Edibles\"\n\"Music.\"\n\"Baby It's You\"\n\"Disaster\"\n\"We Get By\"\n\"Marvins Room (Can't Do Better)\" \n\"Too Little Too Late\"\n\"Weak\" \n\"I Am\"\n\"FAB.\"\n\"Fuck Apologies.\"\n\"Mad Love\" (interpolates Mariah Carey's \"Vision of Love\")\nEncore\n\"Good Thing\"\n\nTour dates\n\n Notes\n\n The April 29, 2017, concert in New Haven, Connecticut is part of the Yale University's annual spring music festival \"Spring Fling 2017\", where JoJo will headline.\n The May 16, 2017, show was originally scheduled for February 20, 2017, however was cancelled and later rescheduled, due to laryngitis.\n The May 17, 2017, show was originally scheduled for February 23, 2017, however was cancelled and later rescheduled, due to laryngitis.\n The May 19, 2017, show was originally scheduled for February 25, 2017, however was cancelled and later rescheduled, due to laryngitis.\n The May 21, 2017, show was originally scheduled for February 24, 2017, however was cancelled and later rescheduled, due to laryngitis.\n The May 23, 2017, show was originally scheduled for February 27, 2017, however was cancelled and later rescheduled, due to laryngitis.\n The May 24, 2017, show was originally scheduled for March 1, 2017, however was cancelled and later rescheduled, due to laryngitis.\n The May 26, 2017, show was originally scheduled for March 3, 2017, however was cancelled and later rescheduled, due to laryngitis.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n Official Website\n\n2017 concert tours",
"The 2021 UCI World Tour was a series of races that included twenty-nine road cycling events throughout the 2021 cycling season. The tour started with the opening stage of the UAE Tour on 21 February, and concluded with Il Lombardia on 9 October.\n\nEvents\nThe 2021 calendar was announced in the autumn of 2020.\n\nCancelled events\nDue to COVID-19-related logistical concerns raised by teams regarding travel to Australia (including strict quarantine requirements), the Tour Down Under (19–24 January) and the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race (31 January) were cancelled. The organisers of the Tour Down Under held a \"domestic cycling festival\" known as the Santos Festival of Cycling in its place, which featured races in various disciplines (including a National Road Series event). In June, the Grand Prix Cycliste de Québec (10 September) and the Grand Prix Cycliste de Montréal (12 September) were cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada. In August, the Hamburg Cyclassics (15 August) and the Tour of Guangxi (14–19 October) were cancelled at the request of their respective organisers, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.\n\nIn addition, and for reasons not entirely related to the pandemic, the organisers of the Tour of California in the United States as well as those of the Prudential RideLondon–Surrey Classic in the United Kingdom did not request to register either of their respective events for the 2021 calendar.\n\nNotes\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\n2021\n2021\n2021 in men's road cycling"
]
|
[
"Napalm Death",
"Utilitarian and Apex Predator - Easy Meat (2011-2015)",
"What was Easy Meat?",
"Napalm Death's sixteenth studio album, Apex Predator - Easy Meat, was released on 26 January 2015.",
"How many copies did it sell?",
"I don't know.",
"Did it have any hits?",
"On 4 July, a Nepal Charity Event track from the Apex Predator sessions called \"Earth Wire\" was released on their page.",
"How much did it raise for charity?",
"I don't know.",
"Did the band tour for the album?",
"In March 2012, Napalm Death headlined the Metal Mayhem IV festival organized by \"Defenders of Metal\" in Nepal. This was the first time Napalm Death played in Nepal.",
"Was there anything else interesting about that album?",
"Napalm Death were scheduled to play a special one-off show at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, on 22 March 2013.",
"Did that tour get cancelled?",
"The show was eventually cancelled at the Victoria and Albert Museum, due to concerns that the noise levels could damage parts of the museum."
]
| C_1c93816f29aa4c889ff3aa3793569d09_0 | Was it rescheduled anywhere? | 8 | Was Napalm Death's London Tour of 2013 rescheduled anywhere? | Napalm Death | In February 2011, Napalm Death appeared in an episode of E4's Skins. Napalm Death entered Parlour Studio in Kettering, with producer Russ Russell to begin working on a new album. Also in 2011, they recorded the single "Legacy Was Yesterday". Napalm Death released their fifteenth studio album, Utilitarian, on 27 February 2012 in Europe and 28 February in North America via Century Media. In March 2012, Napalm Death headlined the Metal Mayhem IV festival organized by "Defenders of Metal" in Nepal. This was the first time Napalm Death played in Nepal. Napalm Death were scheduled to play a special one-off show at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, on 22 March 2013. The show was eventually cancelled at the Victoria and Albert Museum, due to concerns that the noise levels could damage parts of the museum. The show was relocated to the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill, and was performed on 29 November 2013. The performance was a collaboration with ceramicist and Victoria and Albert Artist in Residence Keith Harrison. The show featured 10 large-scale wooden speakers filled with liquid clay that were left to solidify. When the band began to play, the clay inside the speakers was expected to vibrate, causing the speakers to crack and eventually explode. The actual performance was considered anticlimactic, as the speakers withstood the sonic vibration. In April 2014, the band released a cover of the Cardiacs' song "To Go Off and Things" via Bandcamp. All proceeds from the single went towards Cardiacs frontman Tim Smith's recovery from a simultaneous heart attack/stroke he suffered in 2008. The band announced on 5 November 2014, via Facebook that due to an illness in the family, Mitch Harris would be taking a hiatus from the band, to be replaced by various guitarists on their tour. Napalm Death's sixteenth studio album, Apex Predator - Easy Meat, was released on 26 January 2015. On 4 July, a Nepal Charity Event track from the Apex Predator sessions called "Earth Wire" was released on their page. CANNOTANSWER | The show was relocated to the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill, and was performed on 29 November 2013. | Napalm Death are an English grindcore band formed in Meriden, West Midlands in 1981. While none of its original members remain in the group since December 1986, the lineup of vocalist Mark "Barney" Greenway, bassist Shane Embury, guitarist Mitch Harris and drummer Danny Herrera has remained consistent through most of the band's career since 1992's Utopia Banished, although, from 1989 to 2004, Napalm Death were a five-piece band after they added Jesse Pintado as the replacement of one-time guitarist Bill Steer; following Pintado's departure, the band reverted to a four-piece rather than replace him.
The band is credited as pioneers of the grindcore genre by incorporating elements of crust punk and death metal, using a noise-filled sound that uses heavily distorted, down-tuned guitars, grinding overdrive bass, high-speed tempo, blast beats, vocals which consist of incomprehensible growls or high-pitched shrieks, extremely short songs and sociopolitical lyrics. The band's debut album Scum, released in 1987 by Earache Records, proved substantially influential throughout the global metal community. According to the Guinness World Records, their song "You Suffer" is the shortest song ever recorded, at only 1.316 seconds long.
Napalm Death have released sixteen studio albums, and are listed by Nielsen SoundScan as the seventh-best-selling death metal band in the United States.
History
Early history (1981–1986)
Napalm Death were formed in the village of Meriden near Coventry, in the United Kingdom, in May 1981 by Nic Bullen and Miles Ratledge while the duo were still in their early teenage years. The duo had been playing in amateur bands since 1980 as an extension of their fanzine writing, and went through a number of names (including "Civil Defence", "The Mess", "Evasion", "Undead Hatred" and "Sonic Noise") before choosing Napalm Death in mid 1981. The band were initially inspired by the early wave of punk bands, particularly the anarcho-punk movement (a subgenre of punk music focused on anarchist politics), and associated groups such as Crass.
The first stable line-up of the group consisted of Nicholas Bullen on lead vocals and bass, Simon Oppenheimer on guitars, and Miles Ratledge on drums, and lasted from December 1981 to January 1982. Graham Robertson joined on bass in January 1982. Simon Oppenheimer left the group in August 1982 and was replaced by Darryl Fedeski who left the group in October 1982: at this point, Graham Robertson began to play guitar and Finbarr Quinn (ex-Curfew) joined on bass and backing vocals.
The group played concerts throughout 1982 (playing their first concert on 25 July 1982 at Atherstone Miners Club) and 1983 (sharing billing with anarcho-punk groups such as Amebix, The Apostles and Antisect), and made 4 demo recordings in 1982 and 1983, one of which contributed their first released recording to the Bullshit Detector Volume 3 compilation released by Crass Records in 1984.
The band entered a period of hiatus from the end of 1983 onwards, playing only one concert in 1984 (a benefit for striking mine workers) with additional vocalist Marian Williams (ex-Relevant POS, and sister of the drummer of the group Human Cabbages from Coventry, UK). During this period, Nic Bullen met Justin Broadrick, a guitarist from Birmingham with whom he shared an interest in the music of bands such as Killing Joke, Throbbing Gristle, Crass, Amebix, Swans, and the developing power electronics scene. Bullen joined Broadrick's Final project for a period in 1983.
In July 1985, Napalm Death briefly reformed in order to appear at a concert at the Mermaid in Birmingham which was also notable as the last concert by Final. The group consisted of a 4-piece line-up of Miles Ratledge - drums, Bullen - vocals, bass and guitar, Graham Robertson - guitar and bass, and Damien Errington - guitar. After this concert, Miles Ratledge and Bullen asked Broadrick to join Napalm Death as guitarist, with Bullen as vocalist and bass player. The band began to develop a musical style which blended elements of post-punk (particularly Killing Joke and Amebix), heavy hardcore punk in the vein of Discharge, and thrash metal (with particular reference to Possessed and extreme metal group Celtic Frost).
The group played their first concert as a trio on 31 August 1985 (playing 2 concerts on the same day: Telford with Chumbawamba and Blyth Power, and Birmingham with We've Got a Fuzzbox and We're Gonna Use It), and began to play regularly in the Birmingham area (particularly at The Mermaid public house in the Sparkhill area of Birmingham) with a wide range of musicians including Icons of Filth, Concrete Sox, The Varukers, Indecent Assault, Decadence Within, and The Groundhogs.
In September 1985, Peter Shaw (ex-Autism) joined on bass. The 4-piece line-up recorded Hatred Surge (the band's 5th demo recording) on 23 October 1985 which the band made available at their concerts and by mail. Following the recording of the demo, Bullen and Broadrick wished to extend their exploration of a more extreme musical style which created a split in the group with Ratledge: as a result, the group splintered and Mick Harris (a local fan) was asked to join as drummer in December 1985.
The trio – Bullen on vocals and bass, Broadrick on guitar and Harris on drums – made their first performance on 15 December 1985 and went on to play many concerts in 1986, predominantly in the Birmingham area, with musicians such as Amebix, Antisect, Chaos UK, Varukers, Disorder and Dirge.
The group recorded a 6th demo, From Enslavement to Obliteration, on 15 March 1986, which the group made available at their concerts and through mail, before making a 7th recording later that year, Scum, which was provisionally intended to form part of a split LP with the English hardcore band Atavistic on Manic Ears Records. This recording later became the first side of the band's debut album Scum in 1987.
The band then faced a number of line-up changes. Nic Bullen was becoming frustrated with the musical direction of the group, and began to lose interest as a whole: as a result, Jim Whiteley was asked to join as bass player. The band played a number of concerts as a four-piece before Justin Broadrick left the group to play the drums for local band Head of David. The group attempted to find a new guitarist by asking Shane Embury (ex-Unseen Terror and a fan of the group) to join and giving a trial period to Frank Healy (ex-Annihilator, later of Cerebral Fix and Sacrilege). After Broadrick's departure, Nic Bullen's dissatisfaction with the musical direction of the group led him to leave the group in December 1986 (in order to focus on his studies in English Literature and Philosophy at university), leaving the group without any of its original members.
Scum and From Enslavement to Obliteration (1987–1989)
With the departure of Broadrick and Bullen, the band had to look for new members. Guitarist Bill Steer played in a band based in Liverpool called Carcass, and given the affinity between the bands, he joined Napalm Death while still playing an active role in Carcass. The band asked a friend, Coventrian (Lee Dorrian), to join as vocalist due to his good relationship with the band (he had organised a number of concerts for the band), even though he had never been in a band before. This line-up recorded the B side of the Scum LP at Rich Bitch studios in May 1987, and the album was released through Earache Records.
The band promptly lost another member just after they undertook a short tour after the release of Scum. Jim Whiteley left the group (and subsequently joined Weston-Super-Mare based band Ripcord with whom the aforementioned tour had been shared) and Shane Embury (former drummer of Unseen Terror) moved to bass.
The band then appeared on two compilation records ('North Atlantic Noise Attack' and the 'Pathological Compilation'), recorded two Peel sessions and a split 7" with Japanese band S.O.B. They also returned to Rich Bitch studio once more and recorded their second album: From Enslavement to Obliteration.
A follow-up release to "Enslavement..." came in the form of the six song 12" EP "Mentally Murdered", which was to be the last recording with the Harris/Steer/Dorrian/Embury line-up. This EP was recorded at the Slaughterhouse Studios and took on a slightly different sound, blending grindcore with death metal. Following the release, Napalm Death were featured on national television in the United Kingdom in a heavy metal special by Arena (BBC 2).
The band continued to tour, but as soon as they came back home from Japan, in July 1989, Steer and Dorrian left the band: Steer decided to dedicate himself full-time to Carcass, while Dorrian formed the doom metal group Cathedral. The group recruited Jesse Pintado (ex-Terrorizer) on guitar and Mark "Barney" Greenway (ex-Benediction) as vocalist. This line-up took part in the Grindcrusher tour organised by Earache Records and featuring fellow label-mates Carcass, Bolt Thrower and Morbid Angel. The group recruited Mitch Harris (ex-Righteous Pigs) as second guitarist after the tour.
Rise to success (1990–1994)
In Florida, the group began work on Harmony Corruption. Corruption saw stylistic changes from the band, exhibiting blast beats and slower tempos. Death metal was a greater influence on Corruption than previous records. Following the record's release, Live Corruption, a live recording of the band's 30 June 1990 performance at the Salisbury Arts Centre, was released in 1992.
Negative fan reactions to Corruption and accusations of selling out, compelled the band to reconsider its stylistic changes. The group entered Eddie Van Dale's Violent Noise Experience Club in March 1991 to record six new tracks. The songs produced by this session and released on the "Mass Appeal Madness" 12" LP exhibited a much more "raw" quality, again finding favour with fans. This recording, along with the "Mentally Murdered" 12", the split 7" with S.O.B. and live tracks from Live Corruption, were released on Death by Manipulation.
Drummer Mick Harris - the only remaining member of the Scum lineup - eventually left Napalm Death due to conflicts with the rest of the group over changes in its stylistic direction. Danny Herrera, a close friend of Jesse Pintado, was brought in as the new drummer. Herrera's drumming style has been noted for its uniqueness; being described as "Euroblast", a variant of blast beat in which simultaneous eighth notes are played on the ride cymbal and kick drum, with alternate eighth notes added on the snare drum. The addition of Herrera would be the last major line-up change of the band, save for Jesse Pintado's future absence, which has yet to be filled (and vocalist Phil Vane never recorded with the band).
Napalm Death released the album Utopia Banished in 1992, produced by Colin Richardson. This release was a kind of "return to the roots" - grindcore. After recording The World Keeps Turning EP, the band toured Europe with Dismember and Obituary on the "Campaign for Musical Destruction" tour. They then toured the US with Sepultura, Sacred Reich and Sick of It All. The proceeds of Napalm Death's 1993 EP Nazi Punks Fuck Off were donated to anti-fascist organisations.
Their EP, Nazi Punks Fuck Off, was inspired by Napalm Death touring South Africa during 1993, which was particularly controversial given that the band faced a lot of opposition from many white supremacists following the end of Apartheid.
The band remixed the track "Mind of a Razor" by London-based hip hop crew Gunshot. The remixed version of the track appeared on the EP of the same name in 1992.
Thereafter, they went to the studio and recorded Fear, Emptiness, Despair, which was released on 31 May 1994. The album represented a stylistic transition for Napalm Death. Fear, Emptiness, Despair maintained the complex music structures of their previous albums Utopia Banished and Harmony Corruption, but there was a greater emphasis placed on incorporating elements of groove into the band's style, resulting in a wider use of mid-paced music. Bassist Shane Embury recounts that Helmet and their album Strap It On influenced the band's style at the time, as they did many other heavy metal bands during the 1990s. Live concerts with Entombed, Obituary and Machine Head followed the album's release.
Diatribes, Greenway's departure and return (1995–1999)
Their EP Greed Killing was released through Earache in December 1995, followed by the album Diatribes in January 1996. There was greater animosity between the band during this time, with a rift between Greenway and the remainder of the band, especially over the band's stylistic transition and the interference of background presences in the band, exemplifying the former when he stated that the band were "letting go of what made the band special". Greenway was hence expelled from the band later in 1996, and went to record with fellow grindcore act Extreme Noise Terror (ENT) on their release Damage 381. Greenway has stated that following his expulsion he was "devastated" and did not want to commit to ENT in fear of a repetition of the events that took place within Napalm Death.
ENT's vocalist Phil Vane replaced Greenway in Napalm Death. Alas, Shane Embury stated that Vane "couldn't pull off what was required. It was a hard day when I had to pull Phil aside and tell him it just wasn't working. We had been too much into doing our own thing to acknowledge all of the parts that made the Napalm machine tick. I quickly made the call and asked Barney if he would rejoin—time away certainly gave all of us the chance for reflection, regrets and hopes for the future. He was surprised by the material, as it was heavy and some of the songs were fast—I don't know what he really expected us to do!". Following Vane's departure, Greenway returned and the band released the album Inside the Torn Apart on 3 June 1997. An EP and music video were released for the album's track "Breed to Breathe" on 17 November 1997.
The album Words from the Exit Wound followed this, being released on 26 October 1998. The album was their last to be produced by Colin Richardson, who Embury believes hindered the album's creation, ultimately affecting the album's success. Embury has stated that bands such as Nasum influenced the album, and in Embury's view, this album represented a turning point in the band's sound, stating "it was also a turning point in us moving towards rediscovering our roots." Embury also mentioned that following the album's release, the band found it hard to tour due to restricted budgets from their record label, but Cradle of Filth and Nick Barker were able to alleviate this problem.
In 1999 the band made an appearance on Chris Evans' TFI Friday, playing three songs on a set lasting 59 seconds.
Departure from Earache and the departure of Pintado (2000–2004)
The band acrimoniously departed from Earache Records following Words from the Exit Wound and later released Enemy of the Music Business on the record label, Dream Catcher, on 25 September 2000; which showed the band's anger with the music industry and especially with Earache, whilst also incorporating a greater grindcore influence than on their previous few albums. The album was produced jointly by Simon Efemey and Russ Russell, the latter of whom has since been a long-time collaborator with Napalm Death.
Order of the Leech continued with the previous album's style, being released on 21 October 2002, also being produced jointly by Efemey and Russell. In 2003, Embury and Hererra formed the side-project Venomous Concept with Kevin Sharp and Buzz Osborne, and that group has since released four albums. In 2004, Napalm Death recorded a covers album called Leaders Not Followers: Part 2, the sequel to their earlier covers EP. It contains covers of old hardcore punk and heavy metal bands, including Cryptic Slaughter, Massacre, Kreator, Sepultura, Siege and Discharge. Due to personal problems, Jesse Pintado did not play on either Order of the Leech or Leaders Not Followers: Part 2, and left the band in early 2004. Nevertheless, Pintado stated that he left because he grew tired of Napalm Death and wanted to start something new. The two guitars that you hear is Mitch double-tracking.
The Code Is Red... and Time Waits for No Slave (2005–2010)
In April 2005, their next album The Code Is Red...Long Live the Code was released. It features guest appearances from Jeffrey Walker (Carcass), Jamey Jasta (Hatebreed vocalist) and Jello Biafra (formerly of Dead Kennedys, and Lard among many other bands). The album continued the band's progressive approach to their brutal brand of extreme metal, with their trademark grindcore sound retained. Also in 2005, Embury and Herrera joined the extreme metal band Anaal Nathrakh for one tour.
Napalm Death finished recording their follow-up album titled Smear Campaign in June 2006, and it was released on 15 September 2006 to strong reviews from fans and critics alike. The main lyrical focus is criticism of the United States Government and other governments who are strongly religious. The album features a guest appearance by Anneke van Giersbergen, vocalist for the Dutch rock band The Gathering. There is a limited edition digipak version of Smear Campaign, which has two new songs, "Call That an Option?" and "Atheist Runt". They played a series of headline shows in support of the release including the Koko in Camden with Gutworm.
In early 2006 Napalm Death headlined a tour with Kreator, A Perfect Murder, and Undying. On 27 August 2006, Jesse Pintado died in a hospital in the Netherlands due to liver failure, prompting Mitch Harris to express his sadness at the loss of someone he thought of as "a brother" on the band's official website. After the Smear Campaign tour, the band did a 2007 "World Domination Tour". Bassist Shane Embury is currently working on a project with Mick Kenney of Anaal Nathrakh, their work together will be released on FETO Records at the end of 2007. In November 2008, Napalm Death's fourteenth studio album, entitled Time Waits for No Slave, leaked onto the internet; it was officially released on 23 January 2009. Similar to Smear Campaign, Time Waits For No Slave also had a digipak version containing two extra songs ("Suppressed Hunger" and "Omnipresent Knife in Your Back").
Utilitarian and Apex Predator – Easy Meat (2011–2016)
In February 2011, Napalm Death appeared in an episode of E4's Skins. Napalm Death entered Parlour Studio in Kettering, with producer Russ Russell to begin working on a new album. Also in 2011, they recorded the single "Legacy Was Yesterday". Napalm Death released their fifteenth studio album, Utilitarian, on 27 February 2012 in Europe and 28 February in North America via Century Media. In March 2012, Napalm Death headlined the Metal Mayhem IV festival organized by "Defenders of Metal" in Nepal. This was the first time Napalm Death played in Nepal.
Napalm Death were scheduled to play a special one-off show at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, on 22 March 2013. The show was eventually cancelled at the Victoria and Albert Museum, due to concerns that the noise levels could damage parts of the museum. The show was relocated to the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill, and was performed on 29 November 2013. The performance was a collaboration with ceramicist and Victoria and Albert Artist in Residence Keith Harrison. The show featured 10 large-scale wooden speakers filled with liquid clay that were left to solidify. When the band began to play, the clay inside the speakers was expected to vibrate, causing the speakers to crack and eventually explode. The actual performance was considered anticlimactic, as the speakers withstood the sonic vibration.
In April 2014, the band released a cover of the Cardiacs' song "To Go Off and Things" via Bandcamp. All proceeds from the single went towards Cardiacs frontman Tim Smith's recovery from a simultaneous heart attack/stroke he suffered in 2008. The band announced on 5 November 2014, via Facebook that due to an illness in the family, Mitch Harris would be taking a hiatus from the band, to be replaced by various guitarists on their tour. Napalm Death's sixteenth studio album, Apex Predator – Easy Meat, was released on 26 January 2015. On 4 July, a Nepal Charity Event track from the Apex Predator sessions called "Earth Wire" was released on their page.
Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism (2017–present)
In August 2017, it was announced that Napalm Death entered the studio to begin recording their sixteenth studio album for an early 2018 release. In September, frontman Mark "Barney" Greenway spoke to Australia's Sticks for Stones condemning the announcement and stated that no material was being worked on at the moment but was in the "preliminary stages". He then said that it would not be released until later next year. In an interview at Download Festival in June 2018, Greenway confirmed that guitarist Mitch Harris would appear on the new album, which was not expected to be released until 2019, but did not know if he would tour with them again. Bassist Shane Embury confirmed in a March 2019 interview with Extreme Metal Festival News that Harris "did come over and record guitars on the new record" and Greenway has "nearly recorded all his vocal parts." He added, however, that the album will not be released before early 2020.
Napalm Death (along with Lamb of God, Anthrax, and Testament) opened for Slayer on their final North American tour in the summer of 2018. In October 2019, Shane Embury announced that he would be unable to join the band during their North American Tour. Vernon Blake was announced as substitute live bassist.
An EP titled Logic Ravaged by Brute Force was released on 7 February 2020. The band released their sixteenth studio album, Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism, in September 2020.
Political views
The band espouse anarchism, humanism, socialism and animal rights.
Napalm Death congratulated the president of Indonesia, Joko Widodo, a fan of the band, on their Facebook fan page; however, after the Bali Nine and the Lindsay Sandiford case, he came under fire from the band, as well as many others within the metal scene, after their appeals for clemency were ignored.
Inspired by the band's political stance, Professor Simon Springer wrote the conclusion to his 2016 book, The Discourse of Neoliberalism: An Anatomy of a Powerful Idea, by incorporating as many Napalm Death song and album titles into the text as he could.
Members
Current members
Shane Embury – bass, backing vocals (1987–present)
Danny Herrera – drums (1991–present)
Mark "Barney" Greenway – lead vocals (1989–1996, 1997–present)
Mitch Harris – guitars, backing vocals (1990–present)
Touring musicians
John Cooke – guitars, backing vocals (2014–2015, 2015–present)
Vernon Blake – bass (2015, 2019–2020)
Former members
Stephen Beddows - Drums*
Nicholas "Nik Napalm" Bullen – lead vocals, bass (1981–1986)
Miles "Rat" Ratledge – drums (1981–1985)
Simon "Si O" Oppenheimer – guitars (1981–1982)
Graham "Grayhard" Robertson – guitars, bass (1982–1985)
Daryl "Daz F" Fedeski – guitars (1982)
Finbar "Fin" Quinn – bass (1983–1984)
Marian Williams – lead vocals (1984)
Damien Errington – guitars (1985)
Justin Broadrick – guitars, backing and lead vocals (1985–1986)
Peter "P-Nut" Shaw – bass (1985)
Mick Harris – drums, backing vocals (1985–1991)
Jim Whitely – bass (1986–1987)
Frank Healy – guitars (1986)
Bill Steer – guitars (1987–1989)
Lee Dorrian – lead vocals (1987–1989)
Jesse Pintado – guitars (1989–2004; died 2006)
Phil Vane – lead vocals (1996–1997; died 2011)
Erik Burke - guitars (2015)
Jesper Liveröd – bass (2017)
Timeline
Discography
Studio albums
Scum (1987)
From Enslavement to Obliteration (1988)
Harmony Corruption (1990)
Utopia Banished (1992)
Fear, Emptiness, Despair (1994)
Diatribes (1996)
Inside the Torn Apart (1997)
Words from the Exit Wound (1998)
Enemy of the Music Business (2000)
Order of the Leech (2002)
The Code Is Red...Long Live the Code (2005)
Smear Campaign (2006)
Time Waits for No Slave (2009)
Utilitarian (2012)
Apex Predator – Easy Meat (2015)
Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism (2020)
Society and culture
Skins
In the E4 teen comedy-drama Skins, the seasons 5-6 character Rich Hardbeck (Alex Arnold) is a metalhead whose self-proclaimed favourite band is Napalm Death. In the show's fifth season finale, a special appearance from Napalm Death's Mark "Barney" Greenway featured a scene in which he and Rich have a heart-to-heart. Regarding the band's appearance, Barney stated, "One thing that bothers me about TV is the way that teenagers are portrayed. It's down to the f--king Daily Mail's war on teenagers. They stigmatize young kids and it's bulls--t. The thing I like about 'Skins' is it gives a genuine perspective on growing up. That's why we agreed to do this show."
Notes
References
Barcinski, André & Gomes, Silvio (1999). Sepultura: Toda a História. São Paulo: Ed. 34.
Mudrian, Albert (2004). Choosing Death: the Improbable History of Death Metal and Grindcore. Los Angeles, CA: Feral House.
External links
1981 establishments in England
Century Media Records artists
British crust and d-beat groups
Deathgrind musical groups
Earache Records artists
English death metal musical groups
English grindcore musical groups
Kerrang! Awards winners
Musical groups established in 1981
Musical groups from Birmingham, West Midlands
Musical quartets
Political music groups | true | [
"The 2010–11 National League 2 North was the second season (twenty-fourth overall) of the fourth tier (north) of the English domestic rugby union competitions since the professionalised format of the second division was introduced. The league system was 4 points for a win, 2 points for a draw and additional bonus points being awarded for scoring 4 or more tries and/or losing within 7 points of the victorious team. In terms of promotion the league champions would go straight up into National League 1 while the runners up would have a one-game playoff against the runners up from National League 2 South (at the home ground of the club with the superior league record) for the final promotion place.\n\nThe league title ended up going to Fylde who finished 14 points clear of runners up Loughborough Students - quite a turnaround for a team that finished 9th the season before. Although there were 14 points between the two sides, Fylde actually only won one more game, but in the end it was the accumulating of bonus points that really pulled the Lancashire side clear, as they claimed 28 to Loughborough Students 23 (almost one a game). As well as being the best team in the division Fylde also pulled in the most fans with almost 14,000 supporters attending Woodlands over the course of the season (a great record for a division which had seen dwindling attendances over the years). Loughborough Students did have a second chance to go up against the 2010–11 National League 2 South runners up Jersey, but lost heavily away at St. Peter in front of a large crowd of over 3,000, to consign the Students to another year in National League 2 North, in what was their second playoff defeat in a row.\n\nAt the bottom of the table, Manchester had another shocking season, comfortably the worst team in the division with no points (not even bonus points) occurred with almost 2,000 points conceded, and suffering their fourth consecutive relegation since they dropped from the 2008–09 National Division One (now the Championship) in what was the worst overall league performance in the division since league rugby began. Rugby Lions were little better, with two of their three wins coming against the hapless Manchester, going down as the second relegated team with just 20 points, for what was their second relegation in a row. The final spot was far more competitive, with five teams separated by just 2 points but in a dramatic final game (which had been rescheduled from February), Hull Ionians managed to beat Morley away from home 27 - 25 and send the newly promoted Maroons back to their former league. Manchester and Rugby Lions would drop down to National League 3 North while Rugby Lions fell to National League 3 Midlands.\n\nParticipating teams and locations\n\nTwelve of the teams listed below participated in the 2009–10 National League 2 North season; Manchester and Nuneaton were relegated from the 2009–10 National League 1 while Luctonians came up as playoff winners from National League 3 Midlands along with Morley who were champions of National League 3 North. Ampthill had finished 2009-10 as champions of National League 3 Midlands and would have joined National League 2 North or the 2010–11 National League 2 South had they not been found in breach of regulations during a league game which cost them both the league title and promotion.\n\nFinal league table\n\nResults\n\nRound 1\n\nRound 2\n\nRound 3\n\nRound 4\n\nRound 5\n\nRound 6\n\nRound 7\n\nRound 8\n\nRound 9\n\nRound 10\n\nRound 11\n\nRound 12\n\nRound 13 \n\nPostponed. Game rescheduled to 5 February 2011.\n\nPostponed. Game rescheduled to 5 February 2011.\n\nPostponed. Game rescheduled to 5 February 2011.\n\nPostponed. Game rescheduled to 5 February 2011.\n\nPostponed. Game rescheduled to 5 February 2011.\n\nPostponed. Game rescheduled to 5 February 2011.\n\nPostponed. Game rescheduled to 5 February 2011.\n\nRound 14 \n\nPostponed. Game rescheduled to 26 February 2011.\n\nPostponed. Game rescheduled to 26 February 2011.\n\nPostponed. Game rescheduled to 26 February 2011.\n\nPostponed. Game rescheduled to 21 May 2011.\n\nPostponed. Game rescheduled to 26 February 2011.\n\nPostponed. Game rescheduled to 26 February 2011.\n\nPostponed. Game rescheduled to 26 February 2011.\n\nPostponed. Game rescheduled to 26 February 2011.\n\nRound 15 \n\nPostponed. Game rescheduled to 19 March 2011.\n\nRound 16 \n\nPostponed. Game rescheduled to 7 May 2011.\n\nPostponed. Game rescheduled to 19 March 2011.\n\nPostponed. Game rescheduled to 19 March 2011.\n\nPostponed. Game rescheduled to 19 March 2011.\n\nPostponed. Game rescheduled to 19 March 2011.\n\nPostponed. Game rescheduled to 7 May 2011.\n\nPostponed. Game rescheduled to 19 March 2011.\n\nPostponed. Game rescheduled to 19 March 2011.\n\nRound 17 \n\nPostponed. Game rescheduled to 14 May 2011.\n\nRound 18\n\nRound 19 \n\nPostponed. Game rescheduled to 21 May 2011.\n\nRound 20 \n\nPostponed. Game rescheduled to 14 May 2011.\n\nPostponed. Game rescheduled to 7 May 2011.\n\nPostponed. Game rescheduled to 14 May 2011.\n\nGame would initially be postponed but due to fixture congestion it would ultimately be cancelled due to the result not affecting the overall league table.\n\nRound 13 (rescheduled games) \n\nGame rescheduled from 27 November 2010.\n\nGame rescheduled from 27 November 2010.\n\nGame rescheduled from 27 November 2010.\n\nGame rescheduled from 27 November 2010.\n\nGame rescheduled from 27 November 2010.\n\nGame rescheduled from 27 November 2010.\n\nGame rescheduled from 27 November 2010.\n\nRound 21\n\nRound 22 \n\nPostponed. Game rescheduled to 21 May 2011.\n\nPostponed. Game rescheduled to 21 May 2011.\n\nRound 14 (rescheduled games) \n\nGame rescheduled from 4 December 2010.\n\nGame rescheduled from 4 December 2010.\n\nGame rescheduled from 4 December 2010.\n\nGame rescheduled from 4 December 2010.\n\nGame rescheduled from 4 December 2010.\n\nGame rescheduled from 4 December 2010.\n\nGame rescheduled from 4 December 2010.\n\nRound 23 \n\nPostponed. Game rescheduled to 14 May 2011.\n\nRound 24\n\nRounds 15 & 16 (rescheduled games) \n\nGame rescheduled from 11 December 2010.\n\nGame rescheduled from 18 December 2010.\n\nGame rescheduled from 18 December 2010.\n\nGame rescheduled from 18 December 2010.\n\nGame rescheduled from 18 December 2010.\n\nGame rescheduled from 18 December 2010.\n\nGame rescheduled from 18 December 2010.\n\nRound 25\n\nRound 26\n\nRound 27\n\nRound 28\n\nRound 29\n\nRound 30\n\nRounds 16 & 20 (rescheduled games) \n\nGame rescheduled from 18 December 2010.\n\nGame rescheduled from 29 January 2011.\n\nGame rescheduled from 18 December 2010.\n\nRounds 17, 20 & 23 (rescheduled games) \n\nGame rescheduled from 29 January 2011.\n\nGame rescheduled from 8 January 2010.\n\nGame rescheduled from 5 March 2011.\n\nGame rescheduled from 29 January 2011.\n\nRounds 14, 19 & 22 (rescheduled games) \n\nGame rescheduled from 19 February 2011.\n\nGame rescheduled from 22 January 2011.\n\nGame rescheduled from 4 December 2010.\n\nGame rescheduled from 19 February 2011.\n\nPromotion Play-Off\nEach season, the runners-up in the National League 2 North and National League 2 South participate in a play-off for promotion into National League 1. Jersey were runners-up in the South and would host the game as they had a better record in the league in comparison to the North runners up Loughborough Students.\n\nTotal season attendances\n\nIndividual statistics \n\n Note that points scorers includes tries as well as conversions, penalties and drop goals.\n\nTop points scorers\n\nTop try scorers\n\nSeason records\n\nTeam\nLargest home win — 118 pts\n118 - 0 Fylde at home to Manchester on 16 April 2011\nLargest away win — 86 pts\n92 - 6 Fylde away to Manchester on 26 February 2011\nMost points scored — 118 pts\n118 - 0 Fylde at home to Manchester on 16 April 2011\nMost tries in a match — 18 \nFylde at home to Manchester on 16 April 2011\nMost conversions in a match — 14\nFylde at home to Manchester on 16 April 2011\nMost penalties in a match — 6\nCaldy at home to Preston Grasshoppers on 11 December 2010\nMost drop goals in a match — 2 (x2)\nNuneaton at home to Leicester Lions on 11 September 2010\nPreston Grasshoppers at home to Hull Ionians on 16 October 2010\n\nPlayer\nMost points in a match — 37\n Gavin Roberts for Caldy at home to Manchester on 2 April 2011\nMost tries in a match — 6\n Gareth Collins for Leicester Lions at home to Hull Ionians on 13 November 2010\nMost conversions in a match — 14\n Stephen Collins for Fylde at home to Manchester on 16 April 2011\nMost penalties in a match — 6\n Richard Vasey for Caldy at home to Preston Grasshoppers on 11 December 2010\nMost drop goals in a match — 2 (x2)\n Lee Chapman for Nuneaton at home to Leicester Lions on 11 September 2010\n Mark Edwards for Preston Grasshoppers at home to Hull Ionians on 16 October 2010\n\nAttendances\nHighest — 2,415\nFylde at home to Preston Grasshoppers on 11 September 2010\nLowest — 50 \nHuddersfield at home to Hull Ionians on 11 December 2010\nHighest Average Attendance — 921\nFylde\nLowest Average Attendance — 126\nLeicester Lions\n\nSee also\n English Rugby Union Leagues\n English rugby union system\n Rugby union in England\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n NCA Rugby\n\n2010-11\n2010–11 in English rugby union leagues",
"The 2000–01 National Division Two was the fourteenth full season of rugby union within the third tier of the English league system currently known as National League 1. New teams to the division included West Hartlepool and Rugby Lions who were relegated from the 1999–2000 Allied Dunbar Premiership Two while promoted teams included Kendal and Esher who were promoted as champions of National Division Three North and National Division Three South respectively. The league system was 2 points for a win and 1 point for a draw.\n\nThe league champions were Bracknell who won the title by five points and gained promotion to the 2001–02 National Division One. They would be joined by runners up Rugby Lions (making an instant return to the division) who squeaked past Rosslyn Park despite being level on points due to a better points for/conceded record. At the other end of the table West Hartlepool, Lydney and Camberley would be the unfortunate teams to be relegated. West Hartlepool were easily the worse team in the division, failing to win a single game all season and suffering their second successive relegation in a row (part of a slide that would see them drop out of the national league system into regional rugby) while Lydney went down having only played 22 games due to fixture congestion/cancellations – although even if the Gloucestershire-based side won these remaining fixtures it would not have been enough to keep them up. West Hartlepool would drop to the 2001–02 National Division Three North while Camberley and Lydney would drop to the 2001–02 National Division Three South.\n\nParticipating teams and locations\n\nFinal league table\n\nResults\n\nSome of the early-season scores from Rugby Statbunker are incorrect (possibly due to an automatic scoring system used on that website) as they are different from those reported in the Telegraph. I have used scores from the England Rugby website to ensure that they are accurate with reports from Statbunker primarily used to show scorers, attendances and referees were relevant. Statbunker scores are consistent with rest of sources from 16 December 2000 onwards.\n\nRound 1\n\nRound 2\n\nRound 3 \n\nPostponed. Game rescheduled to 3 February 2001.\n\nRound 4\n\nRound 5\n\nRound 6\n\nRound 7\n\nRound 8 \n\nPostponed. Game rescheduled to 30 December 2000.\n\nPostponed. Game rescheduled to 30 December 2000.\n\nPostponed. Game rescheduled to 30 December 2000.\n\nPostponed. Game rescheduled to 30 December 2000.\n\nPostponed. Game rescheduled to 30 December 2000.\n\nPostponed. Game rescheduled to 30 December 2000.\n\nRound 9 \n\nPostponed. Game rescheduled to 3 February 2001.\n\nRound 10 \n\nPostponed. Game rescheduled to 17 February 2001.\n\nRound 11 \n\nPostponed. Game rescheduled to 3 February 2001.\n\nRound 12 \n\nPostponed. Game rescheduled to 3 February 2001.\n\nPostponed. Game rescheduled to 17 February 2001.\n\nRound 13\n\nRound 14 \n\nPostponed. Game rescheduled to 17 February 2001.\n\nRound 15\n\nRound 8 (rescheduled games) \n\nGame originally rescheduled from 4 November 2000 but postponed once again. Game rescheduled to 3 March 2001.\n\nGame originally rescheduled from 4 November 2000 but postponed once again. Game rescheduled to 3 March 2001.\n\nGame originally rescheduled from 4 November 2000 and was initially postponed once again - eventually being cancelled due to fixture congestion and the result being irrelevant to Lydney's eventual relegation.\n\nGame originally rescheduled from 4 November 2000 but postponed once again. Game rescheduled to 3 March 2001.\n\nGame originally rescheduled from 4 November 2000 but postponed once again. Game rescheduled to 3 March 2001.\n\nGame originally rescheduled from 4 November 2000 but postponed once again. Game rescheduled to 17 February 2001.\n\nRound 16\n\nRound 17\n\nRound 18 \n\nPostponed. Game rescheduled to 8 April 2001.\n\nPostponed. Game rescheduled to 3 February 2001.\n\nPostponed. Game rescheduled to 7 April 2001.\n\nPostponed. Game rescheduled to 7 April 2001.\n\nPostponed. Game rescheduled to 7 April 2001.\n\nPostponed. Game rescheduled to 6 April 2001.\n\nRound 19 \n\nPostponed. Game rescheduled to 21 April 2001.\n\nRounds 3, 9, 11, 12 & 18 (rescheduled games) \n\nGame rescheduled from 16 September 2000.\n\nGame rescheduled from 25 November 2000.\n\nGame rescheduled from 20 January 2001.\n\nGame rescheduled from 2 December 2000.\n\nGame rescheduled from 11 November 2000.\n\nRound 20 \n\nPostponed. Game rescheduled to 21 April 2001.\n\nRounds 8, 10, 12 & 14 (rescheduled games) \n\nGame rescheduled from 18 November 2000.\n\nGame rescheduled from 16 December 2000.\n\nGame rescheduled from 30 December 2000.\n\nGame rescheduled from 2 December 2000.\n\nRound 21 \n\nPostponed. Game rescheduled to 21 April 2001.\n\nRound 8 (rescheduled games) \n\nGame rescheduled from 30 December 2000.\n\nGame rescheduled from 30 December 2000.\n\nGame rescheduled from 30 December 2000.\n\nRound 22 \n\nPostponed. Game rescheduled to 28 April 2001.\n\nRound 23 \n\nGame was initially postponed but would eventually be cancelled due to fixture congestion and the result being irrelevant to Lydney's eventual relegation.\n\nRound 24\n\nRound 25 \n\nGame was initially postponed but would eventually be cancelled due to fixture congestion and the result being irrelevant to Lydney's eventual relegation.\n\nRound 18 (rescheduled games) \n\nGame rescheduled from 20 January 2001.\n\nGame rescheduled from 20 January 2001.\n\nGame rescheduled from 20 January 2001.\n\nGame rescheduled from 20 January 2001.\n\nGame rescheduled from 20 January 2001.\n\nRound 26 \n\nGame was initially postponed but would eventually be cancelled due to fixture congestion and the result being irrelevant to Lydney's eventual relegation.\n\nRounds 19, 20 & 21 (rescheduled games) \n\nGame rescheduled from 27 January 2001.\n\nGame rescheduled from 10 February 2001.\n\nGame rescheduled from 24 February 2001.\n\nRounds 8 & 23 (rescheduled games) \n\nGame rescheduled from 4 November 2000.\n\nGame rescheduled from 10 March 2001.\n\nTotal season attendances\n\nIndividual statistics \n\n Note that points scorers includes tries as well as conversions, penalties and drop goals.\n\nTop points scorers\n\nTop try scorers\n\nSeason records\n\nTeam\nLargest home win — 92 pts\n92 - 0 Kendal at home to West Hartlepool on 27 January 2001\nLargest away win — 57 pts\n69 - 12 Rugby Lions away to Camberley on 21 April 2001\nMost points scored — 92 pts\n92 - 0 Kendal at home to West Hartlepool on 27 January 2001\nMost tries in a match — 14 (x2)\nKendal at home to West Hartlepool on 27 January 2001\nEsher at home to West Hartlepool on 8 April 2001\nMost conversions in a match — 12\nRugby Lions away to Camberley on 21 April 2001\nMost penalties in a match — 8\nLydney away to Fylde on 18 November 2000\nMost drop goals in a match — 2 (x2)\nCamberley at home to Nottingham on 17 February 2001\nNottingham away to Fylde on 14 April 2001\n\nPlayer\nMost points in a match — 42\n Mike Scott for Kendal at home to West Hartlepool on 27 January 2001\nMost tries in a match — 4\n Mike Scott for Kendal at home to West Hartlepool on 27 January 2001\nMost conversions in a match — 11 (x2)\n Jaques Steyn for Rugby Lions at home to Camberley on 2 December 2000\n Mike Scott for Kendal at home to West Hartlepool on 27 January 2001\nMost penalties in a match — 7\n Rob Smart for Camberley away to Fylde on 9 September 2000\nMost drop goals in a match — 2 (x2)\n Howard Graham for Camberley at home to Nottingham on 17 February 2001\n Tom Rolt for Nottingham away to Fylde on 14 April 2001\n\nAttendances\nHighest — 1,000 \nRosslyn Park at home to Rugby Lions on 24 February 2001\nLowest — 50 \nWest Hartlepool at home to Camberley on 31 March 2001\nHighest Average Attendance — 650\nRosslyn Park\nLowest Average Attendance — 164\t\nWest Hartlepool\n\nSee also\n English Rugby Union Leagues\n English rugby union system\n Rugby union in England\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n NCA Rugby\n\nNat\nNational League 1 seasons"
]
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[
"Chris Hedges",
"Allegations of plagiarism"
]
| C_93d6f68d107c4aad9ce4395c004be4ac_0 | Who accused him of plagiarism first | 1 | Who accused Chris Hedges of plagiarism first | Chris Hedges | In 2003, University of Texas classics professor Thomas Palaima wrote an article for the Austin-American Statesman accusing Hedges of plagiarizing Ernest Hemingway in Hedge's 2002 book War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. Palaima said that Hedges had corrected a passage in his first edition of War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning that was close to Hemingway, and he should have cited the paraphrase in all subsequent editions. Hedges' publisher at the time, PublicAffairs, said it did not believe the passage needed to be cited to Hemingway. The New Republic said that Palaima's allegation had resulted in the passage being reworded. But, after posting the article online, the magazine posted a correction box that read: "In the original version of this article, The New Republic indicated that PublicAffairs changed the text of War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning only after having been alerted by Thomas [Palaima] to the presence of plagiarism. In fact, the wording had been changed months earlier, and an edition with the present language existed at the time of Palaima's e-mail to PublicAffairs. However, there was still no attribution to Hemingway in the new version, despite the obvious similarities in ideas and formulation". In June 2014, Christopher Ketcham accused Hedges of plagiarism in an article published in The New Republic. Ketcham claims that Hedges plagiarized many writers over his career, including Matt Katz, Naomi Klein, Neil Postman, Ernest Hemingway, along with Ketcham's wife: Petra Bartosiewicz. Hedges, his editors at Truthdig, and his publisher Nation Books denied the claims made by Ketcham. In a response first published by The Real News on June 16, 2014, Hedges noted that Ketcham based his allegations on an unpublished manuscript which the latter man admitted he had never seen and passages that were actually footnoted or sourced. Hedges accused Ketcham and The New Republic (TNR) of malicious intent and character assassination. On the following day (June 17), The New Republic republished Hedges' response along with Ketcham's (and TNR's) response to the counter-allegations made by Hedges. The Washington Free Beacon reported The New York Times spokesman saying that it "did not have reason to believe Hedges plagiarized in his work for the paper" and had no plans to investigate Hedges for plagiarism. The American Prospect and Salon declined to publish Ketcham's article, and The Nation Institute and Truthdig issued statements dismissing Ketcham's allegations. CANNOTANSWER | Thomas Palaima | Christopher Lynn Hedges (born September 18, 1956) is an American journalist, Presbyterian minister, author and television host. A former reporter for The New York Times, Hedges has pursued work and activism related to covering his perspectives on political violence and critical views on American liberalism.
In his early career, Hedges worked as a freelance war correspondent in Central America for The Christian Science Monitor, NPR, and Dallas Morning News. Hedges began working for The New York Times in 1990. During his fifteen year tenure, Hedges reported from more than fifty countries and served as the Times Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief during the wars in the former Yugoslavia.
In 2001, Hedges contributed to The New York Times staff entry that received the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for the paper's coverage of global terrorism. He also received the Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism in 2002. Hedges left the Times in 2005 after an internal dispute over his public opposition to the Iraq War.
Hedges produced a weekly column for Truthdig for 14 years until the outlet's unexpected hiatus in 2020. Hedges' books include War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (2002), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction; American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America (2007); Death of the Liberal Class (2010); and Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt (2012), written with cartoonist Joe Sacco.
Hedges has taught at Columbia University, New York University, the University of Toronto and Princeton University. He has taught college credit writing courses in New Jersey prisons as part of the B.A. program offered by Rutgers University.
Hedges hosts the Emmy-nominated program On Contact for the RT (formerly Russia Today) television network. Hedges has described himself as a socialist and an anarchist, identifying with Dorothy Day in particular.
Early life
Christopher Lynn Hedges was born on September 18, 1956 in St. Johnsbury, Vermont. His father was a World War II veteran, Presbyterian minister, and anti-war activist. He grew up in rural Schoharie County, New York, southwest of Albany.
Education
Hedges received a scholarship to attend Loomis Chaffee School, a private boarding school in Windsor, Connecticut. Hedges founded an underground newspaper at the school that was banned by the administration and resulted in his being put on probation. He graduated in 1975.
Hedges enrolled into Colgate University and, though heterosexual, helped found an LGBT student group. Hedges received his Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Colgate in 1979. He received a Master of Divinity degree from Harvard University's Divinity School (where he studied under James Luther Adams) in 1983. Hedges lived in Roxbury, a blighted inner city neighborhood in Boston, as a seminarian and ran a small church. He was also a member of the Greater Boston YMCA's boxing team, writing that the boxing gym was "the only place I felt safe." He studied Latin and Classical Greek at Harvard.
Early career
Hedges began his career as a freelance journalist in Latin America. He wrote for several publications, including The Washington Post, and covered the Falklands War from Buenos Aires for National Public Radio. From 1983 to 1984, he covered the conflicts in El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala for The Christian Science Monitor and NPR. He was hired as the Central America Bureau Chief for The Dallas Morning News in 1984 and held this position until 1988. Noam Chomsky wrote of Hedges at the time that he was one of the "few US journalists in Central America who merit the title."
Hedges took a sabbatical to study Arabic in 1988. He was appointed the Middle East Bureau Chief for The Dallas Morning News in 1989. In one of his first stories for the paper he tracked down Robert Manning, the prime suspect in the 1985 bombing death in California of Alex Odeh, head of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee’s Western office, in the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Before Hedges discovered Manning, Israel claimed it had no knowledge of Manning’s whereabouts. Manning, linked to the militant Jewish Defense League and allegedly behind several murders, was extradited to the United States in 1991 where he is serving a life sentence for a separate bombing incident.
The New York Times
In 1990, Hedges was hired by The New York Times. He covered the first Gulf War for the paper, where he refused to participate in the military pool system that restricted the movement and reporting of journalists. He was arrested by the United States Army and had his press credentials revoked, but continued to defy the military restrictions to report outside the pool system. Hedges subsequently entered Kuwait with U.S. Marine Corps members who were distrustful of the Army's press control. Within The New York Times, R.W. Apple Jr. supported Hedges' defiance of the pool system.
Hedges was taken prisoner in Basra after the war by the Iraqi Republican Guard during the Shiite uprising. He was freed after a week. Hedges was appointed the paper’s Middle East Bureau Chief in 1991. His reporting on the atrocities committed by Saddam Hussein in the Kurdish-held parts of northern Iraq saw the Iraqi leader offer a bounty for anyone who killed Hedges, along with other western journalists and aid workers in the region. Several aid workers and journalists, including the German reporter Lissy Schmidt, were assassinated and others were severely wounded.
Yugoslav Wars (1995–2000)
In 1995, Hedges was named the Balkan Bureau Chief for The New York Times. He was based in Sarajevo when the city was being hit by over 300 shells a day by the surrounding Bosnia Serbs. He reported on the Srebrenica massacre in July 1995 and shortly after the war uncovered what appeared to be one of the central collection points and hiding places for perhaps thousands of corpses at the large open pit Ljubija mine during the Bosnian Serbs' ethnic cleansing campaign. He and the photographer Wade Goddard were the first reporters to travel with armed units of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in Kosovo. Hedges investigative piece was published in The New York Times in June 1999 detailing how Hashim Thaçi, leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army (and later president of Kosovo), directed a campaign in which as many as half a dozen top rebel commanders were assassinated and many others were brutally purged to consolidate his power. Thaci, indicted by the special court in The Hague on 10 counts of war crimes, is in detention in The Hague awaiting trial.
Hedges was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University during the 1998–1999 academic year.
Hedges ended his career of reporting in active conflicts in October 2000, partly due to trauma sustained from witnessing the death of a juvenile boy in Kosovo during a firefight.
Terrorism coverage and Iraq War (2001–2005)
Hedges was based in Paris following the attacks of 9/11, covering Al Qaeda in Europe and the Middle East. He was a part of an investigative team in The New York Times that won the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting in 2002 for their coverage of Al Qaeda. Hedges' contribution was an October 2001 article describing Al Qaeda's foiled bombing plot of the Embassy of the United States, Paris. Most of the awarded reporting was done by Judith Miller, who was later disgraced due to her work that falsely connected the operations of Al Qaeda to the Republic of Iraq led by Saddam Hussein. Many Times editors pushed to utilize dubious American intelligence reports that gave misleading or fabricated details around an alleged Iraqi connection to international terror.
Reporting from coached defectors
In a collaboration between The New York Times and Frontline, Hedges authored three articles covering the claims of false Iraqi defectors. Hedges worked on the behalf of Lowell Bergman of Frontline, who could not travel to Beirut to interview the purported defectors. The trip was organized by Ahmed Chalabi, who Hedges considered to be unreliable. The first defector Hedges interviewed identified themselves as Lt. General Jamal al-Ghurairy. Hedges consulted the U.S. Embassy in Turkey to confirm their identity, and the embassy falsely did so as the real al-Ghurairy had never left Iraq.
Hedges wrote a November 8, 2001 Times cover story about two former Iraqi military commanders who claimed to have trained foreign mujahedeen how to hijack planes and destroy vital American infrastructure. The two defectors also asserted there was a secret compound in Salman Pak facility where a German scientist was producing biological weapons. The Frontline report featured statements from American officials who doubted the claims of the defectors.
According to Jack Fairweather in Mother Jones: "The impact of the article ... was immediate: Op-eds ran in major papers, and the story was taken to a wider audience through cable-TV talk shows. When Condoleezza Rice, then President George W. Bush's national security adviser, was asked about the report at a press briefing, she said, 'I think it surprises no one that Saddam Hussein is engaged in all kinds of activities that are destabilizing. As late as 2006, according to Fairweather in the same article, conservative magazines including The Weekly Standard and National Review continued to use this article to justify the invasion of Iraq.
In the aftermath of the revelations that the Iraqi defectors were not legitimate, Hedges defended his comportment since he had done the story as a favor to Lowell Bergman, adding that "There has to be a level of trust between reporters. We cover each other's sources when it's a good story because otherwise everyone would get hold of it."
Exit from the Times
In 2003, Hedges was reprimanded by The New York Times for his opposition to U.S. involvement in the Iraq War because of perceived challenges to partiality. This was a motivating factor for his resignation from the Times in 2005.
Later career
In 2005, Hedges left The New York Times to become a senior fellow at Type Media Center, and a columnist at Truthdig, in addition to writing books and teaching inmates at a New Jersey correctional institution.
Obey, a 2013 documentary by British filmmaker Temujin Doran, is based on Hedges' book Death of the Liberal Class.
Truthdig (2006–2020)
Hedges produced a weekly column in Truthdig for 14 years. He was fired along with all of the editorial staff in March 2020. Hedges and the staff had gone on strike earlier in the month to protest the publisher's attempt to fire the Editor-in-Chief Robert Scheer, demand an end to a series of unfair labor practices and the right to form a union. Hedges has since been a writer for Scheerpost.
Citation error controversy
In June 2014, Christopher Ketcham published an article on The New Republic website accusing Hedges of improper citations, alleging the offenses constituted plagiarism. In response, some formatting and reference errors were corrected on the website for Truthdig. Additional accusations of plagiarism from Ketcham were countered by an independent investigation from the Type Media Center.
The Washington Free Beacon reported that a spokesperson for The New York Times said it "did not have reason to believe Hedges plagiarized in his work for the paper" and had no plans to investigate Hedges for plagiarism.
Prison writing teacher
Hedges has worked for a decade teaching writing classes in prisons in New Jersey through a program offered by Princeton University and later Rutgers University. A class that Hedges taught at East Jersey State Prison in 2013 went on to collaborate in the creation of a play titled Caged. Hedges has become a fierce critic of mass incarceration in the United States, and his experience as an educator in New Jersey prisons served as inspiration for his 2021 book Our Class: Trauma and Transformation in an American Prison.
Ordination and ministerial installation
On October 5, 2014, Hedges was ordained a minister within the Presbyterian Church. He was installed as Associate Pastor and Minister of Social Witness and Prison Ministry at the Second Presbyterian Church Elizabeth in Elizabeth, New Jersey. He mentioned being rejected for ordination 30 years earlier, saying that "going to El Salvador as a reporter was not something the Presbyterian Church at the time recognized as a valid ministry, and a committee rejected my 'call.
Political views
Economic views
Hedges contended at the Left Forum in 2015 that with the "denouement of capitalism and the disintegration of globalism", Karl Marx has been "vindicated as capitalism's most prescient and important critic". He said that Marx "foresaw that capitalism had built within it the seeds of its own destruction. He knew that reigning ideologies—think neoliberalism—were created to serve the interests of the elites and in particular the economic elites."
Environmental views
In a March 2009 column, Hedges warned that human over-population and mass species extinction are serious problems, and that any measures to save the ecosystem will be futile unless we cut population growth, and noted that, "As long as the Earth is viewed as the personal property of the human race, a belief embraced by everyone from born-again Christians to Marxists to free-market economists, we are destined to soon inhabit a biological wasteland."
On September 20, 2014, a day before the People's Climate March, Hedges joined Bernie Sanders, Naomi Klein, Bill McKibben, and Kshama Sawant on a panel moderated by WNYC's Brian Lehrer to discuss the issue of climate change. Hedges and Klein also participated in the 'Flood Wall Street' protests that occurred shortly thereafter.
Hedges' environmental concerns were his primary motivation to be vegan. Hedges authored an introduction to a vegan cookbook in 2015.
Other views
In March 2008, Hedges published the book titled I Don't Believe in Atheists, in which he argues that new atheism presents a danger that is similar to religious extremism.
In a December 2014 TruthDig column, Hedges compared the ethnic cleansing of ISIS to the actions of Israel's founding fathers in the late 1940s.
Hedges has repudiated the view that the Founding Fathers of the United States represented a legitimate form of democracy, writing that they rigged America's electoral process to thwart direct democracy and to protect the property rights of the aristocracy. He has written that the Electoral College has served to disenfranchise women, Native Americans, African Americans, and men who do not own property. He has praised abolitionists, labor organizers, women's suffragists, civil rights protestors, and anti-war activists for bringing some change to the structure of the U.S. government.
Hedges told Julian Casablancas, the lead singer for The Strokes who interviewed him for Rolling Stone on December 23, 2020, that one of the few events worth celebrating in American history took place on June 25, 1876 when Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho, led by Crazy Horse and Chief Gall, annihilated the 7th Cavalry under the command of Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer.
Activism
Anti-war activism
Hedges was an early critic of the Iraq War. In May 2003, he delivered a commencement address at Rockford College in Rockford, Illinois, saying: "We are embarking on an occupation that, if history is any guide, will be as damaging to our souls as it will be to our prestige and power and security." His speech was received with boos, "two students approached the stage to push [him] off the podium" (as he told an interviewer), and his microphone was shut off three minutes after he began speaking. Hedges had to end the commencement speech short because of the various student disruptions.
The New York Times, his employer, criticized his statements and issued him a formal reprimand for "public remarks that could undermine public trust in the paper's impartiality".
On December 16, 2010, he was arrested outside the White House along with Daniel Ellsberg and more than 100 activists who were protesting the war in Afghanistan.
In a piece published in Salon Magazine in March 2022, Hedges argued that NATO was at fault for Russia's invasion of Ukraine:The European Union has allocated hundreds of millions of euros to purchase weapons for Ukraine. Germany will almost triple its own defense budget for 2022. The Biden administration has asked Congress to provide $6.4 billion in funding to assist Ukraine, supplementing the $650 million in military aid to Ukraine over the past year. The permanent war economy operates outside the laws of supply and demand. It is the root of the two-decade-long quagmire in the Middle East. It is the root of the conflict with Moscow.
Occupy involvement
Hedges appeared as a guest on an October 2011 episode of the CBC News Network's Lang and O'Leary Exchange to discuss his support for the Occupy Wall Street protests; co-host Kevin O'Leary criticized him, saying that he sounded "like a left-wing nutbar". Hedges said "it will be the last time" he appears on the show, and compared the CBC to Fox News. CBC's ombudsman found O'Leary's heated remarks to be a violation of the public broadcaster's journalistic standards.
On November 3, 2011, Hedges was arrested with others in New York as part of the Occupy Wall Street demonstration, during which the activists staged a "people's hearing" on the activities of the investment bank Goldman Sachs and blocked the entrance to their corporate headquarters.
NDAA lawsuit
In 2012, after the Obama administration signed the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, Hedges sued members of the U.S. government, asserting that section 1021 of the law unconstitutionally allowed presidential authority for indefinite detention without habeas corpus. He was later joined in the suit, Hedges v. Obama, by activists including Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg. In May 2012 Judge Katherine B. Forrest of the Southern District of New York ruled that the counter-terrorism provision of the NDAA is unconstitutional. The Obama administration appealed the decision and it was overturned in July 2013 by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Hedges petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case, but the Supreme Court denied certiorari in April 2014.
Other activism
In the 2008 United States presidential campaign, Hedges was a speech writer for candidate Ralph Nader.
On April 15, 2016, Hedges was arrested, along with 100 other protesters, during a sit-in outside the Capitol building in Washington D.C. during Democracy Spring to protest the capture of the political system by corporations.
On May 27, 2020, Hedges announced that he would run as a Green Party candidate in New Jersey's 12th congressional district for the 2020 elections. However, he was informed the following day that running for office would conflict with FCC fairness doctrine rules because he was at that time hosting the nationally broadcast RT America television show On Contact. Hedges decided not to pursue office in order to keep hosting the show.
In September 2020, Chris Hedges spoke at the Movement for a People's Party convention.
Personal life
Hedges is married to the Canadian actress Eunice Wong. The couple have two children. Hedges also has two children from a previous marriage. He currently lives in Princeton, New Jersey. On November 11, 2014, Hedges announced that he and his family had become vegan. Hedges compared his decision to a vow of abstinence, adding that it is necessary "to make radical changes to save ourselves from ecological meltdown."
Hedges has post-traumatic stress disorder from his experience reporting in war zones.
Hedges studied Latin and Ancient Greek at Harvard, and speaks Arabic, French, and Spanish in addition to his native English.
Books
2002: War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning ()
2003: What Every Person Should Know About War ()
2005: Losing Moses on the Freeway: The 10 Commandments in America ()
2007: American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America ()
2008: I Don't Believe in Atheists ()
2008: Collateral Damage: America's War Against Iraqi Civilians, with Laila Al-Arian ()
2009: When Atheism Becomes Religion: America's New Fundamentalists, (), a retitled edition of I Don't Believe in Atheists
2009: Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle ()
2010: Death of the Liberal Class ()
2010: The World As It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress ()
2012: Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, with Joe Sacco ()
2015: Wages of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of Revolt ()
2016: Unspeakable ()
2018: America: The Farewell Tour ()
2021 Our Class: Trauma and Transformation in an American Prison ()
See also
Christian left
Sacrifice zone
References
External links
APB Speakers Bureau Chris Hedges
"Capitalism's 'Sacrifice Zones Bill Moyers talks with Chris Hedges, and comic-journalist Joe Sacco talking about their collaboration and showing drawings for their book Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, July 20, 2012. Retrieved July 30, 2012
Columns by Chris Hedges at Truthdig
What Every Person Should Know About War, first chapter at The New York Times
Chris Hedges at Scheerpost.
1956 births
Living people
21st-century American male writers
21st-century American non-fiction writers
American anarchists
American anti-capitalists
American anti-fascists
American Christian socialists
American foreign policy writers
American male non-fiction writers
American political writers
American Presbyterians
American reporters and correspondents
American socialists
American war correspondents
Anarchist writers
Anti-consumerists
Anti-corporate activists
Christian anarchists
The Christian Science Monitor people
Colgate University alumni
Columbia University faculty
Critics of atheism
The Dallas Morning News people
Harvard Divinity School alumni
Loomis Chaffee School alumni
The Nation (U.S. magazine) people
The New York Times writers
Nieman Fellows
PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award winners
People from Schoharie, New York
People from St. Johnsbury, Vermont
Presbyterian socialists
RT (TV network) people
War correspondents of the Iraq War
War correspondents of the Yugoslav Wars
Writers about religion and science | false | [
"Dănuţ Marcu (born 11 January 1952) is a Romanian mathematician and computer scientist, who received his Ph.D. from the University of Bucharest in 1981. He claimed to have authored more than 400 scientific papers.\n\nMarcu was frequently accused of plagiarism.\nThe editors of Studia Universitatis Babeş-Bolyai, Informatica decided to ban Marcu from their journal for this reason, as did the editors of 4OR and the editors of Geombinatorics. The editors of Geometriae Dedicata state that they suspect Marcu of plagiarism, as he submitted a manuscript which is \"more-or-less word for word the same\" as a paper by Bernt Lindström. Jerrold W. Grossman, Sanpei Kageyama, Martin R. Pettet, and anonymous reviewers have accused Marcu of plagiarism in MathSciNet reviews. According to the managing editors of Menemui Matematik, Marcu's paper in that journal is a well known result in graph theory, and the paper \"should not have been published\".\n\nSee also \n List of scientific misconduct incidents\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \n\nLiving people\n1952 births\n20th-century mathematicians\n21st-century mathematicians\nScientists from Bucharest\nPeople involved in plagiarism controversies\nPeople involved in scientific misconduct incidents\nRomanian mathematicians\nUniversity of Bucharest alumni",
"Weiwei Zhang () is a Chinese-Swedish author who writes under the pseudonym vivibear. Her stories include romance novels and time-traveling series for young adults, all published in Chinese. To date, all sixteen novels she wrote were believed to be found with various degrees of plagiarism, and the discovery was widely reported by Chinese media.\n\nVivibear managed to evade discovery until January 2009, and prior to this time, nine books have gone into print and are prominently placed on bestselling lists at all major Chinese online book retailers. More than a million copies have been sold in less than 4 years.\n\nPersonal life\nWeiwei Zhang (vivibear) was born on November 26, 1977 in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province. She attended Zhejiang University of Media and Communications (ZUMC) as an undergraduate, but conflicting reports from the media and the author herself imply that she probably did not receive an accredited diploma from this university. After leaving college, Zhang worked at the official TV station in the city of Ningbo. Not long after she left her job to marry a Swedish man in 2004. The couple now reside in Sweden.\n\nCareer\nWeiwei Zhang first wrote, and posted, on the internet The Search for Past Life (), a series of stories about a young girl who routinely travels back in time to solve mysteries. This began several book contracts.\n\nShe was the winner of several competitions for original stories in internet publishing. In the list of \"Top 20 List of Successful Chinese Internet Writers\" compiled in 2008, vivibear ranked No. 1.\n\nPlagiarism controversy\nOn January 30, 2009, a netizen on the forum \"Tianya.cn\" accused Weiwei Zhang of copying and plagiarizing. While reading one of vivibear's novels, this person noticed random switches between traditional Chinese and simplified Chinese, which is very unusual given that the writing system in mainland China has long ago been converted to simplified Chinese. More sections in vivibear's books were found to be identical to other people's works, all published at much earlier dates.\n\nThe post \"Successful Young Adult Author vivibear is a Plagiarizing Maniac\" received thousands of hits within the first hours of its appearance. Among the plagiarized works are fan fictions and yaoi stories that amateur writers published online, and well-known authors including Ryōtarō Shiba and Christian Jacq. The number of writers on the Plagiarized List has been reported to exceed 500. The number of works vivibear plagiarized was more than 600.\n\nDue to its severity, mainstream media, including newspapers \n, TV programs and news websites soon picked up the story and unanimously condemned what has become one of the largest instance of plagiarism by a single person. The Local, a Swedish news website reported Chinese media allegations of her plagiarism on April 26, 2009.\n\nThroughout this time, Weiwei Zhang has remained silent in regards to the plagiarism scandal. Since then, she has made deletions and corrections to her online blog where she publishes her latest book series, removing contents that were suspected of plagiarism.\n\nIn February and March, publishers and literature hosting websites having contracts with vivibear responded:\n jjwxc.net：Affirmed plagiarism. Clean up impossible: portion of plagiarized text too large . Delete vivibear's account.\n myfreshnet：Accusations of plagiarism are confirmed; The accused would not give any apology or explanation. Zhang's ID and personal column have been deleted\n Princess Monthly：Issues of Zhang's latest novels Fantasy Knight and 101st Time Runaway Bride have been delayed due to unspecified reasons\n Core Publishing Group: All unsold books by vivibear have been pulled off-shelf. From now on, we will not published any more of her novels. Please stop all related discussions\n Yueduji: The CEO has learnt of the situation; the company reserves the right to sue vivibear should proper authorities judge it to be plagiarism\n\nQueries to the Chinese Copyright Office have met no reply. Due to difficulty of international lawsuit, no legal actions have been taken against vivibear yet. On June 1, 2009, Ji Yi Fang (), the brother company of Princess Monthly, together with Hua Wen Publisher (), released Weiwei Zhang's Fantansy Knight, which had previously been exposed for plagiarism. Marketing campaigns for the new book present news reports of Weiwei Zhang's plagiarism in various media outlets as a sign of the author's popularity.\n\nJi Yi Fang severed ties with Weiwei Zhang soon after Fantansy Knight was published. Vivibear then signed on with newly opened publishing company Ju Shi Wen Hua (), a subsidiary of Shanda. Doubts about vivibear's integrity caused readers to file complaints with both Ju Shi Wen Hua and Shanda to no avail. As of present, Ju Shi Wen Hua has helped Vivibear to publish three books, Flora, Bloodline Bride, and a Mediterranean travel book called Across the Blue. Flora is accused of stealing plots from Japanese detective manga series Case Closed. Bloodline Bride had been accused of extensive plagiarism in 2009. Netizens who examined the official preview excerpts and teasers of vivibear's travel memoir found a fourth of the book's contents are identical to older travel accounts, magazine articles, and blogs who are written by other people and published prior to vivibear's work.\n\nVivibear continues writing in her on-line blog as usual.\n\nAchievements and honors\nBefore 2009, vivibear placed prominently in the \"Top 20 List of Successful Chinese Internet Writers\" and was admittedly one of the top-selling novelists on the Chinese romance fiction scene.\n\nSince 2009, vivibear continue to garner more honors. Numerous Chinese newspapers granted her the title \"Goddess of Plagiarism.\" In addition, on November 2, 2009, vivibear was given the Golden Crow GJM Award () for her achievement and efforts in plagiarism. The Golden Crow Award () has been compared to the Golden Raspberry Award. It is a grassroot virtual online competition that encourages Chinese internet users to nominate and vote their favorite celebrities for a variety of categories. Vivibear received 12150 votes, the highest number of votes in the history of Golden Crow.\n\nList of works\nAll books have been accused of plagiarism.\n\nPublished\n The Search for Past Life ()\n Sequel to The Search for Past Life ()\n The Search for Past Life 3 ()\n Girl Who Time Traveled Back to Kyoto ()\n Love Story in the Warring Kingdoms ()\n Search for the Dragon ()\n Tang Princess Looking for a Husband ()\n Lan Ling ()\n Legend of the Onmyōji ()\n Fantasy Knight ()\n Flora ()\n Bloodline Bride ()\n\nTo Be Published\n 101st Time Runaway Bride ()\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n vivibear's Baidu forum\n vivibear's Blog\n comprehensive evidence on vivibear's plagiarism\n\n1972 births\nLiving people\nChinese emigrants to Sweden\nSwedish bloggers\nWriters from Ningbo\nChinese bloggers\n21st-century Swedish novelists\nChinese women novelists\nPeople involved in plagiarism controversies\nSwedish women novelists\nSwedish women bloggers\nWomen bloggers"
]
|
[
"Chris Hedges",
"Allegations of plagiarism",
"Who accused him of plagiarism first",
"Thomas Palaima"
]
| C_93d6f68d107c4aad9ce4395c004be4ac_0 | where did he work at the time | 2 | where did Chris Hedges work at the time of his plagiarism allegations? | Chris Hedges | In 2003, University of Texas classics professor Thomas Palaima wrote an article for the Austin-American Statesman accusing Hedges of plagiarizing Ernest Hemingway in Hedge's 2002 book War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. Palaima said that Hedges had corrected a passage in his first edition of War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning that was close to Hemingway, and he should have cited the paraphrase in all subsequent editions. Hedges' publisher at the time, PublicAffairs, said it did not believe the passage needed to be cited to Hemingway. The New Republic said that Palaima's allegation had resulted in the passage being reworded. But, after posting the article online, the magazine posted a correction box that read: "In the original version of this article, The New Republic indicated that PublicAffairs changed the text of War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning only after having been alerted by Thomas [Palaima] to the presence of plagiarism. In fact, the wording had been changed months earlier, and an edition with the present language existed at the time of Palaima's e-mail to PublicAffairs. However, there was still no attribution to Hemingway in the new version, despite the obvious similarities in ideas and formulation". In June 2014, Christopher Ketcham accused Hedges of plagiarism in an article published in The New Republic. Ketcham claims that Hedges plagiarized many writers over his career, including Matt Katz, Naomi Klein, Neil Postman, Ernest Hemingway, along with Ketcham's wife: Petra Bartosiewicz. Hedges, his editors at Truthdig, and his publisher Nation Books denied the claims made by Ketcham. In a response first published by The Real News on June 16, 2014, Hedges noted that Ketcham based his allegations on an unpublished manuscript which the latter man admitted he had never seen and passages that were actually footnoted or sourced. Hedges accused Ketcham and The New Republic (TNR) of malicious intent and character assassination. On the following day (June 17), The New Republic republished Hedges' response along with Ketcham's (and TNR's) response to the counter-allegations made by Hedges. The Washington Free Beacon reported The New York Times spokesman saying that it "did not have reason to believe Hedges plagiarized in his work for the paper" and had no plans to investigate Hedges for plagiarism. The American Prospect and Salon declined to publish Ketcham's article, and The Nation Institute and Truthdig issued statements dismissing Ketcham's allegations. CANNOTANSWER | University of Texas | Christopher Lynn Hedges (born September 18, 1956) is an American journalist, Presbyterian minister, author and television host. A former reporter for The New York Times, Hedges has pursued work and activism related to covering his perspectives on political violence and critical views on American liberalism.
In his early career, Hedges worked as a freelance war correspondent in Central America for The Christian Science Monitor, NPR, and Dallas Morning News. Hedges began working for The New York Times in 1990. During his fifteen year tenure, Hedges reported from more than fifty countries and served as the Times Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief during the wars in the former Yugoslavia.
In 2001, Hedges contributed to The New York Times staff entry that received the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for the paper's coverage of global terrorism. He also received the Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism in 2002. Hedges left the Times in 2005 after an internal dispute over his public opposition to the Iraq War.
Hedges produced a weekly column for Truthdig for 14 years until the outlet's unexpected hiatus in 2020. Hedges' books include War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (2002), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction; American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America (2007); Death of the Liberal Class (2010); and Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt (2012), written with cartoonist Joe Sacco.
Hedges has taught at Columbia University, New York University, the University of Toronto and Princeton University. He has taught college credit writing courses in New Jersey prisons as part of the B.A. program offered by Rutgers University.
Hedges hosts the Emmy-nominated program On Contact for the RT (formerly Russia Today) television network. Hedges has described himself as a socialist and an anarchist, identifying with Dorothy Day in particular.
Early life
Christopher Lynn Hedges was born on September 18, 1956 in St. Johnsbury, Vermont. His father was a World War II veteran, Presbyterian minister, and anti-war activist. He grew up in rural Schoharie County, New York, southwest of Albany.
Education
Hedges received a scholarship to attend Loomis Chaffee School, a private boarding school in Windsor, Connecticut. Hedges founded an underground newspaper at the school that was banned by the administration and resulted in his being put on probation. He graduated in 1975.
Hedges enrolled into Colgate University and, though heterosexual, helped found an LGBT student group. Hedges received his Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Colgate in 1979. He received a Master of Divinity degree from Harvard University's Divinity School (where he studied under James Luther Adams) in 1983. Hedges lived in Roxbury, a blighted inner city neighborhood in Boston, as a seminarian and ran a small church. He was also a member of the Greater Boston YMCA's boxing team, writing that the boxing gym was "the only place I felt safe." He studied Latin and Classical Greek at Harvard.
Early career
Hedges began his career as a freelance journalist in Latin America. He wrote for several publications, including The Washington Post, and covered the Falklands War from Buenos Aires for National Public Radio. From 1983 to 1984, he covered the conflicts in El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala for The Christian Science Monitor and NPR. He was hired as the Central America Bureau Chief for The Dallas Morning News in 1984 and held this position until 1988. Noam Chomsky wrote of Hedges at the time that he was one of the "few US journalists in Central America who merit the title."
Hedges took a sabbatical to study Arabic in 1988. He was appointed the Middle East Bureau Chief for The Dallas Morning News in 1989. In one of his first stories for the paper he tracked down Robert Manning, the prime suspect in the 1985 bombing death in California of Alex Odeh, head of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee’s Western office, in the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Before Hedges discovered Manning, Israel claimed it had no knowledge of Manning’s whereabouts. Manning, linked to the militant Jewish Defense League and allegedly behind several murders, was extradited to the United States in 1991 where he is serving a life sentence for a separate bombing incident.
The New York Times
In 1990, Hedges was hired by The New York Times. He covered the first Gulf War for the paper, where he refused to participate in the military pool system that restricted the movement and reporting of journalists. He was arrested by the United States Army and had his press credentials revoked, but continued to defy the military restrictions to report outside the pool system. Hedges subsequently entered Kuwait with U.S. Marine Corps members who were distrustful of the Army's press control. Within The New York Times, R.W. Apple Jr. supported Hedges' defiance of the pool system.
Hedges was taken prisoner in Basra after the war by the Iraqi Republican Guard during the Shiite uprising. He was freed after a week. Hedges was appointed the paper’s Middle East Bureau Chief in 1991. His reporting on the atrocities committed by Saddam Hussein in the Kurdish-held parts of northern Iraq saw the Iraqi leader offer a bounty for anyone who killed Hedges, along with other western journalists and aid workers in the region. Several aid workers and journalists, including the German reporter Lissy Schmidt, were assassinated and others were severely wounded.
Yugoslav Wars (1995–2000)
In 1995, Hedges was named the Balkan Bureau Chief for The New York Times. He was based in Sarajevo when the city was being hit by over 300 shells a day by the surrounding Bosnia Serbs. He reported on the Srebrenica massacre in July 1995 and shortly after the war uncovered what appeared to be one of the central collection points and hiding places for perhaps thousands of corpses at the large open pit Ljubija mine during the Bosnian Serbs' ethnic cleansing campaign. He and the photographer Wade Goddard were the first reporters to travel with armed units of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in Kosovo. Hedges investigative piece was published in The New York Times in June 1999 detailing how Hashim Thaçi, leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army (and later president of Kosovo), directed a campaign in which as many as half a dozen top rebel commanders were assassinated and many others were brutally purged to consolidate his power. Thaci, indicted by the special court in The Hague on 10 counts of war crimes, is in detention in The Hague awaiting trial.
Hedges was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University during the 1998–1999 academic year.
Hedges ended his career of reporting in active conflicts in October 2000, partly due to trauma sustained from witnessing the death of a juvenile boy in Kosovo during a firefight.
Terrorism coverage and Iraq War (2001–2005)
Hedges was based in Paris following the attacks of 9/11, covering Al Qaeda in Europe and the Middle East. He was a part of an investigative team in The New York Times that won the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting in 2002 for their coverage of Al Qaeda. Hedges' contribution was an October 2001 article describing Al Qaeda's foiled bombing plot of the Embassy of the United States, Paris. Most of the awarded reporting was done by Judith Miller, who was later disgraced due to her work that falsely connected the operations of Al Qaeda to the Republic of Iraq led by Saddam Hussein. Many Times editors pushed to utilize dubious American intelligence reports that gave misleading or fabricated details around an alleged Iraqi connection to international terror.
Reporting from coached defectors
In a collaboration between The New York Times and Frontline, Hedges authored three articles covering the claims of false Iraqi defectors. Hedges worked on the behalf of Lowell Bergman of Frontline, who could not travel to Beirut to interview the purported defectors. The trip was organized by Ahmed Chalabi, who Hedges considered to be unreliable. The first defector Hedges interviewed identified themselves as Lt. General Jamal al-Ghurairy. Hedges consulted the U.S. Embassy in Turkey to confirm their identity, and the embassy falsely did so as the real al-Ghurairy had never left Iraq.
Hedges wrote a November 8, 2001 Times cover story about two former Iraqi military commanders who claimed to have trained foreign mujahedeen how to hijack planes and destroy vital American infrastructure. The two defectors also asserted there was a secret compound in Salman Pak facility where a German scientist was producing biological weapons. The Frontline report featured statements from American officials who doubted the claims of the defectors.
According to Jack Fairweather in Mother Jones: "The impact of the article ... was immediate: Op-eds ran in major papers, and the story was taken to a wider audience through cable-TV talk shows. When Condoleezza Rice, then President George W. Bush's national security adviser, was asked about the report at a press briefing, she said, 'I think it surprises no one that Saddam Hussein is engaged in all kinds of activities that are destabilizing. As late as 2006, according to Fairweather in the same article, conservative magazines including The Weekly Standard and National Review continued to use this article to justify the invasion of Iraq.
In the aftermath of the revelations that the Iraqi defectors were not legitimate, Hedges defended his comportment since he had done the story as a favor to Lowell Bergman, adding that "There has to be a level of trust between reporters. We cover each other's sources when it's a good story because otherwise everyone would get hold of it."
Exit from the Times
In 2003, Hedges was reprimanded by The New York Times for his opposition to U.S. involvement in the Iraq War because of perceived challenges to partiality. This was a motivating factor for his resignation from the Times in 2005.
Later career
In 2005, Hedges left The New York Times to become a senior fellow at Type Media Center, and a columnist at Truthdig, in addition to writing books and teaching inmates at a New Jersey correctional institution.
Obey, a 2013 documentary by British filmmaker Temujin Doran, is based on Hedges' book Death of the Liberal Class.
Truthdig (2006–2020)
Hedges produced a weekly column in Truthdig for 14 years. He was fired along with all of the editorial staff in March 2020. Hedges and the staff had gone on strike earlier in the month to protest the publisher's attempt to fire the Editor-in-Chief Robert Scheer, demand an end to a series of unfair labor practices and the right to form a union. Hedges has since been a writer for Scheerpost.
Citation error controversy
In June 2014, Christopher Ketcham published an article on The New Republic website accusing Hedges of improper citations, alleging the offenses constituted plagiarism. In response, some formatting and reference errors were corrected on the website for Truthdig. Additional accusations of plagiarism from Ketcham were countered by an independent investigation from the Type Media Center.
The Washington Free Beacon reported that a spokesperson for The New York Times said it "did not have reason to believe Hedges plagiarized in his work for the paper" and had no plans to investigate Hedges for plagiarism.
Prison writing teacher
Hedges has worked for a decade teaching writing classes in prisons in New Jersey through a program offered by Princeton University and later Rutgers University. A class that Hedges taught at East Jersey State Prison in 2013 went on to collaborate in the creation of a play titled Caged. Hedges has become a fierce critic of mass incarceration in the United States, and his experience as an educator in New Jersey prisons served as inspiration for his 2021 book Our Class: Trauma and Transformation in an American Prison.
Ordination and ministerial installation
On October 5, 2014, Hedges was ordained a minister within the Presbyterian Church. He was installed as Associate Pastor and Minister of Social Witness and Prison Ministry at the Second Presbyterian Church Elizabeth in Elizabeth, New Jersey. He mentioned being rejected for ordination 30 years earlier, saying that "going to El Salvador as a reporter was not something the Presbyterian Church at the time recognized as a valid ministry, and a committee rejected my 'call.
Political views
Economic views
Hedges contended at the Left Forum in 2015 that with the "denouement of capitalism and the disintegration of globalism", Karl Marx has been "vindicated as capitalism's most prescient and important critic". He said that Marx "foresaw that capitalism had built within it the seeds of its own destruction. He knew that reigning ideologies—think neoliberalism—were created to serve the interests of the elites and in particular the economic elites."
Environmental views
In a March 2009 column, Hedges warned that human over-population and mass species extinction are serious problems, and that any measures to save the ecosystem will be futile unless we cut population growth, and noted that, "As long as the Earth is viewed as the personal property of the human race, a belief embraced by everyone from born-again Christians to Marxists to free-market economists, we are destined to soon inhabit a biological wasteland."
On September 20, 2014, a day before the People's Climate March, Hedges joined Bernie Sanders, Naomi Klein, Bill McKibben, and Kshama Sawant on a panel moderated by WNYC's Brian Lehrer to discuss the issue of climate change. Hedges and Klein also participated in the 'Flood Wall Street' protests that occurred shortly thereafter.
Hedges' environmental concerns were his primary motivation to be vegan. Hedges authored an introduction to a vegan cookbook in 2015.
Other views
In March 2008, Hedges published the book titled I Don't Believe in Atheists, in which he argues that new atheism presents a danger that is similar to religious extremism.
In a December 2014 TruthDig column, Hedges compared the ethnic cleansing of ISIS to the actions of Israel's founding fathers in the late 1940s.
Hedges has repudiated the view that the Founding Fathers of the United States represented a legitimate form of democracy, writing that they rigged America's electoral process to thwart direct democracy and to protect the property rights of the aristocracy. He has written that the Electoral College has served to disenfranchise women, Native Americans, African Americans, and men who do not own property. He has praised abolitionists, labor organizers, women's suffragists, civil rights protestors, and anti-war activists for bringing some change to the structure of the U.S. government.
Hedges told Julian Casablancas, the lead singer for The Strokes who interviewed him for Rolling Stone on December 23, 2020, that one of the few events worth celebrating in American history took place on June 25, 1876 when Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho, led by Crazy Horse and Chief Gall, annihilated the 7th Cavalry under the command of Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer.
Activism
Anti-war activism
Hedges was an early critic of the Iraq War. In May 2003, he delivered a commencement address at Rockford College in Rockford, Illinois, saying: "We are embarking on an occupation that, if history is any guide, will be as damaging to our souls as it will be to our prestige and power and security." His speech was received with boos, "two students approached the stage to push [him] off the podium" (as he told an interviewer), and his microphone was shut off three minutes after he began speaking. Hedges had to end the commencement speech short because of the various student disruptions.
The New York Times, his employer, criticized his statements and issued him a formal reprimand for "public remarks that could undermine public trust in the paper's impartiality".
On December 16, 2010, he was arrested outside the White House along with Daniel Ellsberg and more than 100 activists who were protesting the war in Afghanistan.
In a piece published in Salon Magazine in March 2022, Hedges argued that NATO was at fault for Russia's invasion of Ukraine:The European Union has allocated hundreds of millions of euros to purchase weapons for Ukraine. Germany will almost triple its own defense budget for 2022. The Biden administration has asked Congress to provide $6.4 billion in funding to assist Ukraine, supplementing the $650 million in military aid to Ukraine over the past year. The permanent war economy operates outside the laws of supply and demand. It is the root of the two-decade-long quagmire in the Middle East. It is the root of the conflict with Moscow.
Occupy involvement
Hedges appeared as a guest on an October 2011 episode of the CBC News Network's Lang and O'Leary Exchange to discuss his support for the Occupy Wall Street protests; co-host Kevin O'Leary criticized him, saying that he sounded "like a left-wing nutbar". Hedges said "it will be the last time" he appears on the show, and compared the CBC to Fox News. CBC's ombudsman found O'Leary's heated remarks to be a violation of the public broadcaster's journalistic standards.
On November 3, 2011, Hedges was arrested with others in New York as part of the Occupy Wall Street demonstration, during which the activists staged a "people's hearing" on the activities of the investment bank Goldman Sachs and blocked the entrance to their corporate headquarters.
NDAA lawsuit
In 2012, after the Obama administration signed the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, Hedges sued members of the U.S. government, asserting that section 1021 of the law unconstitutionally allowed presidential authority for indefinite detention without habeas corpus. He was later joined in the suit, Hedges v. Obama, by activists including Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg. In May 2012 Judge Katherine B. Forrest of the Southern District of New York ruled that the counter-terrorism provision of the NDAA is unconstitutional. The Obama administration appealed the decision and it was overturned in July 2013 by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Hedges petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case, but the Supreme Court denied certiorari in April 2014.
Other activism
In the 2008 United States presidential campaign, Hedges was a speech writer for candidate Ralph Nader.
On April 15, 2016, Hedges was arrested, along with 100 other protesters, during a sit-in outside the Capitol building in Washington D.C. during Democracy Spring to protest the capture of the political system by corporations.
On May 27, 2020, Hedges announced that he would run as a Green Party candidate in New Jersey's 12th congressional district for the 2020 elections. However, he was informed the following day that running for office would conflict with FCC fairness doctrine rules because he was at that time hosting the nationally broadcast RT America television show On Contact. Hedges decided not to pursue office in order to keep hosting the show.
In September 2020, Chris Hedges spoke at the Movement for a People's Party convention.
Personal life
Hedges is married to the Canadian actress Eunice Wong. The couple have two children. Hedges also has two children from a previous marriage. He currently lives in Princeton, New Jersey. On November 11, 2014, Hedges announced that he and his family had become vegan. Hedges compared his decision to a vow of abstinence, adding that it is necessary "to make radical changes to save ourselves from ecological meltdown."
Hedges has post-traumatic stress disorder from his experience reporting in war zones.
Hedges studied Latin and Ancient Greek at Harvard, and speaks Arabic, French, and Spanish in addition to his native English.
Books
2002: War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning ()
2003: What Every Person Should Know About War ()
2005: Losing Moses on the Freeway: The 10 Commandments in America ()
2007: American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America ()
2008: I Don't Believe in Atheists ()
2008: Collateral Damage: America's War Against Iraqi Civilians, with Laila Al-Arian ()
2009: When Atheism Becomes Religion: America's New Fundamentalists, (), a retitled edition of I Don't Believe in Atheists
2009: Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle ()
2010: Death of the Liberal Class ()
2010: The World As It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress ()
2012: Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, with Joe Sacco ()
2015: Wages of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of Revolt ()
2016: Unspeakable ()
2018: America: The Farewell Tour ()
2021 Our Class: Trauma and Transformation in an American Prison ()
See also
Christian left
Sacrifice zone
References
External links
APB Speakers Bureau Chris Hedges
"Capitalism's 'Sacrifice Zones Bill Moyers talks with Chris Hedges, and comic-journalist Joe Sacco talking about their collaboration and showing drawings for their book Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, July 20, 2012. Retrieved July 30, 2012
Columns by Chris Hedges at Truthdig
What Every Person Should Know About War, first chapter at The New York Times
Chris Hedges at Scheerpost.
1956 births
Living people
21st-century American male writers
21st-century American non-fiction writers
American anarchists
American anti-capitalists
American anti-fascists
American Christian socialists
American foreign policy writers
American male non-fiction writers
American political writers
American Presbyterians
American reporters and correspondents
American socialists
American war correspondents
Anarchist writers
Anti-consumerists
Anti-corporate activists
Christian anarchists
The Christian Science Monitor people
Colgate University alumni
Columbia University faculty
Critics of atheism
The Dallas Morning News people
Harvard Divinity School alumni
Loomis Chaffee School alumni
The Nation (U.S. magazine) people
The New York Times writers
Nieman Fellows
PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award winners
People from Schoharie, New York
People from St. Johnsbury, Vermont
Presbyterian socialists
RT (TV network) people
War correspondents of the Iraq War
War correspondents of the Yugoslav Wars
Writers about religion and science | false | [
"William Bowers (January 17, 1916 – March 27, 1987) was an American reporter, playwright, and screenwriter. He worked as a reporter in Long Beach, California and for Life magazine, and specialized in writing comedy-westerns. He also turned out several thrillers.\n\nCareer\n\nBowers' first play was Where Do We Go From Here? that ran for 15 performances in 1968.\n\nRKO\nBowers signed with RKO. His first credited screenplay was My Favorite Spy for Kay Kyser in 1942. Also at that studio Bowers helped write the musical comedy Seven Days' Leave (1942), which was a huge hit, and The Adventures of a Rookie (1943) with the team of Carney and Brown. He also did Higher and Higher (1943), Frank Sinatra's first movie.\n\nWar service\nDuring World War II, Bowers served in the United States Army Air Forces Civilian Pilot Training Program where he met Arch Hall Sr. Bowers later wrote a screenplay based on his experiences, The Last Time I Saw Archie, where Jack Webb played Bowers.<ref>p.3 Weaver, Tom Richard Alden Interview I Talked with a Zombie: Interviews with 23 Veterans of Horror and Sci-fi Films and Television\nMcFarland, 2009</ref>\n\nPost War\nHe wrote Sing Your Way Home (1945) with Jack Haley for RKO.\n\nFor Columbia he helped write The Notorious Lone Wolf (1946) and at Warner Bros did the Cole Porter biopic Night and Day (1946). For Republic Pictures he provided the story for The Fabulous Suzanne (1946) and he worked on Paramount's Ladies' Man (1947) for Eddie Bracken.\n\nUniversal\nAt Universal Bowers wrote The Web (1947), a noir, and Deanna Durbin's second last film Something in the Wind (1947). He provided the story for the Abbott and Costello comedy The Wistful Widow of Wagon Gap (1948) and wrote the Yvonne de Carlo-Dan Duryea Westerns Black Bart, Highwayman (1948) and River Lady (1948). He did some uncredited work on United Artists' Pitfall (1948).\n\nHe wrote a noir, Larceny (1948) then did a Sonja Henie musical, The Countess of Monte Cristo (1948).\n\nA play he wrote entitled West of Tomorrow was filmed by 20th Century Fox as Jungle Patrol. Bowers did some uncredited work on Criss Cross (1949) and provided the story for the de Carlo vehicle, The Gal Who Took the West (1949). He did some script work on Abandoned (1949).\n\nThe Gunfighter\nIn 1950 he was Oscar nominated for the gritty Gregory Peck Western, The Gunfighter at Fox.\n\nBowers wrote Convicted (1950) for Columbia, Mrs. O'Malley and Mr. Malone (1951) for MGM, Cry Danger (1951) for Robert Parrish at RKO, The Mob (1951) for Parrish at Columbia, and The San Francisco Story (1952) for Parrish at RKO.\n\nHe did Assignment: Paris (1952) for Parrish at Columbia and Split Second (1953) for Dick Powell at RKO. He did \"The Girl on the Park Bench\" (1953) for Powell's Four Star Theatre and some work on Beautiful But Dangerous (1954) for RKO.\n\nFor Where's Raymond? (1953) Bowers wrote the episodes \"Christmas\" and \"Redecorate the Coffeeshop\". He did \"Trouble with Youth\" for Ford Television Theatre (1954).\n\nAt Columbia he did Tight Spot (1955) and 5 Against the House (1955) for Phil Karlson. Bowers wrote \"Prosper's Old Mother\" (1955) and \"It's Sunny Again\" (1956) for General Electric Theatre and \"Shoot the Moon\" (1956) for Jane Wyman Presents The Fireside Theatre. At Fox he did a musical The Best Things in Life Are Free (1956).\n\nUniversal hired him for the remake of My Man Godfrey in 1957.\n\nThe Sheepman\nAt MGM he wrote The Sheepman (1958) which earned him a second Oscar nomination. He stayed on at MGM to do The Law and Jake Wade (1958), and Imitation General (1959). Bowers wrote a Bob Hope comedy for company, Alias Jesse James (1959) and did two films for Jack Webb, Deadline Midnight (1959) and The Last Time I Saw Archie (1961).\n\nBowers was reunited with Glenn Ford in Company of Cowards? (1964). He wrote a Jerry Lewis comedy, Way... Way Out (1966) and a Western The Ride to Hangman's Tree (1967).\n\nSupport Your Local Sheriff\nBowers produced the last film that he wrote, the Western parody Support Your Local Sheriff! (1969). He also had a bit part as an actor in The Godfather Part II (1974).\n\nHe wrote a TV movie for Burt Kennedy, Sidekicks (1974). He focused on TV movies and an independent production: The Gun and the Pulpit (1974), Mobile Two (1975) (which he produced) Kate Bliss and the Ticker Tape Kid (1978), Shame, Shame on the Bixby Boys (1978), The Wild Wild West Revisited (1979), and More Wild Wild West (1980).\n\nFilmography\nWriter\n My Favorite Spy (1942)\n The Fabulous Suzanne (1946)\n Larceny (1948)\n The Gunfighter (1950)\n Assignment – Paris! (1952)\n Imitation General (1958)\n -30- (1959)\n The Last Time I Saw Archie (1961)\n Support Your Local Sheriff (1969)\n\nActor\n The Godfather Part II'' (1974) - Senate Committee Chairman\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\n1916 births\n1987 deaths\nAmerican male screenwriters\nPeople from Las Cruces, New Mexico\nScreenwriters from New Mexico\n20th-century American male writers\n20th-century American screenwriters\nUnited States Army Air Forces pilots of World War II",
"Knut Guttormsen (1830—1900) was a Norwegian builder and architect. He is most famous for the many churches he built and renovated.\n\nKnut Guttormsen was married to Sara Sofie Andersdtter Haugaskjæret and together they had five children: Sofus Emil Guttormsen, Richard Gotfred Guttormsen, Olav Guttormsen, Karl Guttormsen, and Olaf Marinius Guttormsen.\n\nKnut Guttormsen was born on the homestead Sigurdstøyl in Morgedal in Telemark county. He was confirmed at the Kviteseid Church in 1845. The same year he traveled to Christiania where an older half-brother had settled earlier. He became a stonemason, bricklayer, and builder. He helped build a bridge over Sarpsfossen in Sarpsborg. While in Sarpsborg, he met Sofie Andersdatter Haugaskjæret from Time in Østfold. For a time he also did work on the Gamle Aker Church.\n\nThe family moved to Trondheim in the 1860s where he received several large construction assignments. Eventually, Knut Guttormsen was appointed construction manager for the restoration work at Nidaros Cathedral. He also did work on many churches including Åfjord Church, Rissa Church, Melhus Church, and Ytterøy Church.\n\nReferences\n\n1830 births\n1900 deaths\n\nNorwegian architects"
]
|
[
"Chris Hedges",
"Allegations of plagiarism",
"Who accused him of plagiarism first",
"Thomas Palaima",
"where did he work at the time",
"University of Texas"
]
| C_93d6f68d107c4aad9ce4395c004be4ac_0 | What year was this | 3 | What year was Chris Hedges accused of plagiarism? | Chris Hedges | In 2003, University of Texas classics professor Thomas Palaima wrote an article for the Austin-American Statesman accusing Hedges of plagiarizing Ernest Hemingway in Hedge's 2002 book War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. Palaima said that Hedges had corrected a passage in his first edition of War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning that was close to Hemingway, and he should have cited the paraphrase in all subsequent editions. Hedges' publisher at the time, PublicAffairs, said it did not believe the passage needed to be cited to Hemingway. The New Republic said that Palaima's allegation had resulted in the passage being reworded. But, after posting the article online, the magazine posted a correction box that read: "In the original version of this article, The New Republic indicated that PublicAffairs changed the text of War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning only after having been alerted by Thomas [Palaima] to the presence of plagiarism. In fact, the wording had been changed months earlier, and an edition with the present language existed at the time of Palaima's e-mail to PublicAffairs. However, there was still no attribution to Hemingway in the new version, despite the obvious similarities in ideas and formulation". In June 2014, Christopher Ketcham accused Hedges of plagiarism in an article published in The New Republic. Ketcham claims that Hedges plagiarized many writers over his career, including Matt Katz, Naomi Klein, Neil Postman, Ernest Hemingway, along with Ketcham's wife: Petra Bartosiewicz. Hedges, his editors at Truthdig, and his publisher Nation Books denied the claims made by Ketcham. In a response first published by The Real News on June 16, 2014, Hedges noted that Ketcham based his allegations on an unpublished manuscript which the latter man admitted he had never seen and passages that were actually footnoted or sourced. Hedges accused Ketcham and The New Republic (TNR) of malicious intent and character assassination. On the following day (June 17), The New Republic republished Hedges' response along with Ketcham's (and TNR's) response to the counter-allegations made by Hedges. The Washington Free Beacon reported The New York Times spokesman saying that it "did not have reason to believe Hedges plagiarized in his work for the paper" and had no plans to investigate Hedges for plagiarism. The American Prospect and Salon declined to publish Ketcham's article, and The Nation Institute and Truthdig issued statements dismissing Ketcham's allegations. CANNOTANSWER | 2003, | Christopher Lynn Hedges (born September 18, 1956) is an American journalist, Presbyterian minister, author and television host. A former reporter for The New York Times, Hedges has pursued work and activism related to covering his perspectives on political violence and critical views on American liberalism.
In his early career, Hedges worked as a freelance war correspondent in Central America for The Christian Science Monitor, NPR, and Dallas Morning News. Hedges began working for The New York Times in 1990. During his fifteen year tenure, Hedges reported from more than fifty countries and served as the Times Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief during the wars in the former Yugoslavia.
In 2001, Hedges contributed to The New York Times staff entry that received the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for the paper's coverage of global terrorism. He also received the Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism in 2002. Hedges left the Times in 2005 after an internal dispute over his public opposition to the Iraq War.
Hedges produced a weekly column for Truthdig for 14 years until the outlet's unexpected hiatus in 2020. Hedges' books include War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (2002), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction; American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America (2007); Death of the Liberal Class (2010); and Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt (2012), written with cartoonist Joe Sacco.
Hedges has taught at Columbia University, New York University, the University of Toronto and Princeton University. He has taught college credit writing courses in New Jersey prisons as part of the B.A. program offered by Rutgers University.
Hedges hosts the Emmy-nominated program On Contact for the RT (formerly Russia Today) television network. Hedges has described himself as a socialist and an anarchist, identifying with Dorothy Day in particular.
Early life
Christopher Lynn Hedges was born on September 18, 1956 in St. Johnsbury, Vermont. His father was a World War II veteran, Presbyterian minister, and anti-war activist. He grew up in rural Schoharie County, New York, southwest of Albany.
Education
Hedges received a scholarship to attend Loomis Chaffee School, a private boarding school in Windsor, Connecticut. Hedges founded an underground newspaper at the school that was banned by the administration and resulted in his being put on probation. He graduated in 1975.
Hedges enrolled into Colgate University and, though heterosexual, helped found an LGBT student group. Hedges received his Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Colgate in 1979. He received a Master of Divinity degree from Harvard University's Divinity School (where he studied under James Luther Adams) in 1983. Hedges lived in Roxbury, a blighted inner city neighborhood in Boston, as a seminarian and ran a small church. He was also a member of the Greater Boston YMCA's boxing team, writing that the boxing gym was "the only place I felt safe." He studied Latin and Classical Greek at Harvard.
Early career
Hedges began his career as a freelance journalist in Latin America. He wrote for several publications, including The Washington Post, and covered the Falklands War from Buenos Aires for National Public Radio. From 1983 to 1984, he covered the conflicts in El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala for The Christian Science Monitor and NPR. He was hired as the Central America Bureau Chief for The Dallas Morning News in 1984 and held this position until 1988. Noam Chomsky wrote of Hedges at the time that he was one of the "few US journalists in Central America who merit the title."
Hedges took a sabbatical to study Arabic in 1988. He was appointed the Middle East Bureau Chief for The Dallas Morning News in 1989. In one of his first stories for the paper he tracked down Robert Manning, the prime suspect in the 1985 bombing death in California of Alex Odeh, head of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee’s Western office, in the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Before Hedges discovered Manning, Israel claimed it had no knowledge of Manning’s whereabouts. Manning, linked to the militant Jewish Defense League and allegedly behind several murders, was extradited to the United States in 1991 where he is serving a life sentence for a separate bombing incident.
The New York Times
In 1990, Hedges was hired by The New York Times. He covered the first Gulf War for the paper, where he refused to participate in the military pool system that restricted the movement and reporting of journalists. He was arrested by the United States Army and had his press credentials revoked, but continued to defy the military restrictions to report outside the pool system. Hedges subsequently entered Kuwait with U.S. Marine Corps members who were distrustful of the Army's press control. Within The New York Times, R.W. Apple Jr. supported Hedges' defiance of the pool system.
Hedges was taken prisoner in Basra after the war by the Iraqi Republican Guard during the Shiite uprising. He was freed after a week. Hedges was appointed the paper’s Middle East Bureau Chief in 1991. His reporting on the atrocities committed by Saddam Hussein in the Kurdish-held parts of northern Iraq saw the Iraqi leader offer a bounty for anyone who killed Hedges, along with other western journalists and aid workers in the region. Several aid workers and journalists, including the German reporter Lissy Schmidt, were assassinated and others were severely wounded.
Yugoslav Wars (1995–2000)
In 1995, Hedges was named the Balkan Bureau Chief for The New York Times. He was based in Sarajevo when the city was being hit by over 300 shells a day by the surrounding Bosnia Serbs. He reported on the Srebrenica massacre in July 1995 and shortly after the war uncovered what appeared to be one of the central collection points and hiding places for perhaps thousands of corpses at the large open pit Ljubija mine during the Bosnian Serbs' ethnic cleansing campaign. He and the photographer Wade Goddard were the first reporters to travel with armed units of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in Kosovo. Hedges investigative piece was published in The New York Times in June 1999 detailing how Hashim Thaçi, leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army (and later president of Kosovo), directed a campaign in which as many as half a dozen top rebel commanders were assassinated and many others were brutally purged to consolidate his power. Thaci, indicted by the special court in The Hague on 10 counts of war crimes, is in detention in The Hague awaiting trial.
Hedges was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University during the 1998–1999 academic year.
Hedges ended his career of reporting in active conflicts in October 2000, partly due to trauma sustained from witnessing the death of a juvenile boy in Kosovo during a firefight.
Terrorism coverage and Iraq War (2001–2005)
Hedges was based in Paris following the attacks of 9/11, covering Al Qaeda in Europe and the Middle East. He was a part of an investigative team in The New York Times that won the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting in 2002 for their coverage of Al Qaeda. Hedges' contribution was an October 2001 article describing Al Qaeda's foiled bombing plot of the Embassy of the United States, Paris. Most of the awarded reporting was done by Judith Miller, who was later disgraced due to her work that falsely connected the operations of Al Qaeda to the Republic of Iraq led by Saddam Hussein. Many Times editors pushed to utilize dubious American intelligence reports that gave misleading or fabricated details around an alleged Iraqi connection to international terror.
Reporting from coached defectors
In a collaboration between The New York Times and Frontline, Hedges authored three articles covering the claims of false Iraqi defectors. Hedges worked on the behalf of Lowell Bergman of Frontline, who could not travel to Beirut to interview the purported defectors. The trip was organized by Ahmed Chalabi, who Hedges considered to be unreliable. The first defector Hedges interviewed identified themselves as Lt. General Jamal al-Ghurairy. Hedges consulted the U.S. Embassy in Turkey to confirm their identity, and the embassy falsely did so as the real al-Ghurairy had never left Iraq.
Hedges wrote a November 8, 2001 Times cover story about two former Iraqi military commanders who claimed to have trained foreign mujahedeen how to hijack planes and destroy vital American infrastructure. The two defectors also asserted there was a secret compound in Salman Pak facility where a German scientist was producing biological weapons. The Frontline report featured statements from American officials who doubted the claims of the defectors.
According to Jack Fairweather in Mother Jones: "The impact of the article ... was immediate: Op-eds ran in major papers, and the story was taken to a wider audience through cable-TV talk shows. When Condoleezza Rice, then President George W. Bush's national security adviser, was asked about the report at a press briefing, she said, 'I think it surprises no one that Saddam Hussein is engaged in all kinds of activities that are destabilizing. As late as 2006, according to Fairweather in the same article, conservative magazines including The Weekly Standard and National Review continued to use this article to justify the invasion of Iraq.
In the aftermath of the revelations that the Iraqi defectors were not legitimate, Hedges defended his comportment since he had done the story as a favor to Lowell Bergman, adding that "There has to be a level of trust between reporters. We cover each other's sources when it's a good story because otherwise everyone would get hold of it."
Exit from the Times
In 2003, Hedges was reprimanded by The New York Times for his opposition to U.S. involvement in the Iraq War because of perceived challenges to partiality. This was a motivating factor for his resignation from the Times in 2005.
Later career
In 2005, Hedges left The New York Times to become a senior fellow at Type Media Center, and a columnist at Truthdig, in addition to writing books and teaching inmates at a New Jersey correctional institution.
Obey, a 2013 documentary by British filmmaker Temujin Doran, is based on Hedges' book Death of the Liberal Class.
Truthdig (2006–2020)
Hedges produced a weekly column in Truthdig for 14 years. He was fired along with all of the editorial staff in March 2020. Hedges and the staff had gone on strike earlier in the month to protest the publisher's attempt to fire the Editor-in-Chief Robert Scheer, demand an end to a series of unfair labor practices and the right to form a union. Hedges has since been a writer for Scheerpost.
Citation error controversy
In June 2014, Christopher Ketcham published an article on The New Republic website accusing Hedges of improper citations, alleging the offenses constituted plagiarism. In response, some formatting and reference errors were corrected on the website for Truthdig. Additional accusations of plagiarism from Ketcham were countered by an independent investigation from the Type Media Center.
The Washington Free Beacon reported that a spokesperson for The New York Times said it "did not have reason to believe Hedges plagiarized in his work for the paper" and had no plans to investigate Hedges for plagiarism.
Prison writing teacher
Hedges has worked for a decade teaching writing classes in prisons in New Jersey through a program offered by Princeton University and later Rutgers University. A class that Hedges taught at East Jersey State Prison in 2013 went on to collaborate in the creation of a play titled Caged. Hedges has become a fierce critic of mass incarceration in the United States, and his experience as an educator in New Jersey prisons served as inspiration for his 2021 book Our Class: Trauma and Transformation in an American Prison.
Ordination and ministerial installation
On October 5, 2014, Hedges was ordained a minister within the Presbyterian Church. He was installed as Associate Pastor and Minister of Social Witness and Prison Ministry at the Second Presbyterian Church Elizabeth in Elizabeth, New Jersey. He mentioned being rejected for ordination 30 years earlier, saying that "going to El Salvador as a reporter was not something the Presbyterian Church at the time recognized as a valid ministry, and a committee rejected my 'call.
Political views
Economic views
Hedges contended at the Left Forum in 2015 that with the "denouement of capitalism and the disintegration of globalism", Karl Marx has been "vindicated as capitalism's most prescient and important critic". He said that Marx "foresaw that capitalism had built within it the seeds of its own destruction. He knew that reigning ideologies—think neoliberalism—were created to serve the interests of the elites and in particular the economic elites."
Environmental views
In a March 2009 column, Hedges warned that human over-population and mass species extinction are serious problems, and that any measures to save the ecosystem will be futile unless we cut population growth, and noted that, "As long as the Earth is viewed as the personal property of the human race, a belief embraced by everyone from born-again Christians to Marxists to free-market economists, we are destined to soon inhabit a biological wasteland."
On September 20, 2014, a day before the People's Climate March, Hedges joined Bernie Sanders, Naomi Klein, Bill McKibben, and Kshama Sawant on a panel moderated by WNYC's Brian Lehrer to discuss the issue of climate change. Hedges and Klein also participated in the 'Flood Wall Street' protests that occurred shortly thereafter.
Hedges' environmental concerns were his primary motivation to be vegan. Hedges authored an introduction to a vegan cookbook in 2015.
Other views
In March 2008, Hedges published the book titled I Don't Believe in Atheists, in which he argues that new atheism presents a danger that is similar to religious extremism.
In a December 2014 TruthDig column, Hedges compared the ethnic cleansing of ISIS to the actions of Israel's founding fathers in the late 1940s.
Hedges has repudiated the view that the Founding Fathers of the United States represented a legitimate form of democracy, writing that they rigged America's electoral process to thwart direct democracy and to protect the property rights of the aristocracy. He has written that the Electoral College has served to disenfranchise women, Native Americans, African Americans, and men who do not own property. He has praised abolitionists, labor organizers, women's suffragists, civil rights protestors, and anti-war activists for bringing some change to the structure of the U.S. government.
Hedges told Julian Casablancas, the lead singer for The Strokes who interviewed him for Rolling Stone on December 23, 2020, that one of the few events worth celebrating in American history took place on June 25, 1876 when Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho, led by Crazy Horse and Chief Gall, annihilated the 7th Cavalry under the command of Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer.
Activism
Anti-war activism
Hedges was an early critic of the Iraq War. In May 2003, he delivered a commencement address at Rockford College in Rockford, Illinois, saying: "We are embarking on an occupation that, if history is any guide, will be as damaging to our souls as it will be to our prestige and power and security." His speech was received with boos, "two students approached the stage to push [him] off the podium" (as he told an interviewer), and his microphone was shut off three minutes after he began speaking. Hedges had to end the commencement speech short because of the various student disruptions.
The New York Times, his employer, criticized his statements and issued him a formal reprimand for "public remarks that could undermine public trust in the paper's impartiality".
On December 16, 2010, he was arrested outside the White House along with Daniel Ellsberg and more than 100 activists who were protesting the war in Afghanistan.
In a piece published in Salon Magazine in March 2022, Hedges argued that NATO was at fault for Russia's invasion of Ukraine:The European Union has allocated hundreds of millions of euros to purchase weapons for Ukraine. Germany will almost triple its own defense budget for 2022. The Biden administration has asked Congress to provide $6.4 billion in funding to assist Ukraine, supplementing the $650 million in military aid to Ukraine over the past year. The permanent war economy operates outside the laws of supply and demand. It is the root of the two-decade-long quagmire in the Middle East. It is the root of the conflict with Moscow.
Occupy involvement
Hedges appeared as a guest on an October 2011 episode of the CBC News Network's Lang and O'Leary Exchange to discuss his support for the Occupy Wall Street protests; co-host Kevin O'Leary criticized him, saying that he sounded "like a left-wing nutbar". Hedges said "it will be the last time" he appears on the show, and compared the CBC to Fox News. CBC's ombudsman found O'Leary's heated remarks to be a violation of the public broadcaster's journalistic standards.
On November 3, 2011, Hedges was arrested with others in New York as part of the Occupy Wall Street demonstration, during which the activists staged a "people's hearing" on the activities of the investment bank Goldman Sachs and blocked the entrance to their corporate headquarters.
NDAA lawsuit
In 2012, after the Obama administration signed the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, Hedges sued members of the U.S. government, asserting that section 1021 of the law unconstitutionally allowed presidential authority for indefinite detention without habeas corpus. He was later joined in the suit, Hedges v. Obama, by activists including Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg. In May 2012 Judge Katherine B. Forrest of the Southern District of New York ruled that the counter-terrorism provision of the NDAA is unconstitutional. The Obama administration appealed the decision and it was overturned in July 2013 by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Hedges petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case, but the Supreme Court denied certiorari in April 2014.
Other activism
In the 2008 United States presidential campaign, Hedges was a speech writer for candidate Ralph Nader.
On April 15, 2016, Hedges was arrested, along with 100 other protesters, during a sit-in outside the Capitol building in Washington D.C. during Democracy Spring to protest the capture of the political system by corporations.
On May 27, 2020, Hedges announced that he would run as a Green Party candidate in New Jersey's 12th congressional district for the 2020 elections. However, he was informed the following day that running for office would conflict with FCC fairness doctrine rules because he was at that time hosting the nationally broadcast RT America television show On Contact. Hedges decided not to pursue office in order to keep hosting the show.
In September 2020, Chris Hedges spoke at the Movement for a People's Party convention.
Personal life
Hedges is married to the Canadian actress Eunice Wong. The couple have two children. Hedges also has two children from a previous marriage. He currently lives in Princeton, New Jersey. On November 11, 2014, Hedges announced that he and his family had become vegan. Hedges compared his decision to a vow of abstinence, adding that it is necessary "to make radical changes to save ourselves from ecological meltdown."
Hedges has post-traumatic stress disorder from his experience reporting in war zones.
Hedges studied Latin and Ancient Greek at Harvard, and speaks Arabic, French, and Spanish in addition to his native English.
Books
2002: War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning ()
2003: What Every Person Should Know About War ()
2005: Losing Moses on the Freeway: The 10 Commandments in America ()
2007: American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America ()
2008: I Don't Believe in Atheists ()
2008: Collateral Damage: America's War Against Iraqi Civilians, with Laila Al-Arian ()
2009: When Atheism Becomes Religion: America's New Fundamentalists, (), a retitled edition of I Don't Believe in Atheists
2009: Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle ()
2010: Death of the Liberal Class ()
2010: The World As It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress ()
2012: Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, with Joe Sacco ()
2015: Wages of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of Revolt ()
2016: Unspeakable ()
2018: America: The Farewell Tour ()
2021 Our Class: Trauma and Transformation in an American Prison ()
See also
Christian left
Sacrifice zone
References
External links
APB Speakers Bureau Chris Hedges
"Capitalism's 'Sacrifice Zones Bill Moyers talks with Chris Hedges, and comic-journalist Joe Sacco talking about their collaboration and showing drawings for their book Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, July 20, 2012. Retrieved July 30, 2012
Columns by Chris Hedges at Truthdig
What Every Person Should Know About War, first chapter at The New York Times
Chris Hedges at Scheerpost.
1956 births
Living people
21st-century American male writers
21st-century American non-fiction writers
American anarchists
American anti-capitalists
American anti-fascists
American Christian socialists
American foreign policy writers
American male non-fiction writers
American political writers
American Presbyterians
American reporters and correspondents
American socialists
American war correspondents
Anarchist writers
Anti-consumerists
Anti-corporate activists
Christian anarchists
The Christian Science Monitor people
Colgate University alumni
Columbia University faculty
Critics of atheism
The Dallas Morning News people
Harvard Divinity School alumni
Loomis Chaffee School alumni
The Nation (U.S. magazine) people
The New York Times writers
Nieman Fellows
PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award winners
People from Schoharie, New York
People from St. Johnsbury, Vermont
Presbyterian socialists
RT (TV network) people
War correspondents of the Iraq War
War correspondents of the Yugoslav Wars
Writers about religion and science | true | [
"\"This Is What It Feels Like\" is a song by Dutch DJ and record producer Armin van Buuren, featuring Canadian singer, songwriter and former soulDecision frontman Trevor Guthrie, released in the Netherlands by Armada Music on 29 April 2013 as the second single from van Buuren's fifth studio album, Intense (2013).\n\n\"This Is What It Feels Like\" peaked at number three on the Dutch Top 40. Outside the Netherlands, \"This Is What It Feels Like\" peaked within the top ten of the charts in ten countries, including Austria, Belgium (Flanders), Canada, Israel and the United Kingdom.\n\nThe song was written by Armin van Buuren, Benno de Goeij, Jenson Vaughan, Trevor Guthrie and John Ewbank. Van Buuren wrote the instrumental with de Goeij and Ewbank in 2012. Trevor Guthrie wrote the lyrics with Jenson Vaughan, and it was inspired by Guthrie's neighbour who was diagnosed with a brain tumor. \"This Is What It Feels Like\" was nominated for the 2014 Grammy Award for Best Dance Recording. The song was featured in the intro for a 2019 episode of America's Got Talent.\n\nMusic video\nA music video to accompany the release of \"This is What It Feels Like\" was first released onto YouTube on 17 March 2013. The video also features a guest appearance by Ron Jeremy. As of September 2017, it has received over 100 million views, making it the fifth most viewed video on Armada Music's YouTube channel.\n\nTrack listing\n Digital downloads\n \"This Is What It Feels Like\" – 3:25\n \"This Is What It Feels Like\" (extended mix) – 5:16\n \"This Is What It Feels Like\" (W&W remix) – 6:16\n \"This Is What It Feels Like\" (David Guetta remix) – 5:28\n \"This Is What It Feels Like\" (Antillas and Dankann remix) – 5:44\n \"This Is What It Feels Like\" (Antillas and Dankann radio edit) – 3:34\n \"This Is What It Feels Like\" (Giuseppe Ottaviani remix) – 6:38\n \"This Is What It Feels Like\" (Giuseppe Ottaviani radio edit) – 3:55\n \"This Is What It Feels Like\" (John Ewbank classical remix) – 3:12\n UK CD single\n \"This Is What It Feels Like\" – 3:25\n \"This Is What It Feels Like\" (extended mix) – 5:16\n \"This Is What It Feels Like\" (W&W remix) – 6:16\n \"Waiting for the Night\" – 3:03\n German CD single\n \"This Is What It Feels Like\" – 3:25\n \"This Is What It Feels Like\" (David Guetta remix) – 5:28\n\n Maddix remix\n \"This Is What It Feels Like\" (Maddix remix) – 3:50\n \"This Is What It Feels Like\" (Maddix extended mix) – 4:50\n\nCharts\n\nWeekly charts\n\nYear-end charts\n\nCertifications\n\nRelease history\n\nJason Benoit version\n\n\"This Is What It Feels Like\" was covered by Canadian country music artist Jason Benoit and released through Sky Hit Records, under license to Sony Music Canada, as Benoit's debut single on 10 September 2013. His rendition reached number 46 on the Billboard Canada Country chart. It received positive reviews for Benoit's \"strong vocal performance\" was also included on the compilation album, Country Heat 2014.\n\nMusic video\nAn official lyric video was uploaded to Benoit's Vevo channel on 4 October 2013.\n\nChart performance\n\nReferences\n\n2013 singles\n2013 songs\nArmin van Buuren songs\nArmada Music singles\nJuno Award for Dance Recording of the Year recordings\nSongs written by Armin van Buuren\nSongs written by Benno de Goeij\nSongs written by Jenson Vaughan\nSongs written by Trevor Guthrie\nTrevor Guthrie songs",
"The What A Summer Stakes is an American Thoroughbred horse race held annually in January at Laurel Park Racecourse in Laurel, Maryland. The race is open to fillies and mares four years old and up and is run at six furlongs on the dirt.\n\nAn ungraded stakes race, it offers a purse of $100,000. The race was restricted to Maryland-breds between 1978 and 1992. It was run for fillies and mares from age three and up from 1978 through 1985 and was run under handicap conditions during that same time. The race was restricted to two-year-olds from 1985 to 1992.\n\nThe race was named in honor of What A Summer, a gray mare by What Luck. She was an Eclipse Award winner and was named American Champion Sprint Horse in 1977. She was bred in Maryland by Milton Polinger. What A Summer was a foal in 1973 and won 18 of 31 starts in her career. She won the de facto second leg of the filly Triple Crown, the Black-Eyed Susan Stakes, won the Fall Highweight Handicap twice (carrying 134 pounds each time), the Silver Spoon Handicap twice, the Maskette Handicap and four other stakes. In addition to her 18 wins, she placed nine times with earnings of $479,161. That record of 27 first or second finishes in 31 starts at 87% is among the best in history.\n\nWhat A Summer was trained by Bud Delp while racing for Polinger. She was bought by Diana Firestone following Polinger's death in 1976. Mrs. Firestone turned the mare over to trainer LeRoy Jolley. She was named Maryland-bred horse of the year in 1977 and twice was named champion older mare. What A Summer was retired in 1878 and as a broodmare produced several graded stakes winners.\n\nA venue of 1994 race was Gulfstream Park.\n\nRecords \n\nSpeed record: \n 6 furlongs – 1:09.20 – Xtra Heat (2003) \n 7 furlongs – 1:23.60 – Sea Siren (1983)\n\nMost wins by an horse:\n 2 – Silmaril (2006 & 2007)\n 2 – Sweet on Smokey (2016 & 2017)\n\nMost wins by an owner:\n 3 – Stephen E. Quick (1982, 2007 & 2008)\n\nMost wins by a jockey:\n 2 – five different jockeys share this record with 2 wins each\n\nMost wins by a trainer:\n 3 – Christopher W. Grove (2007, 2008 & 2010)\n\nWinners of the What A Summer Stakes since 1978\n\nSee also \n\n What A Summer Stakes top three finishers\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n Laurel Park website\n\n1978 establishments in Maryland\nLaurel Park Racecourse\nHorse races in Maryland\nRecurring sporting events established in 1978"
]
|
[
"Chris Hedges",
"Allegations of plagiarism",
"Who accused him of plagiarism first",
"Thomas Palaima",
"where did he work at the time",
"University of Texas",
"What year was this",
"2003,"
]
| C_93d6f68d107c4aad9ce4395c004be4ac_0 | what author is he accused of plagiarizing | 4 | what author is Chris Hedges accused of plagiarizing | Chris Hedges | In 2003, University of Texas classics professor Thomas Palaima wrote an article for the Austin-American Statesman accusing Hedges of plagiarizing Ernest Hemingway in Hedge's 2002 book War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. Palaima said that Hedges had corrected a passage in his first edition of War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning that was close to Hemingway, and he should have cited the paraphrase in all subsequent editions. Hedges' publisher at the time, PublicAffairs, said it did not believe the passage needed to be cited to Hemingway. The New Republic said that Palaima's allegation had resulted in the passage being reworded. But, after posting the article online, the magazine posted a correction box that read: "In the original version of this article, The New Republic indicated that PublicAffairs changed the text of War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning only after having been alerted by Thomas [Palaima] to the presence of plagiarism. In fact, the wording had been changed months earlier, and an edition with the present language existed at the time of Palaima's e-mail to PublicAffairs. However, there was still no attribution to Hemingway in the new version, despite the obvious similarities in ideas and formulation". In June 2014, Christopher Ketcham accused Hedges of plagiarism in an article published in The New Republic. Ketcham claims that Hedges plagiarized many writers over his career, including Matt Katz, Naomi Klein, Neil Postman, Ernest Hemingway, along with Ketcham's wife: Petra Bartosiewicz. Hedges, his editors at Truthdig, and his publisher Nation Books denied the claims made by Ketcham. In a response first published by The Real News on June 16, 2014, Hedges noted that Ketcham based his allegations on an unpublished manuscript which the latter man admitted he had never seen and passages that were actually footnoted or sourced. Hedges accused Ketcham and The New Republic (TNR) of malicious intent and character assassination. On the following day (June 17), The New Republic republished Hedges' response along with Ketcham's (and TNR's) response to the counter-allegations made by Hedges. The Washington Free Beacon reported The New York Times spokesman saying that it "did not have reason to believe Hedges plagiarized in his work for the paper" and had no plans to investigate Hedges for plagiarism. The American Prospect and Salon declined to publish Ketcham's article, and The Nation Institute and Truthdig issued statements dismissing Ketcham's allegations. CANNOTANSWER | plagiarizing Ernest Hemingway | Christopher Lynn Hedges (born September 18, 1956) is an American journalist, Presbyterian minister, author and television host. A former reporter for The New York Times, Hedges has pursued work and activism related to covering his perspectives on political violence and critical views on American liberalism.
In his early career, Hedges worked as a freelance war correspondent in Central America for The Christian Science Monitor, NPR, and Dallas Morning News. Hedges began working for The New York Times in 1990. During his fifteen year tenure, Hedges reported from more than fifty countries and served as the Times Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief during the wars in the former Yugoslavia.
In 2001, Hedges contributed to The New York Times staff entry that received the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for the paper's coverage of global terrorism. He also received the Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism in 2002. Hedges left the Times in 2005 after an internal dispute over his public opposition to the Iraq War.
Hedges produced a weekly column for Truthdig for 14 years until the outlet's unexpected hiatus in 2020. Hedges' books include War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (2002), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction; American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America (2007); Death of the Liberal Class (2010); and Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt (2012), written with cartoonist Joe Sacco.
Hedges has taught at Columbia University, New York University, the University of Toronto and Princeton University. He has taught college credit writing courses in New Jersey prisons as part of the B.A. program offered by Rutgers University.
Hedges hosts the Emmy-nominated program On Contact for the RT (formerly Russia Today) television network. Hedges has described himself as a socialist and an anarchist, identifying with Dorothy Day in particular.
Early life
Christopher Lynn Hedges was born on September 18, 1956 in St. Johnsbury, Vermont. His father was a World War II veteran, Presbyterian minister, and anti-war activist. He grew up in rural Schoharie County, New York, southwest of Albany.
Education
Hedges received a scholarship to attend Loomis Chaffee School, a private boarding school in Windsor, Connecticut. Hedges founded an underground newspaper at the school that was banned by the administration and resulted in his being put on probation. He graduated in 1975.
Hedges enrolled into Colgate University and, though heterosexual, helped found an LGBT student group. Hedges received his Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Colgate in 1979. He received a Master of Divinity degree from Harvard University's Divinity School (where he studied under James Luther Adams) in 1983. Hedges lived in Roxbury, a blighted inner city neighborhood in Boston, as a seminarian and ran a small church. He was also a member of the Greater Boston YMCA's boxing team, writing that the boxing gym was "the only place I felt safe." He studied Latin and Classical Greek at Harvard.
Early career
Hedges began his career as a freelance journalist in Latin America. He wrote for several publications, including The Washington Post, and covered the Falklands War from Buenos Aires for National Public Radio. From 1983 to 1984, he covered the conflicts in El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala for The Christian Science Monitor and NPR. He was hired as the Central America Bureau Chief for The Dallas Morning News in 1984 and held this position until 1988. Noam Chomsky wrote of Hedges at the time that he was one of the "few US journalists in Central America who merit the title."
Hedges took a sabbatical to study Arabic in 1988. He was appointed the Middle East Bureau Chief for The Dallas Morning News in 1989. In one of his first stories for the paper he tracked down Robert Manning, the prime suspect in the 1985 bombing death in California of Alex Odeh, head of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee’s Western office, in the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Before Hedges discovered Manning, Israel claimed it had no knowledge of Manning’s whereabouts. Manning, linked to the militant Jewish Defense League and allegedly behind several murders, was extradited to the United States in 1991 where he is serving a life sentence for a separate bombing incident.
The New York Times
In 1990, Hedges was hired by The New York Times. He covered the first Gulf War for the paper, where he refused to participate in the military pool system that restricted the movement and reporting of journalists. He was arrested by the United States Army and had his press credentials revoked, but continued to defy the military restrictions to report outside the pool system. Hedges subsequently entered Kuwait with U.S. Marine Corps members who were distrustful of the Army's press control. Within The New York Times, R.W. Apple Jr. supported Hedges' defiance of the pool system.
Hedges was taken prisoner in Basra after the war by the Iraqi Republican Guard during the Shiite uprising. He was freed after a week. Hedges was appointed the paper’s Middle East Bureau Chief in 1991. His reporting on the atrocities committed by Saddam Hussein in the Kurdish-held parts of northern Iraq saw the Iraqi leader offer a bounty for anyone who killed Hedges, along with other western journalists and aid workers in the region. Several aid workers and journalists, including the German reporter Lissy Schmidt, were assassinated and others were severely wounded.
Yugoslav Wars (1995–2000)
In 1995, Hedges was named the Balkan Bureau Chief for The New York Times. He was based in Sarajevo when the city was being hit by over 300 shells a day by the surrounding Bosnia Serbs. He reported on the Srebrenica massacre in July 1995 and shortly after the war uncovered what appeared to be one of the central collection points and hiding places for perhaps thousands of corpses at the large open pit Ljubija mine during the Bosnian Serbs' ethnic cleansing campaign. He and the photographer Wade Goddard were the first reporters to travel with armed units of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in Kosovo. Hedges investigative piece was published in The New York Times in June 1999 detailing how Hashim Thaçi, leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army (and later president of Kosovo), directed a campaign in which as many as half a dozen top rebel commanders were assassinated and many others were brutally purged to consolidate his power. Thaci, indicted by the special court in The Hague on 10 counts of war crimes, is in detention in The Hague awaiting trial.
Hedges was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University during the 1998–1999 academic year.
Hedges ended his career of reporting in active conflicts in October 2000, partly due to trauma sustained from witnessing the death of a juvenile boy in Kosovo during a firefight.
Terrorism coverage and Iraq War (2001–2005)
Hedges was based in Paris following the attacks of 9/11, covering Al Qaeda in Europe and the Middle East. He was a part of an investigative team in The New York Times that won the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting in 2002 for their coverage of Al Qaeda. Hedges' contribution was an October 2001 article describing Al Qaeda's foiled bombing plot of the Embassy of the United States, Paris. Most of the awarded reporting was done by Judith Miller, who was later disgraced due to her work that falsely connected the operations of Al Qaeda to the Republic of Iraq led by Saddam Hussein. Many Times editors pushed to utilize dubious American intelligence reports that gave misleading or fabricated details around an alleged Iraqi connection to international terror.
Reporting from coached defectors
In a collaboration between The New York Times and Frontline, Hedges authored three articles covering the claims of false Iraqi defectors. Hedges worked on the behalf of Lowell Bergman of Frontline, who could not travel to Beirut to interview the purported defectors. The trip was organized by Ahmed Chalabi, who Hedges considered to be unreliable. The first defector Hedges interviewed identified themselves as Lt. General Jamal al-Ghurairy. Hedges consulted the U.S. Embassy in Turkey to confirm their identity, and the embassy falsely did so as the real al-Ghurairy had never left Iraq.
Hedges wrote a November 8, 2001 Times cover story about two former Iraqi military commanders who claimed to have trained foreign mujahedeen how to hijack planes and destroy vital American infrastructure. The two defectors also asserted there was a secret compound in Salman Pak facility where a German scientist was producing biological weapons. The Frontline report featured statements from American officials who doubted the claims of the defectors.
According to Jack Fairweather in Mother Jones: "The impact of the article ... was immediate: Op-eds ran in major papers, and the story was taken to a wider audience through cable-TV talk shows. When Condoleezza Rice, then President George W. Bush's national security adviser, was asked about the report at a press briefing, she said, 'I think it surprises no one that Saddam Hussein is engaged in all kinds of activities that are destabilizing. As late as 2006, according to Fairweather in the same article, conservative magazines including The Weekly Standard and National Review continued to use this article to justify the invasion of Iraq.
In the aftermath of the revelations that the Iraqi defectors were not legitimate, Hedges defended his comportment since he had done the story as a favor to Lowell Bergman, adding that "There has to be a level of trust between reporters. We cover each other's sources when it's a good story because otherwise everyone would get hold of it."
Exit from the Times
In 2003, Hedges was reprimanded by The New York Times for his opposition to U.S. involvement in the Iraq War because of perceived challenges to partiality. This was a motivating factor for his resignation from the Times in 2005.
Later career
In 2005, Hedges left The New York Times to become a senior fellow at Type Media Center, and a columnist at Truthdig, in addition to writing books and teaching inmates at a New Jersey correctional institution.
Obey, a 2013 documentary by British filmmaker Temujin Doran, is based on Hedges' book Death of the Liberal Class.
Truthdig (2006–2020)
Hedges produced a weekly column in Truthdig for 14 years. He was fired along with all of the editorial staff in March 2020. Hedges and the staff had gone on strike earlier in the month to protest the publisher's attempt to fire the Editor-in-Chief Robert Scheer, demand an end to a series of unfair labor practices and the right to form a union. Hedges has since been a writer for Scheerpost.
Citation error controversy
In June 2014, Christopher Ketcham published an article on The New Republic website accusing Hedges of improper citations, alleging the offenses constituted plagiarism. In response, some formatting and reference errors were corrected on the website for Truthdig. Additional accusations of plagiarism from Ketcham were countered by an independent investigation from the Type Media Center.
The Washington Free Beacon reported that a spokesperson for The New York Times said it "did not have reason to believe Hedges plagiarized in his work for the paper" and had no plans to investigate Hedges for plagiarism.
Prison writing teacher
Hedges has worked for a decade teaching writing classes in prisons in New Jersey through a program offered by Princeton University and later Rutgers University. A class that Hedges taught at East Jersey State Prison in 2013 went on to collaborate in the creation of a play titled Caged. Hedges has become a fierce critic of mass incarceration in the United States, and his experience as an educator in New Jersey prisons served as inspiration for his 2021 book Our Class: Trauma and Transformation in an American Prison.
Ordination and ministerial installation
On October 5, 2014, Hedges was ordained a minister within the Presbyterian Church. He was installed as Associate Pastor and Minister of Social Witness and Prison Ministry at the Second Presbyterian Church Elizabeth in Elizabeth, New Jersey. He mentioned being rejected for ordination 30 years earlier, saying that "going to El Salvador as a reporter was not something the Presbyterian Church at the time recognized as a valid ministry, and a committee rejected my 'call.
Political views
Economic views
Hedges contended at the Left Forum in 2015 that with the "denouement of capitalism and the disintegration of globalism", Karl Marx has been "vindicated as capitalism's most prescient and important critic". He said that Marx "foresaw that capitalism had built within it the seeds of its own destruction. He knew that reigning ideologies—think neoliberalism—were created to serve the interests of the elites and in particular the economic elites."
Environmental views
In a March 2009 column, Hedges warned that human over-population and mass species extinction are serious problems, and that any measures to save the ecosystem will be futile unless we cut population growth, and noted that, "As long as the Earth is viewed as the personal property of the human race, a belief embraced by everyone from born-again Christians to Marxists to free-market economists, we are destined to soon inhabit a biological wasteland."
On September 20, 2014, a day before the People's Climate March, Hedges joined Bernie Sanders, Naomi Klein, Bill McKibben, and Kshama Sawant on a panel moderated by WNYC's Brian Lehrer to discuss the issue of climate change. Hedges and Klein also participated in the 'Flood Wall Street' protests that occurred shortly thereafter.
Hedges' environmental concerns were his primary motivation to be vegan. Hedges authored an introduction to a vegan cookbook in 2015.
Other views
In March 2008, Hedges published the book titled I Don't Believe in Atheists, in which he argues that new atheism presents a danger that is similar to religious extremism.
In a December 2014 TruthDig column, Hedges compared the ethnic cleansing of ISIS to the actions of Israel's founding fathers in the late 1940s.
Hedges has repudiated the view that the Founding Fathers of the United States represented a legitimate form of democracy, writing that they rigged America's electoral process to thwart direct democracy and to protect the property rights of the aristocracy. He has written that the Electoral College has served to disenfranchise women, Native Americans, African Americans, and men who do not own property. He has praised abolitionists, labor organizers, women's suffragists, civil rights protestors, and anti-war activists for bringing some change to the structure of the U.S. government.
Hedges told Julian Casablancas, the lead singer for The Strokes who interviewed him for Rolling Stone on December 23, 2020, that one of the few events worth celebrating in American history took place on June 25, 1876 when Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho, led by Crazy Horse and Chief Gall, annihilated the 7th Cavalry under the command of Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer.
Activism
Anti-war activism
Hedges was an early critic of the Iraq War. In May 2003, he delivered a commencement address at Rockford College in Rockford, Illinois, saying: "We are embarking on an occupation that, if history is any guide, will be as damaging to our souls as it will be to our prestige and power and security." His speech was received with boos, "two students approached the stage to push [him] off the podium" (as he told an interviewer), and his microphone was shut off three minutes after he began speaking. Hedges had to end the commencement speech short because of the various student disruptions.
The New York Times, his employer, criticized his statements and issued him a formal reprimand for "public remarks that could undermine public trust in the paper's impartiality".
On December 16, 2010, he was arrested outside the White House along with Daniel Ellsberg and more than 100 activists who were protesting the war in Afghanistan.
In a piece published in Salon Magazine in March 2022, Hedges argued that NATO was at fault for Russia's invasion of Ukraine:The European Union has allocated hundreds of millions of euros to purchase weapons for Ukraine. Germany will almost triple its own defense budget for 2022. The Biden administration has asked Congress to provide $6.4 billion in funding to assist Ukraine, supplementing the $650 million in military aid to Ukraine over the past year. The permanent war economy operates outside the laws of supply and demand. It is the root of the two-decade-long quagmire in the Middle East. It is the root of the conflict with Moscow.
Occupy involvement
Hedges appeared as a guest on an October 2011 episode of the CBC News Network's Lang and O'Leary Exchange to discuss his support for the Occupy Wall Street protests; co-host Kevin O'Leary criticized him, saying that he sounded "like a left-wing nutbar". Hedges said "it will be the last time" he appears on the show, and compared the CBC to Fox News. CBC's ombudsman found O'Leary's heated remarks to be a violation of the public broadcaster's journalistic standards.
On November 3, 2011, Hedges was arrested with others in New York as part of the Occupy Wall Street demonstration, during which the activists staged a "people's hearing" on the activities of the investment bank Goldman Sachs and blocked the entrance to their corporate headquarters.
NDAA lawsuit
In 2012, after the Obama administration signed the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, Hedges sued members of the U.S. government, asserting that section 1021 of the law unconstitutionally allowed presidential authority for indefinite detention without habeas corpus. He was later joined in the suit, Hedges v. Obama, by activists including Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg. In May 2012 Judge Katherine B. Forrest of the Southern District of New York ruled that the counter-terrorism provision of the NDAA is unconstitutional. The Obama administration appealed the decision and it was overturned in July 2013 by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Hedges petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case, but the Supreme Court denied certiorari in April 2014.
Other activism
In the 2008 United States presidential campaign, Hedges was a speech writer for candidate Ralph Nader.
On April 15, 2016, Hedges was arrested, along with 100 other protesters, during a sit-in outside the Capitol building in Washington D.C. during Democracy Spring to protest the capture of the political system by corporations.
On May 27, 2020, Hedges announced that he would run as a Green Party candidate in New Jersey's 12th congressional district for the 2020 elections. However, he was informed the following day that running for office would conflict with FCC fairness doctrine rules because he was at that time hosting the nationally broadcast RT America television show On Contact. Hedges decided not to pursue office in order to keep hosting the show.
In September 2020, Chris Hedges spoke at the Movement for a People's Party convention.
Personal life
Hedges is married to the Canadian actress Eunice Wong. The couple have two children. Hedges also has two children from a previous marriage. He currently lives in Princeton, New Jersey. On November 11, 2014, Hedges announced that he and his family had become vegan. Hedges compared his decision to a vow of abstinence, adding that it is necessary "to make radical changes to save ourselves from ecological meltdown."
Hedges has post-traumatic stress disorder from his experience reporting in war zones.
Hedges studied Latin and Ancient Greek at Harvard, and speaks Arabic, French, and Spanish in addition to his native English.
Books
2002: War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning ()
2003: What Every Person Should Know About War ()
2005: Losing Moses on the Freeway: The 10 Commandments in America ()
2007: American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America ()
2008: I Don't Believe in Atheists ()
2008: Collateral Damage: America's War Against Iraqi Civilians, with Laila Al-Arian ()
2009: When Atheism Becomes Religion: America's New Fundamentalists, (), a retitled edition of I Don't Believe in Atheists
2009: Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle ()
2010: Death of the Liberal Class ()
2010: The World As It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress ()
2012: Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, with Joe Sacco ()
2015: Wages of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of Revolt ()
2016: Unspeakable ()
2018: America: The Farewell Tour ()
2021 Our Class: Trauma and Transformation in an American Prison ()
See also
Christian left
Sacrifice zone
References
External links
APB Speakers Bureau Chris Hedges
"Capitalism's 'Sacrifice Zones Bill Moyers talks with Chris Hedges, and comic-journalist Joe Sacco talking about their collaboration and showing drawings for their book Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, July 20, 2012. Retrieved July 30, 2012
Columns by Chris Hedges at Truthdig
What Every Person Should Know About War, first chapter at The New York Times
Chris Hedges at Scheerpost.
1956 births
Living people
21st-century American male writers
21st-century American non-fiction writers
American anarchists
American anti-capitalists
American anti-fascists
American Christian socialists
American foreign policy writers
American male non-fiction writers
American political writers
American Presbyterians
American reporters and correspondents
American socialists
American war correspondents
Anarchist writers
Anti-consumerists
Anti-corporate activists
Christian anarchists
The Christian Science Monitor people
Colgate University alumni
Columbia University faculty
Critics of atheism
The Dallas Morning News people
Harvard Divinity School alumni
Loomis Chaffee School alumni
The Nation (U.S. magazine) people
The New York Times writers
Nieman Fellows
PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award winners
People from Schoharie, New York
People from St. Johnsbury, Vermont
Presbyterian socialists
RT (TV network) people
War correspondents of the Iraq War
War correspondents of the Yugoslav Wars
Writers about religion and science | false | [
"John Heidenry is an author and editor who was born in St. Louis, Missouri on May 15, 1939. He studied theology at Saint Louis University but did not take a degree. During 1960-61 he edited 3 small Catholic Monthlies: Social Justice Review, Catholic Women’s Journal and The Call to Catholic Youth. He then wrote for Saint Louis Review, married and had 3 children. He is the former editor of St. Louis magazine and the founder of the St. Louis Literary Supplement. He is also the former editor of Penthouse Forum, the former interim editor of Maxim magazine, and the former executive editor of The Week. Heidenry is the author of Theirs Was The Kingdom: Lila and DeWitt Wallace & the Story of the Reader's Digest (W W Norton, 1993), What Wild Ecstasy: The Rise and Fall of the Sexual Revolution (Simon & Schuster, 1997), The Gashouse Gang: How Dizzy Dean, Leo Durocher, Branch Rickey, Pepper Martin, and Their Colorful, Come-from-Behind Ball Club Won the World Series-and America's Heart-During the Great Depression (Public Affairs, 2007), Zero at the Bone: The Playboy, the Prostitute, and the Murder of Bobby Greenlease (St. Martin's Press, 2009), and the co-author, with Brett Topel, of The Boys Who Were Left Behind: The 1944 World Series between the Hapless St. Louis Browns and the Legendary St. Louis Cardinals (University of Nebraska Press, 2006).\n\nAccording to The New York Times, Heidenry was accused by Philip Nobile, his former coworker at Penthouse Forum, of plagiarizing parts of What Wild Ecstasy. The accusation raised the question of whether ordinary, workaday prose, rather than \"unique expression,\" can be plagiarized.\n\nSee also\n Sexual Preference\n\nFootnotes\n\nAmerican magazine editors\nAmerican non-fiction writers\nLiving people\nYear of birth missing (living people)",
"Milan Chams (born 20 March 1980) is a director of Nepali films. He is best known for the films Bir Bikram and Lily Bily which have received a number of awards. Other films he directed include Bir Bikram 2.\n\nChams caused an uproar when he filed charges against stand-up comedian Pranesh Gautam after the latter gave a satirical review of Bir Bikram 2. His critics accused him of bullying and harassing movie critics upon getting negative reviews.\n\nBir Bikram 2 was widely panned by the critics. It was criticized for its sexist overtones and also accused of plagiarizing scenes from 'Sholay', a hit Bollywood film from the 70's.\n\nFilmography \n Paschatap (Director)\n Hasiya (Director)\n Bir Bikram (Producer, Director)\n Blind Rocks (Producer, Director)\n Happy Days (Director)\n Lily Bily (Director)\n Bobby (Producer, Director)\n Bir Bikram 2 (Producer, Director)\n Bobby 2 (Producer, Director)\n\nAwards and nominations\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n \n\n1980 births\nLiving people\nNepalese film directors\nNepalese screenwriters\nNepalese film producers\nPeople from Kathmandu\n21st-century Nepalese screenwriters\n21st-century Nepalese film directors"
]
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"Allegations of plagiarism",
"Who accused him of plagiarism first",
"Thomas Palaima",
"where did he work at the time",
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"2003,",
"what author is he accused of plagiarizing",
"plagiarizing Ernest Hemingway"
]
| C_93d6f68d107c4aad9ce4395c004be4ac_0 | What was the name of his book | 5 | What was the name of Chris Hedges book | Chris Hedges | In 2003, University of Texas classics professor Thomas Palaima wrote an article for the Austin-American Statesman accusing Hedges of plagiarizing Ernest Hemingway in Hedge's 2002 book War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. Palaima said that Hedges had corrected a passage in his first edition of War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning that was close to Hemingway, and he should have cited the paraphrase in all subsequent editions. Hedges' publisher at the time, PublicAffairs, said it did not believe the passage needed to be cited to Hemingway. The New Republic said that Palaima's allegation had resulted in the passage being reworded. But, after posting the article online, the magazine posted a correction box that read: "In the original version of this article, The New Republic indicated that PublicAffairs changed the text of War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning only after having been alerted by Thomas [Palaima] to the presence of plagiarism. In fact, the wording had been changed months earlier, and an edition with the present language existed at the time of Palaima's e-mail to PublicAffairs. However, there was still no attribution to Hemingway in the new version, despite the obvious similarities in ideas and formulation". In June 2014, Christopher Ketcham accused Hedges of plagiarism in an article published in The New Republic. Ketcham claims that Hedges plagiarized many writers over his career, including Matt Katz, Naomi Klein, Neil Postman, Ernest Hemingway, along with Ketcham's wife: Petra Bartosiewicz. Hedges, his editors at Truthdig, and his publisher Nation Books denied the claims made by Ketcham. In a response first published by The Real News on June 16, 2014, Hedges noted that Ketcham based his allegations on an unpublished manuscript which the latter man admitted he had never seen and passages that were actually footnoted or sourced. Hedges accused Ketcham and The New Republic (TNR) of malicious intent and character assassination. On the following day (June 17), The New Republic republished Hedges' response along with Ketcham's (and TNR's) response to the counter-allegations made by Hedges. The Washington Free Beacon reported The New York Times spokesman saying that it "did not have reason to believe Hedges plagiarized in his work for the paper" and had no plans to investigate Hedges for plagiarism. The American Prospect and Salon declined to publish Ketcham's article, and The Nation Institute and Truthdig issued statements dismissing Ketcham's allegations. CANNOTANSWER | War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. | Christopher Lynn Hedges (born September 18, 1956) is an American journalist, Presbyterian minister, author and television host. A former reporter for The New York Times, Hedges has pursued work and activism related to covering his perspectives on political violence and critical views on American liberalism.
In his early career, Hedges worked as a freelance war correspondent in Central America for The Christian Science Monitor, NPR, and Dallas Morning News. Hedges began working for The New York Times in 1990. During his fifteen year tenure, Hedges reported from more than fifty countries and served as the Times Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief during the wars in the former Yugoslavia.
In 2001, Hedges contributed to The New York Times staff entry that received the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for the paper's coverage of global terrorism. He also received the Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism in 2002. Hedges left the Times in 2005 after an internal dispute over his public opposition to the Iraq War.
Hedges produced a weekly column for Truthdig for 14 years until the outlet's unexpected hiatus in 2020. Hedges' books include War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (2002), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction; American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America (2007); Death of the Liberal Class (2010); and Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt (2012), written with cartoonist Joe Sacco.
Hedges has taught at Columbia University, New York University, the University of Toronto and Princeton University. He has taught college credit writing courses in New Jersey prisons as part of the B.A. program offered by Rutgers University.
Hedges hosts the Emmy-nominated program On Contact for the RT (formerly Russia Today) television network. Hedges has described himself as a socialist and an anarchist, identifying with Dorothy Day in particular.
Early life
Christopher Lynn Hedges was born on September 18, 1956 in St. Johnsbury, Vermont. His father was a World War II veteran, Presbyterian minister, and anti-war activist. He grew up in rural Schoharie County, New York, southwest of Albany.
Education
Hedges received a scholarship to attend Loomis Chaffee School, a private boarding school in Windsor, Connecticut. Hedges founded an underground newspaper at the school that was banned by the administration and resulted in his being put on probation. He graduated in 1975.
Hedges enrolled into Colgate University and, though heterosexual, helped found an LGBT student group. Hedges received his Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Colgate in 1979. He received a Master of Divinity degree from Harvard University's Divinity School (where he studied under James Luther Adams) in 1983. Hedges lived in Roxbury, a blighted inner city neighborhood in Boston, as a seminarian and ran a small church. He was also a member of the Greater Boston YMCA's boxing team, writing that the boxing gym was "the only place I felt safe." He studied Latin and Classical Greek at Harvard.
Early career
Hedges began his career as a freelance journalist in Latin America. He wrote for several publications, including The Washington Post, and covered the Falklands War from Buenos Aires for National Public Radio. From 1983 to 1984, he covered the conflicts in El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala for The Christian Science Monitor and NPR. He was hired as the Central America Bureau Chief for The Dallas Morning News in 1984 and held this position until 1988. Noam Chomsky wrote of Hedges at the time that he was one of the "few US journalists in Central America who merit the title."
Hedges took a sabbatical to study Arabic in 1988. He was appointed the Middle East Bureau Chief for The Dallas Morning News in 1989. In one of his first stories for the paper he tracked down Robert Manning, the prime suspect in the 1985 bombing death in California of Alex Odeh, head of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee’s Western office, in the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Before Hedges discovered Manning, Israel claimed it had no knowledge of Manning’s whereabouts. Manning, linked to the militant Jewish Defense League and allegedly behind several murders, was extradited to the United States in 1991 where he is serving a life sentence for a separate bombing incident.
The New York Times
In 1990, Hedges was hired by The New York Times. He covered the first Gulf War for the paper, where he refused to participate in the military pool system that restricted the movement and reporting of journalists. He was arrested by the United States Army and had his press credentials revoked, but continued to defy the military restrictions to report outside the pool system. Hedges subsequently entered Kuwait with U.S. Marine Corps members who were distrustful of the Army's press control. Within The New York Times, R.W. Apple Jr. supported Hedges' defiance of the pool system.
Hedges was taken prisoner in Basra after the war by the Iraqi Republican Guard during the Shiite uprising. He was freed after a week. Hedges was appointed the paper’s Middle East Bureau Chief in 1991. His reporting on the atrocities committed by Saddam Hussein in the Kurdish-held parts of northern Iraq saw the Iraqi leader offer a bounty for anyone who killed Hedges, along with other western journalists and aid workers in the region. Several aid workers and journalists, including the German reporter Lissy Schmidt, were assassinated and others were severely wounded.
Yugoslav Wars (1995–2000)
In 1995, Hedges was named the Balkan Bureau Chief for The New York Times. He was based in Sarajevo when the city was being hit by over 300 shells a day by the surrounding Bosnia Serbs. He reported on the Srebrenica massacre in July 1995 and shortly after the war uncovered what appeared to be one of the central collection points and hiding places for perhaps thousands of corpses at the large open pit Ljubija mine during the Bosnian Serbs' ethnic cleansing campaign. He and the photographer Wade Goddard were the first reporters to travel with armed units of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in Kosovo. Hedges investigative piece was published in The New York Times in June 1999 detailing how Hashim Thaçi, leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army (and later president of Kosovo), directed a campaign in which as many as half a dozen top rebel commanders were assassinated and many others were brutally purged to consolidate his power. Thaci, indicted by the special court in The Hague on 10 counts of war crimes, is in detention in The Hague awaiting trial.
Hedges was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University during the 1998–1999 academic year.
Hedges ended his career of reporting in active conflicts in October 2000, partly due to trauma sustained from witnessing the death of a juvenile boy in Kosovo during a firefight.
Terrorism coverage and Iraq War (2001–2005)
Hedges was based in Paris following the attacks of 9/11, covering Al Qaeda in Europe and the Middle East. He was a part of an investigative team in The New York Times that won the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting in 2002 for their coverage of Al Qaeda. Hedges' contribution was an October 2001 article describing Al Qaeda's foiled bombing plot of the Embassy of the United States, Paris. Most of the awarded reporting was done by Judith Miller, who was later disgraced due to her work that falsely connected the operations of Al Qaeda to the Republic of Iraq led by Saddam Hussein. Many Times editors pushed to utilize dubious American intelligence reports that gave misleading or fabricated details around an alleged Iraqi connection to international terror.
Reporting from coached defectors
In a collaboration between The New York Times and Frontline, Hedges authored three articles covering the claims of false Iraqi defectors. Hedges worked on the behalf of Lowell Bergman of Frontline, who could not travel to Beirut to interview the purported defectors. The trip was organized by Ahmed Chalabi, who Hedges considered to be unreliable. The first defector Hedges interviewed identified themselves as Lt. General Jamal al-Ghurairy. Hedges consulted the U.S. Embassy in Turkey to confirm their identity, and the embassy falsely did so as the real al-Ghurairy had never left Iraq.
Hedges wrote a November 8, 2001 Times cover story about two former Iraqi military commanders who claimed to have trained foreign mujahedeen how to hijack planes and destroy vital American infrastructure. The two defectors also asserted there was a secret compound in Salman Pak facility where a German scientist was producing biological weapons. The Frontline report featured statements from American officials who doubted the claims of the defectors.
According to Jack Fairweather in Mother Jones: "The impact of the article ... was immediate: Op-eds ran in major papers, and the story was taken to a wider audience through cable-TV talk shows. When Condoleezza Rice, then President George W. Bush's national security adviser, was asked about the report at a press briefing, she said, 'I think it surprises no one that Saddam Hussein is engaged in all kinds of activities that are destabilizing. As late as 2006, according to Fairweather in the same article, conservative magazines including The Weekly Standard and National Review continued to use this article to justify the invasion of Iraq.
In the aftermath of the revelations that the Iraqi defectors were not legitimate, Hedges defended his comportment since he had done the story as a favor to Lowell Bergman, adding that "There has to be a level of trust between reporters. We cover each other's sources when it's a good story because otherwise everyone would get hold of it."
Exit from the Times
In 2003, Hedges was reprimanded by The New York Times for his opposition to U.S. involvement in the Iraq War because of perceived challenges to partiality. This was a motivating factor for his resignation from the Times in 2005.
Later career
In 2005, Hedges left The New York Times to become a senior fellow at Type Media Center, and a columnist at Truthdig, in addition to writing books and teaching inmates at a New Jersey correctional institution.
Obey, a 2013 documentary by British filmmaker Temujin Doran, is based on Hedges' book Death of the Liberal Class.
Truthdig (2006–2020)
Hedges produced a weekly column in Truthdig for 14 years. He was fired along with all of the editorial staff in March 2020. Hedges and the staff had gone on strike earlier in the month to protest the publisher's attempt to fire the Editor-in-Chief Robert Scheer, demand an end to a series of unfair labor practices and the right to form a union. Hedges has since been a writer for Scheerpost.
Citation error controversy
In June 2014, Christopher Ketcham published an article on The New Republic website accusing Hedges of improper citations, alleging the offenses constituted plagiarism. In response, some formatting and reference errors were corrected on the website for Truthdig. Additional accusations of plagiarism from Ketcham were countered by an independent investigation from the Type Media Center.
The Washington Free Beacon reported that a spokesperson for The New York Times said it "did not have reason to believe Hedges plagiarized in his work for the paper" and had no plans to investigate Hedges for plagiarism.
Prison writing teacher
Hedges has worked for a decade teaching writing classes in prisons in New Jersey through a program offered by Princeton University and later Rutgers University. A class that Hedges taught at East Jersey State Prison in 2013 went on to collaborate in the creation of a play titled Caged. Hedges has become a fierce critic of mass incarceration in the United States, and his experience as an educator in New Jersey prisons served as inspiration for his 2021 book Our Class: Trauma and Transformation in an American Prison.
Ordination and ministerial installation
On October 5, 2014, Hedges was ordained a minister within the Presbyterian Church. He was installed as Associate Pastor and Minister of Social Witness and Prison Ministry at the Second Presbyterian Church Elizabeth in Elizabeth, New Jersey. He mentioned being rejected for ordination 30 years earlier, saying that "going to El Salvador as a reporter was not something the Presbyterian Church at the time recognized as a valid ministry, and a committee rejected my 'call.
Political views
Economic views
Hedges contended at the Left Forum in 2015 that with the "denouement of capitalism and the disintegration of globalism", Karl Marx has been "vindicated as capitalism's most prescient and important critic". He said that Marx "foresaw that capitalism had built within it the seeds of its own destruction. He knew that reigning ideologies—think neoliberalism—were created to serve the interests of the elites and in particular the economic elites."
Environmental views
In a March 2009 column, Hedges warned that human over-population and mass species extinction are serious problems, and that any measures to save the ecosystem will be futile unless we cut population growth, and noted that, "As long as the Earth is viewed as the personal property of the human race, a belief embraced by everyone from born-again Christians to Marxists to free-market economists, we are destined to soon inhabit a biological wasteland."
On September 20, 2014, a day before the People's Climate March, Hedges joined Bernie Sanders, Naomi Klein, Bill McKibben, and Kshama Sawant on a panel moderated by WNYC's Brian Lehrer to discuss the issue of climate change. Hedges and Klein also participated in the 'Flood Wall Street' protests that occurred shortly thereafter.
Hedges' environmental concerns were his primary motivation to be vegan. Hedges authored an introduction to a vegan cookbook in 2015.
Other views
In March 2008, Hedges published the book titled I Don't Believe in Atheists, in which he argues that new atheism presents a danger that is similar to religious extremism.
In a December 2014 TruthDig column, Hedges compared the ethnic cleansing of ISIS to the actions of Israel's founding fathers in the late 1940s.
Hedges has repudiated the view that the Founding Fathers of the United States represented a legitimate form of democracy, writing that they rigged America's electoral process to thwart direct democracy and to protect the property rights of the aristocracy. He has written that the Electoral College has served to disenfranchise women, Native Americans, African Americans, and men who do not own property. He has praised abolitionists, labor organizers, women's suffragists, civil rights protestors, and anti-war activists for bringing some change to the structure of the U.S. government.
Hedges told Julian Casablancas, the lead singer for The Strokes who interviewed him for Rolling Stone on December 23, 2020, that one of the few events worth celebrating in American history took place on June 25, 1876 when Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho, led by Crazy Horse and Chief Gall, annihilated the 7th Cavalry under the command of Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer.
Activism
Anti-war activism
Hedges was an early critic of the Iraq War. In May 2003, he delivered a commencement address at Rockford College in Rockford, Illinois, saying: "We are embarking on an occupation that, if history is any guide, will be as damaging to our souls as it will be to our prestige and power and security." His speech was received with boos, "two students approached the stage to push [him] off the podium" (as he told an interviewer), and his microphone was shut off three minutes after he began speaking. Hedges had to end the commencement speech short because of the various student disruptions.
The New York Times, his employer, criticized his statements and issued him a formal reprimand for "public remarks that could undermine public trust in the paper's impartiality".
On December 16, 2010, he was arrested outside the White House along with Daniel Ellsberg and more than 100 activists who were protesting the war in Afghanistan.
In a piece published in Salon Magazine in March 2022, Hedges argued that NATO was at fault for Russia's invasion of Ukraine:The European Union has allocated hundreds of millions of euros to purchase weapons for Ukraine. Germany will almost triple its own defense budget for 2022. The Biden administration has asked Congress to provide $6.4 billion in funding to assist Ukraine, supplementing the $650 million in military aid to Ukraine over the past year. The permanent war economy operates outside the laws of supply and demand. It is the root of the two-decade-long quagmire in the Middle East. It is the root of the conflict with Moscow.
Occupy involvement
Hedges appeared as a guest on an October 2011 episode of the CBC News Network's Lang and O'Leary Exchange to discuss his support for the Occupy Wall Street protests; co-host Kevin O'Leary criticized him, saying that he sounded "like a left-wing nutbar". Hedges said "it will be the last time" he appears on the show, and compared the CBC to Fox News. CBC's ombudsman found O'Leary's heated remarks to be a violation of the public broadcaster's journalistic standards.
On November 3, 2011, Hedges was arrested with others in New York as part of the Occupy Wall Street demonstration, during which the activists staged a "people's hearing" on the activities of the investment bank Goldman Sachs and blocked the entrance to their corporate headquarters.
NDAA lawsuit
In 2012, after the Obama administration signed the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, Hedges sued members of the U.S. government, asserting that section 1021 of the law unconstitutionally allowed presidential authority for indefinite detention without habeas corpus. He was later joined in the suit, Hedges v. Obama, by activists including Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg. In May 2012 Judge Katherine B. Forrest of the Southern District of New York ruled that the counter-terrorism provision of the NDAA is unconstitutional. The Obama administration appealed the decision and it was overturned in July 2013 by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Hedges petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case, but the Supreme Court denied certiorari in April 2014.
Other activism
In the 2008 United States presidential campaign, Hedges was a speech writer for candidate Ralph Nader.
On April 15, 2016, Hedges was arrested, along with 100 other protesters, during a sit-in outside the Capitol building in Washington D.C. during Democracy Spring to protest the capture of the political system by corporations.
On May 27, 2020, Hedges announced that he would run as a Green Party candidate in New Jersey's 12th congressional district for the 2020 elections. However, he was informed the following day that running for office would conflict with FCC fairness doctrine rules because he was at that time hosting the nationally broadcast RT America television show On Contact. Hedges decided not to pursue office in order to keep hosting the show.
In September 2020, Chris Hedges spoke at the Movement for a People's Party convention.
Personal life
Hedges is married to the Canadian actress Eunice Wong. The couple have two children. Hedges also has two children from a previous marriage. He currently lives in Princeton, New Jersey. On November 11, 2014, Hedges announced that he and his family had become vegan. Hedges compared his decision to a vow of abstinence, adding that it is necessary "to make radical changes to save ourselves from ecological meltdown."
Hedges has post-traumatic stress disorder from his experience reporting in war zones.
Hedges studied Latin and Ancient Greek at Harvard, and speaks Arabic, French, and Spanish in addition to his native English.
Books
2002: War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning ()
2003: What Every Person Should Know About War ()
2005: Losing Moses on the Freeway: The 10 Commandments in America ()
2007: American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America ()
2008: I Don't Believe in Atheists ()
2008: Collateral Damage: America's War Against Iraqi Civilians, with Laila Al-Arian ()
2009: When Atheism Becomes Religion: America's New Fundamentalists, (), a retitled edition of I Don't Believe in Atheists
2009: Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle ()
2010: Death of the Liberal Class ()
2010: The World As It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress ()
2012: Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, with Joe Sacco ()
2015: Wages of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of Revolt ()
2016: Unspeakable ()
2018: America: The Farewell Tour ()
2021 Our Class: Trauma and Transformation in an American Prison ()
See also
Christian left
Sacrifice zone
References
External links
APB Speakers Bureau Chris Hedges
"Capitalism's 'Sacrifice Zones Bill Moyers talks with Chris Hedges, and comic-journalist Joe Sacco talking about their collaboration and showing drawings for their book Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, July 20, 2012. Retrieved July 30, 2012
Columns by Chris Hedges at Truthdig
What Every Person Should Know About War, first chapter at The New York Times
Chris Hedges at Scheerpost.
1956 births
Living people
21st-century American male writers
21st-century American non-fiction writers
American anarchists
American anti-capitalists
American anti-fascists
American Christian socialists
American foreign policy writers
American male non-fiction writers
American political writers
American Presbyterians
American reporters and correspondents
American socialists
American war correspondents
Anarchist writers
Anti-consumerists
Anti-corporate activists
Christian anarchists
The Christian Science Monitor people
Colgate University alumni
Columbia University faculty
Critics of atheism
The Dallas Morning News people
Harvard Divinity School alumni
Loomis Chaffee School alumni
The Nation (U.S. magazine) people
The New York Times writers
Nieman Fellows
PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award winners
People from Schoharie, New York
People from St. Johnsbury, Vermont
Presbyterian socialists
RT (TV network) people
War correspondents of the Iraq War
War correspondents of the Yugoslav Wars
Writers about religion and science | false | [
"Old Book is the name given to a purported ghost or spirit that haunts a cemetery and tree on the grounds of the Peoria State Hospital in Bartonville, Illinois. While rumors of ghosts and ghost stories are highly speculative, the Old Book tale has been documented many times. Among those documenting the tale is the first director of the state insane asylum, George Zeller.\n\nThe living Old Book\nThe name Old Book is the name given to a popular patient at the hospital. The well-liked Old Book worked as a gravedigger during his time at Peoria State Hospital. It is said that following burial services for deceased patients he would lean against an old elm tree and weep for the dead. Various sources report that Old Book's official name was recorded as Manual Bookbinder aka A. Bookbinder (1878 - 1910), grave marker 713 on the cemetery grounds. It is said that Old Book was mute, so no one could ask him his name. No one knows what his given name was, but he is allegedly called Bookbinder because of his previous occupation at the printing house where he worked before he was brought to the hospital. Despite his disabilities, he was one of the staff's most favored patients.\n\nThe Crying Tree\nThe superstitious tale surrounding Old Book is somewhat unusual among ghost stories in that it was reportedly witnessed by hundreds of people. The story goes that when Old Book died his funeral was attended by hundreds of patients and staff members who became witnesses to the ghostly phenomena that was about to transpire. As workers were attempting to lower what should have been a heavy casket they discovered that it instead felt empty. Suddenly, a crying sound echoed from the Graveyard Elm and everyone in attendance turned and looked, including Dr. Zeller, who later detailed Bookbinder and the surrounding events in his diary. They all claimed to have seen Old Book standing by the tree. They so believed it to be true that Zeller had the casket opened to ensure that Old Book still lay inside. As the lid was opened the crying ceased and Old Book's corpse was found undisturbed in the coffin. Days passed and the tree began to die. Several of the grounds crewmen tried to remove the Graveyard Elm or the \"crying tree\", as it was also known. None were successful, citing the weeping emanating from the tree. One man even tried to cut it down with an axe, but when striking the side, terrible wailing would sound as if Old Book himself was being chopped. \n\nIn later years the elm was struck during a lightning storm and was finally removed from the potters field.\n\nSee also\nList of ghosts\n\nNotes\n\nExternal links\n Bartonville Insane Asylum: on Prairieghosts.com\n\n \n\nAmerican ghosts\nPeoria County, Illinois",
"Afrikan Nikolaevich Krishtofovich (Африкан Николаевич Криштофович) (1885 – 1953) was a Soviet paleobotanist. His name be abbreviated as \"Krysht.\" when attributing him as the author of botanical names.\n\nHe was a fossil hunter specializing in Mesozoic flora. In 1932 he published his book Geological review of the countries of the Far East.\n\nA crater on Mars was named in his honor. Located at , with a diameter of 112.0 Kilometers. The craters name was approved in 1982 by what is now known as VSEGEI.\n\nReferences\n\n1885 births\n1953 deaths\nPaleobotanists\nSoviet paleontologists\nPaleontologists of the Russian Empire\nBurials at Serafimovskoe Cemetery"
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"plagiarizing Ernest Hemingway",
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"War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning."
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| C_93d6f68d107c4aad9ce4395c004be4ac_0 | what year is the book from | 6 | what year is the book, War is a force that gives us meaning from | Chris Hedges | In 2003, University of Texas classics professor Thomas Palaima wrote an article for the Austin-American Statesman accusing Hedges of plagiarizing Ernest Hemingway in Hedge's 2002 book War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. Palaima said that Hedges had corrected a passage in his first edition of War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning that was close to Hemingway, and he should have cited the paraphrase in all subsequent editions. Hedges' publisher at the time, PublicAffairs, said it did not believe the passage needed to be cited to Hemingway. The New Republic said that Palaima's allegation had resulted in the passage being reworded. But, after posting the article online, the magazine posted a correction box that read: "In the original version of this article, The New Republic indicated that PublicAffairs changed the text of War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning only after having been alerted by Thomas [Palaima] to the presence of plagiarism. In fact, the wording had been changed months earlier, and an edition with the present language existed at the time of Palaima's e-mail to PublicAffairs. However, there was still no attribution to Hemingway in the new version, despite the obvious similarities in ideas and formulation". In June 2014, Christopher Ketcham accused Hedges of plagiarism in an article published in The New Republic. Ketcham claims that Hedges plagiarized many writers over his career, including Matt Katz, Naomi Klein, Neil Postman, Ernest Hemingway, along with Ketcham's wife: Petra Bartosiewicz. Hedges, his editors at Truthdig, and his publisher Nation Books denied the claims made by Ketcham. In a response first published by The Real News on June 16, 2014, Hedges noted that Ketcham based his allegations on an unpublished manuscript which the latter man admitted he had never seen and passages that were actually footnoted or sourced. Hedges accused Ketcham and The New Republic (TNR) of malicious intent and character assassination. On the following day (June 17), The New Republic republished Hedges' response along with Ketcham's (and TNR's) response to the counter-allegations made by Hedges. The Washington Free Beacon reported The New York Times spokesman saying that it "did not have reason to believe Hedges plagiarized in his work for the paper" and had no plans to investigate Hedges for plagiarism. The American Prospect and Salon declined to publish Ketcham's article, and The Nation Institute and Truthdig issued statements dismissing Ketcham's allegations. CANNOTANSWER | 2002 | Christopher Lynn Hedges (born September 18, 1956) is an American journalist, Presbyterian minister, author and television host. A former reporter for The New York Times, Hedges has pursued work and activism related to covering his perspectives on political violence and critical views on American liberalism.
In his early career, Hedges worked as a freelance war correspondent in Central America for The Christian Science Monitor, NPR, and Dallas Morning News. Hedges began working for The New York Times in 1990. During his fifteen year tenure, Hedges reported from more than fifty countries and served as the Times Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief during the wars in the former Yugoslavia.
In 2001, Hedges contributed to The New York Times staff entry that received the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for the paper's coverage of global terrorism. He also received the Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism in 2002. Hedges left the Times in 2005 after an internal dispute over his public opposition to the Iraq War.
Hedges produced a weekly column for Truthdig for 14 years until the outlet's unexpected hiatus in 2020. Hedges' books include War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (2002), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction; American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America (2007); Death of the Liberal Class (2010); and Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt (2012), written with cartoonist Joe Sacco.
Hedges has taught at Columbia University, New York University, the University of Toronto and Princeton University. He has taught college credit writing courses in New Jersey prisons as part of the B.A. program offered by Rutgers University.
Hedges hosts the Emmy-nominated program On Contact for the RT (formerly Russia Today) television network. Hedges has described himself as a socialist and an anarchist, identifying with Dorothy Day in particular.
Early life
Christopher Lynn Hedges was born on September 18, 1956 in St. Johnsbury, Vermont. His father was a World War II veteran, Presbyterian minister, and anti-war activist. He grew up in rural Schoharie County, New York, southwest of Albany.
Education
Hedges received a scholarship to attend Loomis Chaffee School, a private boarding school in Windsor, Connecticut. Hedges founded an underground newspaper at the school that was banned by the administration and resulted in his being put on probation. He graduated in 1975.
Hedges enrolled into Colgate University and, though heterosexual, helped found an LGBT student group. Hedges received his Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Colgate in 1979. He received a Master of Divinity degree from Harvard University's Divinity School (where he studied under James Luther Adams) in 1983. Hedges lived in Roxbury, a blighted inner city neighborhood in Boston, as a seminarian and ran a small church. He was also a member of the Greater Boston YMCA's boxing team, writing that the boxing gym was "the only place I felt safe." He studied Latin and Classical Greek at Harvard.
Early career
Hedges began his career as a freelance journalist in Latin America. He wrote for several publications, including The Washington Post, and covered the Falklands War from Buenos Aires for National Public Radio. From 1983 to 1984, he covered the conflicts in El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala for The Christian Science Monitor and NPR. He was hired as the Central America Bureau Chief for The Dallas Morning News in 1984 and held this position until 1988. Noam Chomsky wrote of Hedges at the time that he was one of the "few US journalists in Central America who merit the title."
Hedges took a sabbatical to study Arabic in 1988. He was appointed the Middle East Bureau Chief for The Dallas Morning News in 1989. In one of his first stories for the paper he tracked down Robert Manning, the prime suspect in the 1985 bombing death in California of Alex Odeh, head of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee’s Western office, in the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Before Hedges discovered Manning, Israel claimed it had no knowledge of Manning’s whereabouts. Manning, linked to the militant Jewish Defense League and allegedly behind several murders, was extradited to the United States in 1991 where he is serving a life sentence for a separate bombing incident.
The New York Times
In 1990, Hedges was hired by The New York Times. He covered the first Gulf War for the paper, where he refused to participate in the military pool system that restricted the movement and reporting of journalists. He was arrested by the United States Army and had his press credentials revoked, but continued to defy the military restrictions to report outside the pool system. Hedges subsequently entered Kuwait with U.S. Marine Corps members who were distrustful of the Army's press control. Within The New York Times, R.W. Apple Jr. supported Hedges' defiance of the pool system.
Hedges was taken prisoner in Basra after the war by the Iraqi Republican Guard during the Shiite uprising. He was freed after a week. Hedges was appointed the paper’s Middle East Bureau Chief in 1991. His reporting on the atrocities committed by Saddam Hussein in the Kurdish-held parts of northern Iraq saw the Iraqi leader offer a bounty for anyone who killed Hedges, along with other western journalists and aid workers in the region. Several aid workers and journalists, including the German reporter Lissy Schmidt, were assassinated and others were severely wounded.
Yugoslav Wars (1995–2000)
In 1995, Hedges was named the Balkan Bureau Chief for The New York Times. He was based in Sarajevo when the city was being hit by over 300 shells a day by the surrounding Bosnia Serbs. He reported on the Srebrenica massacre in July 1995 and shortly after the war uncovered what appeared to be one of the central collection points and hiding places for perhaps thousands of corpses at the large open pit Ljubija mine during the Bosnian Serbs' ethnic cleansing campaign. He and the photographer Wade Goddard were the first reporters to travel with armed units of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in Kosovo. Hedges investigative piece was published in The New York Times in June 1999 detailing how Hashim Thaçi, leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army (and later president of Kosovo), directed a campaign in which as many as half a dozen top rebel commanders were assassinated and many others were brutally purged to consolidate his power. Thaci, indicted by the special court in The Hague on 10 counts of war crimes, is in detention in The Hague awaiting trial.
Hedges was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University during the 1998–1999 academic year.
Hedges ended his career of reporting in active conflicts in October 2000, partly due to trauma sustained from witnessing the death of a juvenile boy in Kosovo during a firefight.
Terrorism coverage and Iraq War (2001–2005)
Hedges was based in Paris following the attacks of 9/11, covering Al Qaeda in Europe and the Middle East. He was a part of an investigative team in The New York Times that won the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting in 2002 for their coverage of Al Qaeda. Hedges' contribution was an October 2001 article describing Al Qaeda's foiled bombing plot of the Embassy of the United States, Paris. Most of the awarded reporting was done by Judith Miller, who was later disgraced due to her work that falsely connected the operations of Al Qaeda to the Republic of Iraq led by Saddam Hussein. Many Times editors pushed to utilize dubious American intelligence reports that gave misleading or fabricated details around an alleged Iraqi connection to international terror.
Reporting from coached defectors
In a collaboration between The New York Times and Frontline, Hedges authored three articles covering the claims of false Iraqi defectors. Hedges worked on the behalf of Lowell Bergman of Frontline, who could not travel to Beirut to interview the purported defectors. The trip was organized by Ahmed Chalabi, who Hedges considered to be unreliable. The first defector Hedges interviewed identified themselves as Lt. General Jamal al-Ghurairy. Hedges consulted the U.S. Embassy in Turkey to confirm their identity, and the embassy falsely did so as the real al-Ghurairy had never left Iraq.
Hedges wrote a November 8, 2001 Times cover story about two former Iraqi military commanders who claimed to have trained foreign mujahedeen how to hijack planes and destroy vital American infrastructure. The two defectors also asserted there was a secret compound in Salman Pak facility where a German scientist was producing biological weapons. The Frontline report featured statements from American officials who doubted the claims of the defectors.
According to Jack Fairweather in Mother Jones: "The impact of the article ... was immediate: Op-eds ran in major papers, and the story was taken to a wider audience through cable-TV talk shows. When Condoleezza Rice, then President George W. Bush's national security adviser, was asked about the report at a press briefing, she said, 'I think it surprises no one that Saddam Hussein is engaged in all kinds of activities that are destabilizing. As late as 2006, according to Fairweather in the same article, conservative magazines including The Weekly Standard and National Review continued to use this article to justify the invasion of Iraq.
In the aftermath of the revelations that the Iraqi defectors were not legitimate, Hedges defended his comportment since he had done the story as a favor to Lowell Bergman, adding that "There has to be a level of trust between reporters. We cover each other's sources when it's a good story because otherwise everyone would get hold of it."
Exit from the Times
In 2003, Hedges was reprimanded by The New York Times for his opposition to U.S. involvement in the Iraq War because of perceived challenges to partiality. This was a motivating factor for his resignation from the Times in 2005.
Later career
In 2005, Hedges left The New York Times to become a senior fellow at Type Media Center, and a columnist at Truthdig, in addition to writing books and teaching inmates at a New Jersey correctional institution.
Obey, a 2013 documentary by British filmmaker Temujin Doran, is based on Hedges' book Death of the Liberal Class.
Truthdig (2006–2020)
Hedges produced a weekly column in Truthdig for 14 years. He was fired along with all of the editorial staff in March 2020. Hedges and the staff had gone on strike earlier in the month to protest the publisher's attempt to fire the Editor-in-Chief Robert Scheer, demand an end to a series of unfair labor practices and the right to form a union. Hedges has since been a writer for Scheerpost.
Citation error controversy
In June 2014, Christopher Ketcham published an article on The New Republic website accusing Hedges of improper citations, alleging the offenses constituted plagiarism. In response, some formatting and reference errors were corrected on the website for Truthdig. Additional accusations of plagiarism from Ketcham were countered by an independent investigation from the Type Media Center.
The Washington Free Beacon reported that a spokesperson for The New York Times said it "did not have reason to believe Hedges plagiarized in his work for the paper" and had no plans to investigate Hedges for plagiarism.
Prison writing teacher
Hedges has worked for a decade teaching writing classes in prisons in New Jersey through a program offered by Princeton University and later Rutgers University. A class that Hedges taught at East Jersey State Prison in 2013 went on to collaborate in the creation of a play titled Caged. Hedges has become a fierce critic of mass incarceration in the United States, and his experience as an educator in New Jersey prisons served as inspiration for his 2021 book Our Class: Trauma and Transformation in an American Prison.
Ordination and ministerial installation
On October 5, 2014, Hedges was ordained a minister within the Presbyterian Church. He was installed as Associate Pastor and Minister of Social Witness and Prison Ministry at the Second Presbyterian Church Elizabeth in Elizabeth, New Jersey. He mentioned being rejected for ordination 30 years earlier, saying that "going to El Salvador as a reporter was not something the Presbyterian Church at the time recognized as a valid ministry, and a committee rejected my 'call.
Political views
Economic views
Hedges contended at the Left Forum in 2015 that with the "denouement of capitalism and the disintegration of globalism", Karl Marx has been "vindicated as capitalism's most prescient and important critic". He said that Marx "foresaw that capitalism had built within it the seeds of its own destruction. He knew that reigning ideologies—think neoliberalism—were created to serve the interests of the elites and in particular the economic elites."
Environmental views
In a March 2009 column, Hedges warned that human over-population and mass species extinction are serious problems, and that any measures to save the ecosystem will be futile unless we cut population growth, and noted that, "As long as the Earth is viewed as the personal property of the human race, a belief embraced by everyone from born-again Christians to Marxists to free-market economists, we are destined to soon inhabit a biological wasteland."
On September 20, 2014, a day before the People's Climate March, Hedges joined Bernie Sanders, Naomi Klein, Bill McKibben, and Kshama Sawant on a panel moderated by WNYC's Brian Lehrer to discuss the issue of climate change. Hedges and Klein also participated in the 'Flood Wall Street' protests that occurred shortly thereafter.
Hedges' environmental concerns were his primary motivation to be vegan. Hedges authored an introduction to a vegan cookbook in 2015.
Other views
In March 2008, Hedges published the book titled I Don't Believe in Atheists, in which he argues that new atheism presents a danger that is similar to religious extremism.
In a December 2014 TruthDig column, Hedges compared the ethnic cleansing of ISIS to the actions of Israel's founding fathers in the late 1940s.
Hedges has repudiated the view that the Founding Fathers of the United States represented a legitimate form of democracy, writing that they rigged America's electoral process to thwart direct democracy and to protect the property rights of the aristocracy. He has written that the Electoral College has served to disenfranchise women, Native Americans, African Americans, and men who do not own property. He has praised abolitionists, labor organizers, women's suffragists, civil rights protestors, and anti-war activists for bringing some change to the structure of the U.S. government.
Hedges told Julian Casablancas, the lead singer for The Strokes who interviewed him for Rolling Stone on December 23, 2020, that one of the few events worth celebrating in American history took place on June 25, 1876 when Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho, led by Crazy Horse and Chief Gall, annihilated the 7th Cavalry under the command of Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer.
Activism
Anti-war activism
Hedges was an early critic of the Iraq War. In May 2003, he delivered a commencement address at Rockford College in Rockford, Illinois, saying: "We are embarking on an occupation that, if history is any guide, will be as damaging to our souls as it will be to our prestige and power and security." His speech was received with boos, "two students approached the stage to push [him] off the podium" (as he told an interviewer), and his microphone was shut off three minutes after he began speaking. Hedges had to end the commencement speech short because of the various student disruptions.
The New York Times, his employer, criticized his statements and issued him a formal reprimand for "public remarks that could undermine public trust in the paper's impartiality".
On December 16, 2010, he was arrested outside the White House along with Daniel Ellsberg and more than 100 activists who were protesting the war in Afghanistan.
In a piece published in Salon Magazine in March 2022, Hedges argued that NATO was at fault for Russia's invasion of Ukraine:The European Union has allocated hundreds of millions of euros to purchase weapons for Ukraine. Germany will almost triple its own defense budget for 2022. The Biden administration has asked Congress to provide $6.4 billion in funding to assist Ukraine, supplementing the $650 million in military aid to Ukraine over the past year. The permanent war economy operates outside the laws of supply and demand. It is the root of the two-decade-long quagmire in the Middle East. It is the root of the conflict with Moscow.
Occupy involvement
Hedges appeared as a guest on an October 2011 episode of the CBC News Network's Lang and O'Leary Exchange to discuss his support for the Occupy Wall Street protests; co-host Kevin O'Leary criticized him, saying that he sounded "like a left-wing nutbar". Hedges said "it will be the last time" he appears on the show, and compared the CBC to Fox News. CBC's ombudsman found O'Leary's heated remarks to be a violation of the public broadcaster's journalistic standards.
On November 3, 2011, Hedges was arrested with others in New York as part of the Occupy Wall Street demonstration, during which the activists staged a "people's hearing" on the activities of the investment bank Goldman Sachs and blocked the entrance to their corporate headquarters.
NDAA lawsuit
In 2012, after the Obama administration signed the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, Hedges sued members of the U.S. government, asserting that section 1021 of the law unconstitutionally allowed presidential authority for indefinite detention without habeas corpus. He was later joined in the suit, Hedges v. Obama, by activists including Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg. In May 2012 Judge Katherine B. Forrest of the Southern District of New York ruled that the counter-terrorism provision of the NDAA is unconstitutional. The Obama administration appealed the decision and it was overturned in July 2013 by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Hedges petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case, but the Supreme Court denied certiorari in April 2014.
Other activism
In the 2008 United States presidential campaign, Hedges was a speech writer for candidate Ralph Nader.
On April 15, 2016, Hedges was arrested, along with 100 other protesters, during a sit-in outside the Capitol building in Washington D.C. during Democracy Spring to protest the capture of the political system by corporations.
On May 27, 2020, Hedges announced that he would run as a Green Party candidate in New Jersey's 12th congressional district for the 2020 elections. However, he was informed the following day that running for office would conflict with FCC fairness doctrine rules because he was at that time hosting the nationally broadcast RT America television show On Contact. Hedges decided not to pursue office in order to keep hosting the show.
In September 2020, Chris Hedges spoke at the Movement for a People's Party convention.
Personal life
Hedges is married to the Canadian actress Eunice Wong. The couple have two children. Hedges also has two children from a previous marriage. He currently lives in Princeton, New Jersey. On November 11, 2014, Hedges announced that he and his family had become vegan. Hedges compared his decision to a vow of abstinence, adding that it is necessary "to make radical changes to save ourselves from ecological meltdown."
Hedges has post-traumatic stress disorder from his experience reporting in war zones.
Hedges studied Latin and Ancient Greek at Harvard, and speaks Arabic, French, and Spanish in addition to his native English.
Books
2002: War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning ()
2003: What Every Person Should Know About War ()
2005: Losing Moses on the Freeway: The 10 Commandments in America ()
2007: American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America ()
2008: I Don't Believe in Atheists ()
2008: Collateral Damage: America's War Against Iraqi Civilians, with Laila Al-Arian ()
2009: When Atheism Becomes Religion: America's New Fundamentalists, (), a retitled edition of I Don't Believe in Atheists
2009: Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle ()
2010: Death of the Liberal Class ()
2010: The World As It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress ()
2012: Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, with Joe Sacco ()
2015: Wages of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of Revolt ()
2016: Unspeakable ()
2018: America: The Farewell Tour ()
2021 Our Class: Trauma and Transformation in an American Prison ()
See also
Christian left
Sacrifice zone
References
External links
APB Speakers Bureau Chris Hedges
"Capitalism's 'Sacrifice Zones Bill Moyers talks with Chris Hedges, and comic-journalist Joe Sacco talking about their collaboration and showing drawings for their book Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, July 20, 2012. Retrieved July 30, 2012
Columns by Chris Hedges at Truthdig
What Every Person Should Know About War, first chapter at The New York Times
Chris Hedges at Scheerpost.
1956 births
Living people
21st-century American male writers
21st-century American non-fiction writers
American anarchists
American anti-capitalists
American anti-fascists
American Christian socialists
American foreign policy writers
American male non-fiction writers
American political writers
American Presbyterians
American reporters and correspondents
American socialists
American war correspondents
Anarchist writers
Anti-consumerists
Anti-corporate activists
Christian anarchists
The Christian Science Monitor people
Colgate University alumni
Columbia University faculty
Critics of atheism
The Dallas Morning News people
Harvard Divinity School alumni
Loomis Chaffee School alumni
The Nation (U.S. magazine) people
The New York Times writers
Nieman Fellows
PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award winners
People from Schoharie, New York
People from St. Johnsbury, Vermont
Presbyterian socialists
RT (TV network) people
War correspondents of the Iraq War
War correspondents of the Yugoslav Wars
Writers about religion and science | true | [
"\"What Is Love\" is a song by Haddaway. \n\nWhat Is Love may also refer to:\n\nBooks\nWhat Is Love?, 1928 novel by E. M. Delafield\n What Is Love? (picture book), a 2021 picture book written by Mac Barnett and illustrated by Carson Ellis\n\nFilm and television\n Nishwartha Bhalobasa (What Is Love), a 2013 Bangladeshi film directed by Ananta Jalil\n What Is Love (TV series), 2012 Taiwanese series\n Just Only Love, a 2018 Japanese film also known as What Is Love?\n\nMusic\n\nAlbums\n What Is Love? (Andrea Marcovicci album), 1992\n What Is Love? (Never Shout Never album), 2010\n What Is Love? (Clean Bandit album), 2018\n What Is Love? (EP) by Twice, 2018\n\nSongs\n \"What Is Love?\", a song recorded by The Playmates, 1959\n \"What Is Love?\" (Howard Jones song), 1983\n \"What Is Love\" (En Vogue song), 1993\n \"What Is Love\", a song by Exo from the 2012 EP Mama\n \"What Is Love?\", a song by Irving Berlin\n \"(What Is) Love?\", a song by Jennifer Lopez from the 2011 album Love?\n \"What Is Love?\", a song by Dr. Nathaniel Irvin III and Roman Irvin, Janelle Monáe from soundtrack of Rio 2\n \"What Is Love\", a song by Take That from the 2008 album The Circus\n \"What Is Love?\", a song by Johnny \"Guitar\" Watson\n \"What Is Love?\", a song by Debbie Harry\n \"What Is Love?\", a song by Sound Tribe Sector 9\n \"What Is Love\", a single by Miriam Makeba from the 1967 album Pata Pata\n \"What Is Love?\" (Twice song), 2018\n \"What Is Love\" (V. Bozeman song), 2015\n\nSee also\n What's Love (disambiguation)",
"What You See Is What You Get or WYSIWYG is where computer editing software allows content to be edited in a form that resembles its final appearance.\n\nWhat You See Is What You Get may also refer to:\n\nMusic\n What You See Is What You Get (EP), a 1998 EP by Pitchshifter\n What You See Is What You Get (Glen Goldsmith album), 1988\n What You See Is What You Get (Luke Combs album), 2019\n Whatcha See Is Whatcha Get (album), a 1971 debut album by the band The Dramatics\n\"Whatcha See Is Whatcha Get\" (song), title song from the above The Dramatics album\n \"What You See Is What You Get\" (song), a 1971 song by Stoney & Meatloaf\n \"What U See Is What U Get\", a 1998 song by rapper Xzibit\n \"What U See (Is What U Get)\", a song by Britney Spears from the 2000 album Oops!... I Did It Again\n\nOthers\n What you see is what you get, a term popularized by Geraldine Jones, a character from the television show The Flip Wilson Show\n What You See Is What You Get (book), a 2010 book written by Alan Sugar\n\nSee also\nWYSIWYG (disambiguation)\nWhatcha See Is Whatcha Get (disambiguation)\n\"What You Get Is What You See\", a song by Tina Turner from her 1987 album Break Every Rule\n Stand by Me (Whatcha See Is Whatcha Get), 1971 album by Pretty Purdie and The Playboys"
]
|
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"Chris Hedges",
"Allegations of plagiarism",
"Who accused him of plagiarism first",
"Thomas Palaima",
"where did he work at the time",
"University of Texas",
"What year was this",
"2003,",
"what author is he accused of plagiarizing",
"plagiarizing Ernest Hemingway",
"What was the name of his book",
"War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning.",
"what year is the book from",
"2002"
]
| C_93d6f68d107c4aad9ce4395c004be4ac_0 | who published his book | 7 | who published Chris Hedges book | Chris Hedges | In 2003, University of Texas classics professor Thomas Palaima wrote an article for the Austin-American Statesman accusing Hedges of plagiarizing Ernest Hemingway in Hedge's 2002 book War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. Palaima said that Hedges had corrected a passage in his first edition of War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning that was close to Hemingway, and he should have cited the paraphrase in all subsequent editions. Hedges' publisher at the time, PublicAffairs, said it did not believe the passage needed to be cited to Hemingway. The New Republic said that Palaima's allegation had resulted in the passage being reworded. But, after posting the article online, the magazine posted a correction box that read: "In the original version of this article, The New Republic indicated that PublicAffairs changed the text of War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning only after having been alerted by Thomas [Palaima] to the presence of plagiarism. In fact, the wording had been changed months earlier, and an edition with the present language existed at the time of Palaima's e-mail to PublicAffairs. However, there was still no attribution to Hemingway in the new version, despite the obvious similarities in ideas and formulation". In June 2014, Christopher Ketcham accused Hedges of plagiarism in an article published in The New Republic. Ketcham claims that Hedges plagiarized many writers over his career, including Matt Katz, Naomi Klein, Neil Postman, Ernest Hemingway, along with Ketcham's wife: Petra Bartosiewicz. Hedges, his editors at Truthdig, and his publisher Nation Books denied the claims made by Ketcham. In a response first published by The Real News on June 16, 2014, Hedges noted that Ketcham based his allegations on an unpublished manuscript which the latter man admitted he had never seen and passages that were actually footnoted or sourced. Hedges accused Ketcham and The New Republic (TNR) of malicious intent and character assassination. On the following day (June 17), The New Republic republished Hedges' response along with Ketcham's (and TNR's) response to the counter-allegations made by Hedges. The Washington Free Beacon reported The New York Times spokesman saying that it "did not have reason to believe Hedges plagiarized in his work for the paper" and had no plans to investigate Hedges for plagiarism. The American Prospect and Salon declined to publish Ketcham's article, and The Nation Institute and Truthdig issued statements dismissing Ketcham's allegations. CANNOTANSWER | publisher at the time, PublicAffairs, | Christopher Lynn Hedges (born September 18, 1956) is an American journalist, Presbyterian minister, author and television host. A former reporter for The New York Times, Hedges has pursued work and activism related to covering his perspectives on political violence and critical views on American liberalism.
In his early career, Hedges worked as a freelance war correspondent in Central America for The Christian Science Monitor, NPR, and Dallas Morning News. Hedges began working for The New York Times in 1990. During his fifteen year tenure, Hedges reported from more than fifty countries and served as the Times Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief during the wars in the former Yugoslavia.
In 2001, Hedges contributed to The New York Times staff entry that received the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for the paper's coverage of global terrorism. He also received the Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism in 2002. Hedges left the Times in 2005 after an internal dispute over his public opposition to the Iraq War.
Hedges produced a weekly column for Truthdig for 14 years until the outlet's unexpected hiatus in 2020. Hedges' books include War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (2002), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction; American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America (2007); Death of the Liberal Class (2010); and Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt (2012), written with cartoonist Joe Sacco.
Hedges has taught at Columbia University, New York University, the University of Toronto and Princeton University. He has taught college credit writing courses in New Jersey prisons as part of the B.A. program offered by Rutgers University.
Hedges hosts the Emmy-nominated program On Contact for the RT (formerly Russia Today) television network. Hedges has described himself as a socialist and an anarchist, identifying with Dorothy Day in particular.
Early life
Christopher Lynn Hedges was born on September 18, 1956 in St. Johnsbury, Vermont. His father was a World War II veteran, Presbyterian minister, and anti-war activist. He grew up in rural Schoharie County, New York, southwest of Albany.
Education
Hedges received a scholarship to attend Loomis Chaffee School, a private boarding school in Windsor, Connecticut. Hedges founded an underground newspaper at the school that was banned by the administration and resulted in his being put on probation. He graduated in 1975.
Hedges enrolled into Colgate University and, though heterosexual, helped found an LGBT student group. Hedges received his Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Colgate in 1979. He received a Master of Divinity degree from Harvard University's Divinity School (where he studied under James Luther Adams) in 1983. Hedges lived in Roxbury, a blighted inner city neighborhood in Boston, as a seminarian and ran a small church. He was also a member of the Greater Boston YMCA's boxing team, writing that the boxing gym was "the only place I felt safe." He studied Latin and Classical Greek at Harvard.
Early career
Hedges began his career as a freelance journalist in Latin America. He wrote for several publications, including The Washington Post, and covered the Falklands War from Buenos Aires for National Public Radio. From 1983 to 1984, he covered the conflicts in El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala for The Christian Science Monitor and NPR. He was hired as the Central America Bureau Chief for The Dallas Morning News in 1984 and held this position until 1988. Noam Chomsky wrote of Hedges at the time that he was one of the "few US journalists in Central America who merit the title."
Hedges took a sabbatical to study Arabic in 1988. He was appointed the Middle East Bureau Chief for The Dallas Morning News in 1989. In one of his first stories for the paper he tracked down Robert Manning, the prime suspect in the 1985 bombing death in California of Alex Odeh, head of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee’s Western office, in the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Before Hedges discovered Manning, Israel claimed it had no knowledge of Manning’s whereabouts. Manning, linked to the militant Jewish Defense League and allegedly behind several murders, was extradited to the United States in 1991 where he is serving a life sentence for a separate bombing incident.
The New York Times
In 1990, Hedges was hired by The New York Times. He covered the first Gulf War for the paper, where he refused to participate in the military pool system that restricted the movement and reporting of journalists. He was arrested by the United States Army and had his press credentials revoked, but continued to defy the military restrictions to report outside the pool system. Hedges subsequently entered Kuwait with U.S. Marine Corps members who were distrustful of the Army's press control. Within The New York Times, R.W. Apple Jr. supported Hedges' defiance of the pool system.
Hedges was taken prisoner in Basra after the war by the Iraqi Republican Guard during the Shiite uprising. He was freed after a week. Hedges was appointed the paper’s Middle East Bureau Chief in 1991. His reporting on the atrocities committed by Saddam Hussein in the Kurdish-held parts of northern Iraq saw the Iraqi leader offer a bounty for anyone who killed Hedges, along with other western journalists and aid workers in the region. Several aid workers and journalists, including the German reporter Lissy Schmidt, were assassinated and others were severely wounded.
Yugoslav Wars (1995–2000)
In 1995, Hedges was named the Balkan Bureau Chief for The New York Times. He was based in Sarajevo when the city was being hit by over 300 shells a day by the surrounding Bosnia Serbs. He reported on the Srebrenica massacre in July 1995 and shortly after the war uncovered what appeared to be one of the central collection points and hiding places for perhaps thousands of corpses at the large open pit Ljubija mine during the Bosnian Serbs' ethnic cleansing campaign. He and the photographer Wade Goddard were the first reporters to travel with armed units of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in Kosovo. Hedges investigative piece was published in The New York Times in June 1999 detailing how Hashim Thaçi, leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army (and later president of Kosovo), directed a campaign in which as many as half a dozen top rebel commanders were assassinated and many others were brutally purged to consolidate his power. Thaci, indicted by the special court in The Hague on 10 counts of war crimes, is in detention in The Hague awaiting trial.
Hedges was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University during the 1998–1999 academic year.
Hedges ended his career of reporting in active conflicts in October 2000, partly due to trauma sustained from witnessing the death of a juvenile boy in Kosovo during a firefight.
Terrorism coverage and Iraq War (2001–2005)
Hedges was based in Paris following the attacks of 9/11, covering Al Qaeda in Europe and the Middle East. He was a part of an investigative team in The New York Times that won the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting in 2002 for their coverage of Al Qaeda. Hedges' contribution was an October 2001 article describing Al Qaeda's foiled bombing plot of the Embassy of the United States, Paris. Most of the awarded reporting was done by Judith Miller, who was later disgraced due to her work that falsely connected the operations of Al Qaeda to the Republic of Iraq led by Saddam Hussein. Many Times editors pushed to utilize dubious American intelligence reports that gave misleading or fabricated details around an alleged Iraqi connection to international terror.
Reporting from coached defectors
In a collaboration between The New York Times and Frontline, Hedges authored three articles covering the claims of false Iraqi defectors. Hedges worked on the behalf of Lowell Bergman of Frontline, who could not travel to Beirut to interview the purported defectors. The trip was organized by Ahmed Chalabi, who Hedges considered to be unreliable. The first defector Hedges interviewed identified themselves as Lt. General Jamal al-Ghurairy. Hedges consulted the U.S. Embassy in Turkey to confirm their identity, and the embassy falsely did so as the real al-Ghurairy had never left Iraq.
Hedges wrote a November 8, 2001 Times cover story about two former Iraqi military commanders who claimed to have trained foreign mujahedeen how to hijack planes and destroy vital American infrastructure. The two defectors also asserted there was a secret compound in Salman Pak facility where a German scientist was producing biological weapons. The Frontline report featured statements from American officials who doubted the claims of the defectors.
According to Jack Fairweather in Mother Jones: "The impact of the article ... was immediate: Op-eds ran in major papers, and the story was taken to a wider audience through cable-TV talk shows. When Condoleezza Rice, then President George W. Bush's national security adviser, was asked about the report at a press briefing, she said, 'I think it surprises no one that Saddam Hussein is engaged in all kinds of activities that are destabilizing. As late as 2006, according to Fairweather in the same article, conservative magazines including The Weekly Standard and National Review continued to use this article to justify the invasion of Iraq.
In the aftermath of the revelations that the Iraqi defectors were not legitimate, Hedges defended his comportment since he had done the story as a favor to Lowell Bergman, adding that "There has to be a level of trust between reporters. We cover each other's sources when it's a good story because otherwise everyone would get hold of it."
Exit from the Times
In 2003, Hedges was reprimanded by The New York Times for his opposition to U.S. involvement in the Iraq War because of perceived challenges to partiality. This was a motivating factor for his resignation from the Times in 2005.
Later career
In 2005, Hedges left The New York Times to become a senior fellow at Type Media Center, and a columnist at Truthdig, in addition to writing books and teaching inmates at a New Jersey correctional institution.
Obey, a 2013 documentary by British filmmaker Temujin Doran, is based on Hedges' book Death of the Liberal Class.
Truthdig (2006–2020)
Hedges produced a weekly column in Truthdig for 14 years. He was fired along with all of the editorial staff in March 2020. Hedges and the staff had gone on strike earlier in the month to protest the publisher's attempt to fire the Editor-in-Chief Robert Scheer, demand an end to a series of unfair labor practices and the right to form a union. Hedges has since been a writer for Scheerpost.
Citation error controversy
In June 2014, Christopher Ketcham published an article on The New Republic website accusing Hedges of improper citations, alleging the offenses constituted plagiarism. In response, some formatting and reference errors were corrected on the website for Truthdig. Additional accusations of plagiarism from Ketcham were countered by an independent investigation from the Type Media Center.
The Washington Free Beacon reported that a spokesperson for The New York Times said it "did not have reason to believe Hedges plagiarized in his work for the paper" and had no plans to investigate Hedges for plagiarism.
Prison writing teacher
Hedges has worked for a decade teaching writing classes in prisons in New Jersey through a program offered by Princeton University and later Rutgers University. A class that Hedges taught at East Jersey State Prison in 2013 went on to collaborate in the creation of a play titled Caged. Hedges has become a fierce critic of mass incarceration in the United States, and his experience as an educator in New Jersey prisons served as inspiration for his 2021 book Our Class: Trauma and Transformation in an American Prison.
Ordination and ministerial installation
On October 5, 2014, Hedges was ordained a minister within the Presbyterian Church. He was installed as Associate Pastor and Minister of Social Witness and Prison Ministry at the Second Presbyterian Church Elizabeth in Elizabeth, New Jersey. He mentioned being rejected for ordination 30 years earlier, saying that "going to El Salvador as a reporter was not something the Presbyterian Church at the time recognized as a valid ministry, and a committee rejected my 'call.
Political views
Economic views
Hedges contended at the Left Forum in 2015 that with the "denouement of capitalism and the disintegration of globalism", Karl Marx has been "vindicated as capitalism's most prescient and important critic". He said that Marx "foresaw that capitalism had built within it the seeds of its own destruction. He knew that reigning ideologies—think neoliberalism—were created to serve the interests of the elites and in particular the economic elites."
Environmental views
In a March 2009 column, Hedges warned that human over-population and mass species extinction are serious problems, and that any measures to save the ecosystem will be futile unless we cut population growth, and noted that, "As long as the Earth is viewed as the personal property of the human race, a belief embraced by everyone from born-again Christians to Marxists to free-market economists, we are destined to soon inhabit a biological wasteland."
On September 20, 2014, a day before the People's Climate March, Hedges joined Bernie Sanders, Naomi Klein, Bill McKibben, and Kshama Sawant on a panel moderated by WNYC's Brian Lehrer to discuss the issue of climate change. Hedges and Klein also participated in the 'Flood Wall Street' protests that occurred shortly thereafter.
Hedges' environmental concerns were his primary motivation to be vegan. Hedges authored an introduction to a vegan cookbook in 2015.
Other views
In March 2008, Hedges published the book titled I Don't Believe in Atheists, in which he argues that new atheism presents a danger that is similar to religious extremism.
In a December 2014 TruthDig column, Hedges compared the ethnic cleansing of ISIS to the actions of Israel's founding fathers in the late 1940s.
Hedges has repudiated the view that the Founding Fathers of the United States represented a legitimate form of democracy, writing that they rigged America's electoral process to thwart direct democracy and to protect the property rights of the aristocracy. He has written that the Electoral College has served to disenfranchise women, Native Americans, African Americans, and men who do not own property. He has praised abolitionists, labor organizers, women's suffragists, civil rights protestors, and anti-war activists for bringing some change to the structure of the U.S. government.
Hedges told Julian Casablancas, the lead singer for The Strokes who interviewed him for Rolling Stone on December 23, 2020, that one of the few events worth celebrating in American history took place on June 25, 1876 when Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho, led by Crazy Horse and Chief Gall, annihilated the 7th Cavalry under the command of Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer.
Activism
Anti-war activism
Hedges was an early critic of the Iraq War. In May 2003, he delivered a commencement address at Rockford College in Rockford, Illinois, saying: "We are embarking on an occupation that, if history is any guide, will be as damaging to our souls as it will be to our prestige and power and security." His speech was received with boos, "two students approached the stage to push [him] off the podium" (as he told an interviewer), and his microphone was shut off three minutes after he began speaking. Hedges had to end the commencement speech short because of the various student disruptions.
The New York Times, his employer, criticized his statements and issued him a formal reprimand for "public remarks that could undermine public trust in the paper's impartiality".
On December 16, 2010, he was arrested outside the White House along with Daniel Ellsberg and more than 100 activists who were protesting the war in Afghanistan.
In a piece published in Salon Magazine in March 2022, Hedges argued that NATO was at fault for Russia's invasion of Ukraine:The European Union has allocated hundreds of millions of euros to purchase weapons for Ukraine. Germany will almost triple its own defense budget for 2022. The Biden administration has asked Congress to provide $6.4 billion in funding to assist Ukraine, supplementing the $650 million in military aid to Ukraine over the past year. The permanent war economy operates outside the laws of supply and demand. It is the root of the two-decade-long quagmire in the Middle East. It is the root of the conflict with Moscow.
Occupy involvement
Hedges appeared as a guest on an October 2011 episode of the CBC News Network's Lang and O'Leary Exchange to discuss his support for the Occupy Wall Street protests; co-host Kevin O'Leary criticized him, saying that he sounded "like a left-wing nutbar". Hedges said "it will be the last time" he appears on the show, and compared the CBC to Fox News. CBC's ombudsman found O'Leary's heated remarks to be a violation of the public broadcaster's journalistic standards.
On November 3, 2011, Hedges was arrested with others in New York as part of the Occupy Wall Street demonstration, during which the activists staged a "people's hearing" on the activities of the investment bank Goldman Sachs and blocked the entrance to their corporate headquarters.
NDAA lawsuit
In 2012, after the Obama administration signed the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, Hedges sued members of the U.S. government, asserting that section 1021 of the law unconstitutionally allowed presidential authority for indefinite detention without habeas corpus. He was later joined in the suit, Hedges v. Obama, by activists including Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg. In May 2012 Judge Katherine B. Forrest of the Southern District of New York ruled that the counter-terrorism provision of the NDAA is unconstitutional. The Obama administration appealed the decision and it was overturned in July 2013 by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Hedges petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case, but the Supreme Court denied certiorari in April 2014.
Other activism
In the 2008 United States presidential campaign, Hedges was a speech writer for candidate Ralph Nader.
On April 15, 2016, Hedges was arrested, along with 100 other protesters, during a sit-in outside the Capitol building in Washington D.C. during Democracy Spring to protest the capture of the political system by corporations.
On May 27, 2020, Hedges announced that he would run as a Green Party candidate in New Jersey's 12th congressional district for the 2020 elections. However, he was informed the following day that running for office would conflict with FCC fairness doctrine rules because he was at that time hosting the nationally broadcast RT America television show On Contact. Hedges decided not to pursue office in order to keep hosting the show.
In September 2020, Chris Hedges spoke at the Movement for a People's Party convention.
Personal life
Hedges is married to the Canadian actress Eunice Wong. The couple have two children. Hedges also has two children from a previous marriage. He currently lives in Princeton, New Jersey. On November 11, 2014, Hedges announced that he and his family had become vegan. Hedges compared his decision to a vow of abstinence, adding that it is necessary "to make radical changes to save ourselves from ecological meltdown."
Hedges has post-traumatic stress disorder from his experience reporting in war zones.
Hedges studied Latin and Ancient Greek at Harvard, and speaks Arabic, French, and Spanish in addition to his native English.
Books
2002: War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning ()
2003: What Every Person Should Know About War ()
2005: Losing Moses on the Freeway: The 10 Commandments in America ()
2007: American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America ()
2008: I Don't Believe in Atheists ()
2008: Collateral Damage: America's War Against Iraqi Civilians, with Laila Al-Arian ()
2009: When Atheism Becomes Religion: America's New Fundamentalists, (), a retitled edition of I Don't Believe in Atheists
2009: Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle ()
2010: Death of the Liberal Class ()
2010: The World As It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress ()
2012: Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, with Joe Sacco ()
2015: Wages of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of Revolt ()
2016: Unspeakable ()
2018: America: The Farewell Tour ()
2021 Our Class: Trauma and Transformation in an American Prison ()
See also
Christian left
Sacrifice zone
References
External links
APB Speakers Bureau Chris Hedges
"Capitalism's 'Sacrifice Zones Bill Moyers talks with Chris Hedges, and comic-journalist Joe Sacco talking about their collaboration and showing drawings for their book Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, July 20, 2012. Retrieved July 30, 2012
Columns by Chris Hedges at Truthdig
What Every Person Should Know About War, first chapter at The New York Times
Chris Hedges at Scheerpost.
1956 births
Living people
21st-century American male writers
21st-century American non-fiction writers
American anarchists
American anti-capitalists
American anti-fascists
American Christian socialists
American foreign policy writers
American male non-fiction writers
American political writers
American Presbyterians
American reporters and correspondents
American socialists
American war correspondents
Anarchist writers
Anti-consumerists
Anti-corporate activists
Christian anarchists
The Christian Science Monitor people
Colgate University alumni
Columbia University faculty
Critics of atheism
The Dallas Morning News people
Harvard Divinity School alumni
Loomis Chaffee School alumni
The Nation (U.S. magazine) people
The New York Times writers
Nieman Fellows
PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award winners
People from Schoharie, New York
People from St. Johnsbury, Vermont
Presbyterian socialists
RT (TV network) people
War correspondents of the Iraq War
War correspondents of the Yugoslav Wars
Writers about religion and science | false | [
"M. K. Ramachandran is a writer from Thrissur, Kerala. In 2005 he won the Kerala Sahithya Academy award for his first book, Uttarakhandiloode - Kailas Mansarovar Yatra. His other books are Thapobhoomi Uttarakhand, Adi Kailasa Yathra and Devabhoomiyiloode . \n\nRamachandran was born in 1953 at Kechery in Thrissur district. His parents were late Machingal Krishnan Ezhuthachan and late Narangalil Vadakkevalappil Devaki Amma. He completed his studies at Puttekkara St. Sebastians' School, Thrissur Sree Keralavarma College and Thrissur St. Thomas College. He is a disciple of the veteran Sanskrit scholar K. P. Narayana Pisharody. He was one of the first persons from Kerala who conducted Kailas Mansarovar Yatra, which he conducted in 2001. His first book, 'Uttarkhandiloode - Kailas Mansarovar Yatra' was published in 2003 and narrates this experience. His second book, 'Thapoobhoomi Uttarkhand', was published in 2005, and that book was written on his Char Dham tour and also other pilgrim spots in the northern state Uttarakhand. His third book, 'Adi Kailasa Yathra', was published in 2008, and it narrates his experience with the peaks Om Parvat and Kailash located in Uttarakhand. His fourth book, 'Devabhoomiyiloode', was published in 2012, and it narrates his experiences with Kinnaur, Shrikant Mahadev and Manimahesh Kailash & also his Sikkim tour. He is perhaps the only person who visited all five Kailash. In 2014, he also published a collection of short stories called 'Nilavum Nizhalukalum'. In 2016, his another travelogue 'Dakinimarude Hridaya Bhoomiyiloode' was released. All his books were published by Current Books, Thrissur. His travelogues have been sold for many copies year by year. He is married to Geetha, and has three children. His wife and elder son Sarath are also popular travellers, who shot to fame through their Kailash pilgrimage in 2018.\n\nAwards\n Kerala Sahithya Academy Award 2005 for Uttarakhandiloode - Kailas Mansarovar Yatra\n\nReferences\n\nMalayalam-language writers\nLiving people\n1953 births\nWriters from Thrissur",
"Tim Myers is an American author who publishes under a number of pen names, including Jessica Beck. As Beck, he is the author of the Donut Shop Mystery, Classic Diner Mystery, Ghost Cat Cozy Mystery, and Cast Iron Cooking Mystery series. The author has been nominated for the Agatha Award and named an Independent Mystery Booksellers Association national bestseller. Beck is most known for the Donut Shop Mystery series, which features main protagonist Suzanne Hart, who runs a Donut Hearts shop in the town of April Springs in North Carolina.\n\nBibliography\n\nLighthouse Inn Mysteries series\n Innkeeping with Murder, Berkley, June 2001 \n Reservations for Murder, Berkley, June 2002 \n Murder Checks Inn, Berkley, December 2002 \n Room for Murder, Berkley, September 2003 \n Booked for Murder, Berkley, August 2004 \n Key to Murder, Self Published, August 2011 \n Ring for Murder, Self Published, August 2011 \n Honeymoon for Murder, Self Published, May 2017\n\nCandlemaking Mysteries series\n At Wick's End, Berkley, January 2004 \n Snuffed Out, Berkley, November 2004 \n Death Waxed Over, Berkley, October 2005 \n A Flicker of Doubt, Berkley, January 2006 \n Waxing Moon: A Short Story, Self Published, March 2011 (e-book)\n\nSoapmaking Mysteries series\n Dead Men Don't Lye, Berkley, February 2006 \n A Pour Way to Dye, Berkley, August 2006 \n A Mold for Murder, Berkley, April 2007\n\nGentle Southern Mysteries series\n Coventry, Self Published, August 2011 \n A Family of Strangers, Self Published, April 2011 \n Volunteer for Murder, Self Published, August 2011\n\nParanormal Kids series\n Paranormal Kids, Self Published, April 2011 \n Paranormal Camp, Self Published, April 2011\n\nWizard's School series\n Year One: The Wizard's Secret, Self Published, August 2011 \n Year Two: The Killing Crystal, Self Published, May 2012\n\nBooks of Time series\n The Book of Time and Ben Franklin, Self Published, January 2011 (e-book)\n The Book of Time and Thomas Edison, Self Published, January 2011 (e-book)\n The Book of Time and Archimedes, Self Published, January 2011 (e-book)\n\nLost in Art series\n Lost in Monet's Garden, Self Published, January 2011 (e-book)\n Lost in Picasso's Cubes, Self Published, January 2011 (e-book)\n\nSlow Cooker Mysteries series\n Slow Cooked Murder, Self Published, December 2011 \n Simmering Death, Self Published, December 2011\n\nPizza series\n Rest in Pizza (Pizza Lover's Mystery Book 4) (RestInPizza.de), Published by Join Now, April 2011\n\nStand Alone\n Crispin Livingston Hughes, Boy Inventor, Self Published, July 2010 (e-book)\n Emma's Emerald Mine, Self Published, July 2010 (e-book)\n The Fairy Godfather: A Modern Romantic Fairy Tale, Self Published, July 2010 \n Lightning Ridge, Self Published, August 2011 \n Rebuilding My Life, Self Published, August 2011 \n Tackling the Truth, Self Published, August 2011 \n The Amazing Voltini, Self Published, August 2011\n\nCollections\n Long Shots, Self Published, March 2011 (e-book)\n Can You Guess What's Next? Volume One, Self Published, July 2011 (e-book)\n Can You Guess What's Next? Volume Two, Self Published, July 2011 (e-book)\n Did You Solve the Crime? Volume One, Self Published, July 2011 (e-book)\n Did You Solve the Crime? Volume Two, Self Published, July 2011 (e-book)\n Did You Solve the Crime? Volume Three, Self Published, July 2011 (e-book)\n Repeat Performances, Self Published, July 2011 (e-book)\n Beauty Time 3, Self Published, November 2011 (e-book)\n Senior Sleuths, Self Published, November 2011 (e-book)\n Crimes with a Twist, Self Published, July 2014 (e-book)\n Dark Sips of Mystery, Self Published, July 2014 (e-book)\n Hidden Messages, Self Published, July 2014 (e-book)\n Marriage Can Be Murder, Self Published, July 2014 (e-book)\n Money Mysteries, Self Published, July 2014 (e-book)\n Murder is a Special Occasion, Self Published, July 2014 (e-book)\n Murder Nine to Five, Self Published, July 2014 (e-book)\n Pet Mysteries, Self Published, July 2014 (e-book)\n Senior Sleuths Again, Self Published, July 2014 (e-book)\n Turning the Tables, Self Published, July 2014 (e-book)\n Minecraft, RestInPizza Network, September 2016 (full release)\n\nPseudonyms\n\nChris Cavender (Voldechse)\nJessica Beck\nElizabeth Bright\nMelissa Glazer\nCasey Mayes\nIngrid Meier\nD. B. Morgan\nT. S. Punkt (Freezle)\nS. Y. Paulson (undefined)\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\n21st-century American novelists\nAmerican mystery writers\nYear of birth missing (living people)\nLiving people\n21st-century pseudonymous writers"
]
|
[
"Chris Hedges",
"Allegations of plagiarism",
"Who accused him of plagiarism first",
"Thomas Palaima",
"where did he work at the time",
"University of Texas",
"What year was this",
"2003,",
"what author is he accused of plagiarizing",
"plagiarizing Ernest Hemingway",
"What was the name of his book",
"War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning.",
"what year is the book from",
"2002",
"who published his book",
"publisher at the time, PublicAffairs,"
]
| C_93d6f68d107c4aad9ce4395c004be4ac_0 | What did they say | 8 | What did PublicAffairs say | Chris Hedges | In 2003, University of Texas classics professor Thomas Palaima wrote an article for the Austin-American Statesman accusing Hedges of plagiarizing Ernest Hemingway in Hedge's 2002 book War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. Palaima said that Hedges had corrected a passage in his first edition of War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning that was close to Hemingway, and he should have cited the paraphrase in all subsequent editions. Hedges' publisher at the time, PublicAffairs, said it did not believe the passage needed to be cited to Hemingway. The New Republic said that Palaima's allegation had resulted in the passage being reworded. But, after posting the article online, the magazine posted a correction box that read: "In the original version of this article, The New Republic indicated that PublicAffairs changed the text of War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning only after having been alerted by Thomas [Palaima] to the presence of plagiarism. In fact, the wording had been changed months earlier, and an edition with the present language existed at the time of Palaima's e-mail to PublicAffairs. However, there was still no attribution to Hemingway in the new version, despite the obvious similarities in ideas and formulation". In June 2014, Christopher Ketcham accused Hedges of plagiarism in an article published in The New Republic. Ketcham claims that Hedges plagiarized many writers over his career, including Matt Katz, Naomi Klein, Neil Postman, Ernest Hemingway, along with Ketcham's wife: Petra Bartosiewicz. Hedges, his editors at Truthdig, and his publisher Nation Books denied the claims made by Ketcham. In a response first published by The Real News on June 16, 2014, Hedges noted that Ketcham based his allegations on an unpublished manuscript which the latter man admitted he had never seen and passages that were actually footnoted or sourced. Hedges accused Ketcham and The New Republic (TNR) of malicious intent and character assassination. On the following day (June 17), The New Republic republished Hedges' response along with Ketcham's (and TNR's) response to the counter-allegations made by Hedges. The Washington Free Beacon reported The New York Times spokesman saying that it "did not have reason to believe Hedges plagiarized in his work for the paper" and had no plans to investigate Hedges for plagiarism. The American Prospect and Salon declined to publish Ketcham's article, and The Nation Institute and Truthdig issued statements dismissing Ketcham's allegations. CANNOTANSWER | it did not believe the passage needed to be cited to Hemingway. | Christopher Lynn Hedges (born September 18, 1956) is an American journalist, Presbyterian minister, author and television host. A former reporter for The New York Times, Hedges has pursued work and activism related to covering his perspectives on political violence and critical views on American liberalism.
In his early career, Hedges worked as a freelance war correspondent in Central America for The Christian Science Monitor, NPR, and Dallas Morning News. Hedges began working for The New York Times in 1990. During his fifteen year tenure, Hedges reported from more than fifty countries and served as the Times Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief during the wars in the former Yugoslavia.
In 2001, Hedges contributed to The New York Times staff entry that received the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for the paper's coverage of global terrorism. He also received the Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism in 2002. Hedges left the Times in 2005 after an internal dispute over his public opposition to the Iraq War.
Hedges produced a weekly column for Truthdig for 14 years until the outlet's unexpected hiatus in 2020. Hedges' books include War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (2002), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction; American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America (2007); Death of the Liberal Class (2010); and Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt (2012), written with cartoonist Joe Sacco.
Hedges has taught at Columbia University, New York University, the University of Toronto and Princeton University. He has taught college credit writing courses in New Jersey prisons as part of the B.A. program offered by Rutgers University.
Hedges hosts the Emmy-nominated program On Contact for the RT (formerly Russia Today) television network. Hedges has described himself as a socialist and an anarchist, identifying with Dorothy Day in particular.
Early life
Christopher Lynn Hedges was born on September 18, 1956 in St. Johnsbury, Vermont. His father was a World War II veteran, Presbyterian minister, and anti-war activist. He grew up in rural Schoharie County, New York, southwest of Albany.
Education
Hedges received a scholarship to attend Loomis Chaffee School, a private boarding school in Windsor, Connecticut. Hedges founded an underground newspaper at the school that was banned by the administration and resulted in his being put on probation. He graduated in 1975.
Hedges enrolled into Colgate University and, though heterosexual, helped found an LGBT student group. Hedges received his Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Colgate in 1979. He received a Master of Divinity degree from Harvard University's Divinity School (where he studied under James Luther Adams) in 1983. Hedges lived in Roxbury, a blighted inner city neighborhood in Boston, as a seminarian and ran a small church. He was also a member of the Greater Boston YMCA's boxing team, writing that the boxing gym was "the only place I felt safe." He studied Latin and Classical Greek at Harvard.
Early career
Hedges began his career as a freelance journalist in Latin America. He wrote for several publications, including The Washington Post, and covered the Falklands War from Buenos Aires for National Public Radio. From 1983 to 1984, he covered the conflicts in El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala for The Christian Science Monitor and NPR. He was hired as the Central America Bureau Chief for The Dallas Morning News in 1984 and held this position until 1988. Noam Chomsky wrote of Hedges at the time that he was one of the "few US journalists in Central America who merit the title."
Hedges took a sabbatical to study Arabic in 1988. He was appointed the Middle East Bureau Chief for The Dallas Morning News in 1989. In one of his first stories for the paper he tracked down Robert Manning, the prime suspect in the 1985 bombing death in California of Alex Odeh, head of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee’s Western office, in the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Before Hedges discovered Manning, Israel claimed it had no knowledge of Manning’s whereabouts. Manning, linked to the militant Jewish Defense League and allegedly behind several murders, was extradited to the United States in 1991 where he is serving a life sentence for a separate bombing incident.
The New York Times
In 1990, Hedges was hired by The New York Times. He covered the first Gulf War for the paper, where he refused to participate in the military pool system that restricted the movement and reporting of journalists. He was arrested by the United States Army and had his press credentials revoked, but continued to defy the military restrictions to report outside the pool system. Hedges subsequently entered Kuwait with U.S. Marine Corps members who were distrustful of the Army's press control. Within The New York Times, R.W. Apple Jr. supported Hedges' defiance of the pool system.
Hedges was taken prisoner in Basra after the war by the Iraqi Republican Guard during the Shiite uprising. He was freed after a week. Hedges was appointed the paper’s Middle East Bureau Chief in 1991. His reporting on the atrocities committed by Saddam Hussein in the Kurdish-held parts of northern Iraq saw the Iraqi leader offer a bounty for anyone who killed Hedges, along with other western journalists and aid workers in the region. Several aid workers and journalists, including the German reporter Lissy Schmidt, were assassinated and others were severely wounded.
Yugoslav Wars (1995–2000)
In 1995, Hedges was named the Balkan Bureau Chief for The New York Times. He was based in Sarajevo when the city was being hit by over 300 shells a day by the surrounding Bosnia Serbs. He reported on the Srebrenica massacre in July 1995 and shortly after the war uncovered what appeared to be one of the central collection points and hiding places for perhaps thousands of corpses at the large open pit Ljubija mine during the Bosnian Serbs' ethnic cleansing campaign. He and the photographer Wade Goddard were the first reporters to travel with armed units of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in Kosovo. Hedges investigative piece was published in The New York Times in June 1999 detailing how Hashim Thaçi, leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army (and later president of Kosovo), directed a campaign in which as many as half a dozen top rebel commanders were assassinated and many others were brutally purged to consolidate his power. Thaci, indicted by the special court in The Hague on 10 counts of war crimes, is in detention in The Hague awaiting trial.
Hedges was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University during the 1998–1999 academic year.
Hedges ended his career of reporting in active conflicts in October 2000, partly due to trauma sustained from witnessing the death of a juvenile boy in Kosovo during a firefight.
Terrorism coverage and Iraq War (2001–2005)
Hedges was based in Paris following the attacks of 9/11, covering Al Qaeda in Europe and the Middle East. He was a part of an investigative team in The New York Times that won the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting in 2002 for their coverage of Al Qaeda. Hedges' contribution was an October 2001 article describing Al Qaeda's foiled bombing plot of the Embassy of the United States, Paris. Most of the awarded reporting was done by Judith Miller, who was later disgraced due to her work that falsely connected the operations of Al Qaeda to the Republic of Iraq led by Saddam Hussein. Many Times editors pushed to utilize dubious American intelligence reports that gave misleading or fabricated details around an alleged Iraqi connection to international terror.
Reporting from coached defectors
In a collaboration between The New York Times and Frontline, Hedges authored three articles covering the claims of false Iraqi defectors. Hedges worked on the behalf of Lowell Bergman of Frontline, who could not travel to Beirut to interview the purported defectors. The trip was organized by Ahmed Chalabi, who Hedges considered to be unreliable. The first defector Hedges interviewed identified themselves as Lt. General Jamal al-Ghurairy. Hedges consulted the U.S. Embassy in Turkey to confirm their identity, and the embassy falsely did so as the real al-Ghurairy had never left Iraq.
Hedges wrote a November 8, 2001 Times cover story about two former Iraqi military commanders who claimed to have trained foreign mujahedeen how to hijack planes and destroy vital American infrastructure. The two defectors also asserted there was a secret compound in Salman Pak facility where a German scientist was producing biological weapons. The Frontline report featured statements from American officials who doubted the claims of the defectors.
According to Jack Fairweather in Mother Jones: "The impact of the article ... was immediate: Op-eds ran in major papers, and the story was taken to a wider audience through cable-TV talk shows. When Condoleezza Rice, then President George W. Bush's national security adviser, was asked about the report at a press briefing, she said, 'I think it surprises no one that Saddam Hussein is engaged in all kinds of activities that are destabilizing. As late as 2006, according to Fairweather in the same article, conservative magazines including The Weekly Standard and National Review continued to use this article to justify the invasion of Iraq.
In the aftermath of the revelations that the Iraqi defectors were not legitimate, Hedges defended his comportment since he had done the story as a favor to Lowell Bergman, adding that "There has to be a level of trust between reporters. We cover each other's sources when it's a good story because otherwise everyone would get hold of it."
Exit from the Times
In 2003, Hedges was reprimanded by The New York Times for his opposition to U.S. involvement in the Iraq War because of perceived challenges to partiality. This was a motivating factor for his resignation from the Times in 2005.
Later career
In 2005, Hedges left The New York Times to become a senior fellow at Type Media Center, and a columnist at Truthdig, in addition to writing books and teaching inmates at a New Jersey correctional institution.
Obey, a 2013 documentary by British filmmaker Temujin Doran, is based on Hedges' book Death of the Liberal Class.
Truthdig (2006–2020)
Hedges produced a weekly column in Truthdig for 14 years. He was fired along with all of the editorial staff in March 2020. Hedges and the staff had gone on strike earlier in the month to protest the publisher's attempt to fire the Editor-in-Chief Robert Scheer, demand an end to a series of unfair labor practices and the right to form a union. Hedges has since been a writer for Scheerpost.
Citation error controversy
In June 2014, Christopher Ketcham published an article on The New Republic website accusing Hedges of improper citations, alleging the offenses constituted plagiarism. In response, some formatting and reference errors were corrected on the website for Truthdig. Additional accusations of plagiarism from Ketcham were countered by an independent investigation from the Type Media Center.
The Washington Free Beacon reported that a spokesperson for The New York Times said it "did not have reason to believe Hedges plagiarized in his work for the paper" and had no plans to investigate Hedges for plagiarism.
Prison writing teacher
Hedges has worked for a decade teaching writing classes in prisons in New Jersey through a program offered by Princeton University and later Rutgers University. A class that Hedges taught at East Jersey State Prison in 2013 went on to collaborate in the creation of a play titled Caged. Hedges has become a fierce critic of mass incarceration in the United States, and his experience as an educator in New Jersey prisons served as inspiration for his 2021 book Our Class: Trauma and Transformation in an American Prison.
Ordination and ministerial installation
On October 5, 2014, Hedges was ordained a minister within the Presbyterian Church. He was installed as Associate Pastor and Minister of Social Witness and Prison Ministry at the Second Presbyterian Church Elizabeth in Elizabeth, New Jersey. He mentioned being rejected for ordination 30 years earlier, saying that "going to El Salvador as a reporter was not something the Presbyterian Church at the time recognized as a valid ministry, and a committee rejected my 'call.
Political views
Economic views
Hedges contended at the Left Forum in 2015 that with the "denouement of capitalism and the disintegration of globalism", Karl Marx has been "vindicated as capitalism's most prescient and important critic". He said that Marx "foresaw that capitalism had built within it the seeds of its own destruction. He knew that reigning ideologies—think neoliberalism—were created to serve the interests of the elites and in particular the economic elites."
Environmental views
In a March 2009 column, Hedges warned that human over-population and mass species extinction are serious problems, and that any measures to save the ecosystem will be futile unless we cut population growth, and noted that, "As long as the Earth is viewed as the personal property of the human race, a belief embraced by everyone from born-again Christians to Marxists to free-market economists, we are destined to soon inhabit a biological wasteland."
On September 20, 2014, a day before the People's Climate March, Hedges joined Bernie Sanders, Naomi Klein, Bill McKibben, and Kshama Sawant on a panel moderated by WNYC's Brian Lehrer to discuss the issue of climate change. Hedges and Klein also participated in the 'Flood Wall Street' protests that occurred shortly thereafter.
Hedges' environmental concerns were his primary motivation to be vegan. Hedges authored an introduction to a vegan cookbook in 2015.
Other views
In March 2008, Hedges published the book titled I Don't Believe in Atheists, in which he argues that new atheism presents a danger that is similar to religious extremism.
In a December 2014 TruthDig column, Hedges compared the ethnic cleansing of ISIS to the actions of Israel's founding fathers in the late 1940s.
Hedges has repudiated the view that the Founding Fathers of the United States represented a legitimate form of democracy, writing that they rigged America's electoral process to thwart direct democracy and to protect the property rights of the aristocracy. He has written that the Electoral College has served to disenfranchise women, Native Americans, African Americans, and men who do not own property. He has praised abolitionists, labor organizers, women's suffragists, civil rights protestors, and anti-war activists for bringing some change to the structure of the U.S. government.
Hedges told Julian Casablancas, the lead singer for The Strokes who interviewed him for Rolling Stone on December 23, 2020, that one of the few events worth celebrating in American history took place on June 25, 1876 when Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho, led by Crazy Horse and Chief Gall, annihilated the 7th Cavalry under the command of Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer.
Activism
Anti-war activism
Hedges was an early critic of the Iraq War. In May 2003, he delivered a commencement address at Rockford College in Rockford, Illinois, saying: "We are embarking on an occupation that, if history is any guide, will be as damaging to our souls as it will be to our prestige and power and security." His speech was received with boos, "two students approached the stage to push [him] off the podium" (as he told an interviewer), and his microphone was shut off three minutes after he began speaking. Hedges had to end the commencement speech short because of the various student disruptions.
The New York Times, his employer, criticized his statements and issued him a formal reprimand for "public remarks that could undermine public trust in the paper's impartiality".
On December 16, 2010, he was arrested outside the White House along with Daniel Ellsberg and more than 100 activists who were protesting the war in Afghanistan.
In a piece published in Salon Magazine in March 2022, Hedges argued that NATO was at fault for Russia's invasion of Ukraine:The European Union has allocated hundreds of millions of euros to purchase weapons for Ukraine. Germany will almost triple its own defense budget for 2022. The Biden administration has asked Congress to provide $6.4 billion in funding to assist Ukraine, supplementing the $650 million in military aid to Ukraine over the past year. The permanent war economy operates outside the laws of supply and demand. It is the root of the two-decade-long quagmire in the Middle East. It is the root of the conflict with Moscow.
Occupy involvement
Hedges appeared as a guest on an October 2011 episode of the CBC News Network's Lang and O'Leary Exchange to discuss his support for the Occupy Wall Street protests; co-host Kevin O'Leary criticized him, saying that he sounded "like a left-wing nutbar". Hedges said "it will be the last time" he appears on the show, and compared the CBC to Fox News. CBC's ombudsman found O'Leary's heated remarks to be a violation of the public broadcaster's journalistic standards.
On November 3, 2011, Hedges was arrested with others in New York as part of the Occupy Wall Street demonstration, during which the activists staged a "people's hearing" on the activities of the investment bank Goldman Sachs and blocked the entrance to their corporate headquarters.
NDAA lawsuit
In 2012, after the Obama administration signed the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, Hedges sued members of the U.S. government, asserting that section 1021 of the law unconstitutionally allowed presidential authority for indefinite detention without habeas corpus. He was later joined in the suit, Hedges v. Obama, by activists including Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg. In May 2012 Judge Katherine B. Forrest of the Southern District of New York ruled that the counter-terrorism provision of the NDAA is unconstitutional. The Obama administration appealed the decision and it was overturned in July 2013 by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Hedges petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case, but the Supreme Court denied certiorari in April 2014.
Other activism
In the 2008 United States presidential campaign, Hedges was a speech writer for candidate Ralph Nader.
On April 15, 2016, Hedges was arrested, along with 100 other protesters, during a sit-in outside the Capitol building in Washington D.C. during Democracy Spring to protest the capture of the political system by corporations.
On May 27, 2020, Hedges announced that he would run as a Green Party candidate in New Jersey's 12th congressional district for the 2020 elections. However, he was informed the following day that running for office would conflict with FCC fairness doctrine rules because he was at that time hosting the nationally broadcast RT America television show On Contact. Hedges decided not to pursue office in order to keep hosting the show.
In September 2020, Chris Hedges spoke at the Movement for a People's Party convention.
Personal life
Hedges is married to the Canadian actress Eunice Wong. The couple have two children. Hedges also has two children from a previous marriage. He currently lives in Princeton, New Jersey. On November 11, 2014, Hedges announced that he and his family had become vegan. Hedges compared his decision to a vow of abstinence, adding that it is necessary "to make radical changes to save ourselves from ecological meltdown."
Hedges has post-traumatic stress disorder from his experience reporting in war zones.
Hedges studied Latin and Ancient Greek at Harvard, and speaks Arabic, French, and Spanish in addition to his native English.
Books
2002: War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning ()
2003: What Every Person Should Know About War ()
2005: Losing Moses on the Freeway: The 10 Commandments in America ()
2007: American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America ()
2008: I Don't Believe in Atheists ()
2008: Collateral Damage: America's War Against Iraqi Civilians, with Laila Al-Arian ()
2009: When Atheism Becomes Religion: America's New Fundamentalists, (), a retitled edition of I Don't Believe in Atheists
2009: Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle ()
2010: Death of the Liberal Class ()
2010: The World As It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress ()
2012: Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, with Joe Sacco ()
2015: Wages of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of Revolt ()
2016: Unspeakable ()
2018: America: The Farewell Tour ()
2021 Our Class: Trauma and Transformation in an American Prison ()
See also
Christian left
Sacrifice zone
References
External links
APB Speakers Bureau Chris Hedges
"Capitalism's 'Sacrifice Zones Bill Moyers talks with Chris Hedges, and comic-journalist Joe Sacco talking about their collaboration and showing drawings for their book Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, July 20, 2012. Retrieved July 30, 2012
Columns by Chris Hedges at Truthdig
What Every Person Should Know About War, first chapter at The New York Times
Chris Hedges at Scheerpost.
1956 births
Living people
21st-century American male writers
21st-century American non-fiction writers
American anarchists
American anti-capitalists
American anti-fascists
American Christian socialists
American foreign policy writers
American male non-fiction writers
American political writers
American Presbyterians
American reporters and correspondents
American socialists
American war correspondents
Anarchist writers
Anti-consumerists
Anti-corporate activists
Christian anarchists
The Christian Science Monitor people
Colgate University alumni
Columbia University faculty
Critics of atheism
The Dallas Morning News people
Harvard Divinity School alumni
Loomis Chaffee School alumni
The Nation (U.S. magazine) people
The New York Times writers
Nieman Fellows
PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award winners
People from Schoharie, New York
People from St. Johnsbury, Vermont
Presbyterian socialists
RT (TV network) people
War correspondents of the Iraq War
War correspondents of the Yugoslav Wars
Writers about religion and science | false | [
"No Matter What They Say is a song by Lil' Kim\n\nNo Matter What They Say\tmay also refer to:\n\"No Matter What They Say\", song by Denise LaSalle\t1978\n\"No Matter What They Say\", song by Priscilla Hernández \n\"No Matter What They Say\", song by Heinz (singer)\tMeek, Lawrence 1964\n\"No Matter What They Say\", song by Booker T. & the MG's, sampled in \"Shamrocks and Shenanigans\" on House of Pain (album)\n\"No Matter What They Say\", song by Raptile",
"\"No Matter What They Say\" is a song by Lil' Kim, released as the first single from her second album The Notorious K.I.M., released in 2000. It reached number 60 on the Billboard Hot 100, and number 35 on the UK Singles Chart.\n\nBackground\n\"No Matter What They Say\" was not Kim's first choice as the lead single from the album. Kim did not want the song released as she felt the Spanish sound had already been done so many times due to the Latin pop explosion of the late 90s. Instead Kim wanted \"The Queen\", one of the songs that leaked prior to the album's release, as her first single. The record label didn't agree with Kim and insisted on releasing \"No Matter What They Say\". With time running out and not wanting her first week album sales to suffer, Kim agreed with her label to release the song. \"The Queen\" never made it on the album's final track listing.\n\nSamples\nThis song sampled many other songs, including:\n\"Esto es el Guaguanco\" by Cheo Feliciano\n\"I Got It Made\" by Special Ed\n\"I Know You Got Soul\" by Eric B. & Rakim\n\"Rapper's Delight\" by The Sugarhill Gang\n\nThe song also samples the line 'I'm just tryna be me, doing what I gotta do' from \"Top of the World\" by Brandy as well as \"This is how it should be done\" from Roxanne's On A Roll by The Real Roxanne.\n\nMusic video \nThe accompanying music video for \"No Matter What They Say\" was filmed in Los Angeles and directed by Marcus Raboy in early June 2000. It features cameo appearances from Puff Daddy, Mary J. Blige, Missy Elliott, Method Man & Redman, Xzibit, Junior M.A.F.I.A. and Carmen Electra. The video needed some digital retouches, such was \"nipple fixes\" for when Kim wiggles out of her Versace bustiers and computer-edited T-shirts for her backup girls (they were altered to \"itty girls\"). Cameo dancer Carmen Electra had her underwear altered as well. \"It's not like you could really see anything. It's just the freeze-frame factor you have to consider\", said director Marcus Raboy. The music video premiered on Total Request Live (TRL) on June 20, 2000.\n\nTrack listings\n\nUS Promo CD\n\"No Matter What They Say\" (Radio Edit) - 4:19\n\"No Matter What They Say\" (Album Version) - 5:35\n\"No Matter What They Say\" (Instrumental) - 4:21\n\nEurope CD single\n\"No Matter What They Say\" (Radio Edit) - 4:18\n\"No Matter What They Say\" (Album Version) - 4:14\n\"No Matter What They Say\" (Instrumental) - 4:19\n\"No Matter What They Say\" (Acappella) - 4:26\n\nCredits and personnel\nCredits for \"No Matter What They Say\" are taken from the single's liner notes.\n\nRecording\nRecorded at Daddy's House Recording Studios.\nRecorded by Stephen Dent\n\nPersonnel\n Lil' Kim – lead vocals\n K. Jones, D. Henson, J. Feliciano, Eric B. & Rakim, E. Archer, R. Beavers, J. Hill, P. Jovner, D. Taylor, H. Thomas, N. Rodgers, B. Edwards – songwriting\n Darren \"Limitless\" Henson – producer\n Rich Travali – mixing\n Chris Athens – audio mastering\n\nCharts\n\nWeekly charts\n\nYear-end charts\n\nReferences\n\n2000 singles\nLil' Kim songs\nMusic videos directed by Marcus Raboy\n1999 songs\nAtlantic Records singles\nSongs written by Lil' Kim\nSongs written by Bernard Edwards\nSongs written by Nile Rodgers"
]
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"Thomas Palaima",
"where did he work at the time",
"University of Texas",
"What year was this",
"2003,",
"what author is he accused of plagiarizing",
"plagiarizing Ernest Hemingway",
"What was the name of his book",
"War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning.",
"what year is the book from",
"2002",
"who published his book",
"publisher at the time, PublicAffairs,",
"What did they say",
"it did not believe the passage needed to be cited to Hemingway."
]
| C_93d6f68d107c4aad9ce4395c004be4ac_0 | What did they do | 9 | What did PublicAffairs do | Chris Hedges | In 2003, University of Texas classics professor Thomas Palaima wrote an article for the Austin-American Statesman accusing Hedges of plagiarizing Ernest Hemingway in Hedge's 2002 book War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. Palaima said that Hedges had corrected a passage in his first edition of War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning that was close to Hemingway, and he should have cited the paraphrase in all subsequent editions. Hedges' publisher at the time, PublicAffairs, said it did not believe the passage needed to be cited to Hemingway. The New Republic said that Palaima's allegation had resulted in the passage being reworded. But, after posting the article online, the magazine posted a correction box that read: "In the original version of this article, The New Republic indicated that PublicAffairs changed the text of War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning only after having been alerted by Thomas [Palaima] to the presence of plagiarism. In fact, the wording had been changed months earlier, and an edition with the present language existed at the time of Palaima's e-mail to PublicAffairs. However, there was still no attribution to Hemingway in the new version, despite the obvious similarities in ideas and formulation". In June 2014, Christopher Ketcham accused Hedges of plagiarism in an article published in The New Republic. Ketcham claims that Hedges plagiarized many writers over his career, including Matt Katz, Naomi Klein, Neil Postman, Ernest Hemingway, along with Ketcham's wife: Petra Bartosiewicz. Hedges, his editors at Truthdig, and his publisher Nation Books denied the claims made by Ketcham. In a response first published by The Real News on June 16, 2014, Hedges noted that Ketcham based his allegations on an unpublished manuscript which the latter man admitted he had never seen and passages that were actually footnoted or sourced. Hedges accused Ketcham and The New Republic (TNR) of malicious intent and character assassination. On the following day (June 17), The New Republic republished Hedges' response along with Ketcham's (and TNR's) response to the counter-allegations made by Hedges. The Washington Free Beacon reported The New York Times spokesman saying that it "did not have reason to believe Hedges plagiarized in his work for the paper" and had no plans to investigate Hedges for plagiarism. The American Prospect and Salon declined to publish Ketcham's article, and The Nation Institute and Truthdig issued statements dismissing Ketcham's allegations. CANNOTANSWER | In fact, the wording had been changed months earlier, and an edition with the present language | Christopher Lynn Hedges (born September 18, 1956) is an American journalist, Presbyterian minister, author and television host. A former reporter for The New York Times, Hedges has pursued work and activism related to covering his perspectives on political violence and critical views on American liberalism.
In his early career, Hedges worked as a freelance war correspondent in Central America for The Christian Science Monitor, NPR, and Dallas Morning News. Hedges began working for The New York Times in 1990. During his fifteen year tenure, Hedges reported from more than fifty countries and served as the Times Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief during the wars in the former Yugoslavia.
In 2001, Hedges contributed to The New York Times staff entry that received the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for the paper's coverage of global terrorism. He also received the Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism in 2002. Hedges left the Times in 2005 after an internal dispute over his public opposition to the Iraq War.
Hedges produced a weekly column for Truthdig for 14 years until the outlet's unexpected hiatus in 2020. Hedges' books include War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (2002), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction; American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America (2007); Death of the Liberal Class (2010); and Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt (2012), written with cartoonist Joe Sacco.
Hedges has taught at Columbia University, New York University, the University of Toronto and Princeton University. He has taught college credit writing courses in New Jersey prisons as part of the B.A. program offered by Rutgers University.
Hedges hosts the Emmy-nominated program On Contact for the RT (formerly Russia Today) television network. Hedges has described himself as a socialist and an anarchist, identifying with Dorothy Day in particular.
Early life
Christopher Lynn Hedges was born on September 18, 1956 in St. Johnsbury, Vermont. His father was a World War II veteran, Presbyterian minister, and anti-war activist. He grew up in rural Schoharie County, New York, southwest of Albany.
Education
Hedges received a scholarship to attend Loomis Chaffee School, a private boarding school in Windsor, Connecticut. Hedges founded an underground newspaper at the school that was banned by the administration and resulted in his being put on probation. He graduated in 1975.
Hedges enrolled into Colgate University and, though heterosexual, helped found an LGBT student group. Hedges received his Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Colgate in 1979. He received a Master of Divinity degree from Harvard University's Divinity School (where he studied under James Luther Adams) in 1983. Hedges lived in Roxbury, a blighted inner city neighborhood in Boston, as a seminarian and ran a small church. He was also a member of the Greater Boston YMCA's boxing team, writing that the boxing gym was "the only place I felt safe." He studied Latin and Classical Greek at Harvard.
Early career
Hedges began his career as a freelance journalist in Latin America. He wrote for several publications, including The Washington Post, and covered the Falklands War from Buenos Aires for National Public Radio. From 1983 to 1984, he covered the conflicts in El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala for The Christian Science Monitor and NPR. He was hired as the Central America Bureau Chief for The Dallas Morning News in 1984 and held this position until 1988. Noam Chomsky wrote of Hedges at the time that he was one of the "few US journalists in Central America who merit the title."
Hedges took a sabbatical to study Arabic in 1988. He was appointed the Middle East Bureau Chief for The Dallas Morning News in 1989. In one of his first stories for the paper he tracked down Robert Manning, the prime suspect in the 1985 bombing death in California of Alex Odeh, head of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee’s Western office, in the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Before Hedges discovered Manning, Israel claimed it had no knowledge of Manning’s whereabouts. Manning, linked to the militant Jewish Defense League and allegedly behind several murders, was extradited to the United States in 1991 where he is serving a life sentence for a separate bombing incident.
The New York Times
In 1990, Hedges was hired by The New York Times. He covered the first Gulf War for the paper, where he refused to participate in the military pool system that restricted the movement and reporting of journalists. He was arrested by the United States Army and had his press credentials revoked, but continued to defy the military restrictions to report outside the pool system. Hedges subsequently entered Kuwait with U.S. Marine Corps members who were distrustful of the Army's press control. Within The New York Times, R.W. Apple Jr. supported Hedges' defiance of the pool system.
Hedges was taken prisoner in Basra after the war by the Iraqi Republican Guard during the Shiite uprising. He was freed after a week. Hedges was appointed the paper’s Middle East Bureau Chief in 1991. His reporting on the atrocities committed by Saddam Hussein in the Kurdish-held parts of northern Iraq saw the Iraqi leader offer a bounty for anyone who killed Hedges, along with other western journalists and aid workers in the region. Several aid workers and journalists, including the German reporter Lissy Schmidt, were assassinated and others were severely wounded.
Yugoslav Wars (1995–2000)
In 1995, Hedges was named the Balkan Bureau Chief for The New York Times. He was based in Sarajevo when the city was being hit by over 300 shells a day by the surrounding Bosnia Serbs. He reported on the Srebrenica massacre in July 1995 and shortly after the war uncovered what appeared to be one of the central collection points and hiding places for perhaps thousands of corpses at the large open pit Ljubija mine during the Bosnian Serbs' ethnic cleansing campaign. He and the photographer Wade Goddard were the first reporters to travel with armed units of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in Kosovo. Hedges investigative piece was published in The New York Times in June 1999 detailing how Hashim Thaçi, leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army (and later president of Kosovo), directed a campaign in which as many as half a dozen top rebel commanders were assassinated and many others were brutally purged to consolidate his power. Thaci, indicted by the special court in The Hague on 10 counts of war crimes, is in detention in The Hague awaiting trial.
Hedges was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University during the 1998–1999 academic year.
Hedges ended his career of reporting in active conflicts in October 2000, partly due to trauma sustained from witnessing the death of a juvenile boy in Kosovo during a firefight.
Terrorism coverage and Iraq War (2001–2005)
Hedges was based in Paris following the attacks of 9/11, covering Al Qaeda in Europe and the Middle East. He was a part of an investigative team in The New York Times that won the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting in 2002 for their coverage of Al Qaeda. Hedges' contribution was an October 2001 article describing Al Qaeda's foiled bombing plot of the Embassy of the United States, Paris. Most of the awarded reporting was done by Judith Miller, who was later disgraced due to her work that falsely connected the operations of Al Qaeda to the Republic of Iraq led by Saddam Hussein. Many Times editors pushed to utilize dubious American intelligence reports that gave misleading or fabricated details around an alleged Iraqi connection to international terror.
Reporting from coached defectors
In a collaboration between The New York Times and Frontline, Hedges authored three articles covering the claims of false Iraqi defectors. Hedges worked on the behalf of Lowell Bergman of Frontline, who could not travel to Beirut to interview the purported defectors. The trip was organized by Ahmed Chalabi, who Hedges considered to be unreliable. The first defector Hedges interviewed identified themselves as Lt. General Jamal al-Ghurairy. Hedges consulted the U.S. Embassy in Turkey to confirm their identity, and the embassy falsely did so as the real al-Ghurairy had never left Iraq.
Hedges wrote a November 8, 2001 Times cover story about two former Iraqi military commanders who claimed to have trained foreign mujahedeen how to hijack planes and destroy vital American infrastructure. The two defectors also asserted there was a secret compound in Salman Pak facility where a German scientist was producing biological weapons. The Frontline report featured statements from American officials who doubted the claims of the defectors.
According to Jack Fairweather in Mother Jones: "The impact of the article ... was immediate: Op-eds ran in major papers, and the story was taken to a wider audience through cable-TV talk shows. When Condoleezza Rice, then President George W. Bush's national security adviser, was asked about the report at a press briefing, she said, 'I think it surprises no one that Saddam Hussein is engaged in all kinds of activities that are destabilizing. As late as 2006, according to Fairweather in the same article, conservative magazines including The Weekly Standard and National Review continued to use this article to justify the invasion of Iraq.
In the aftermath of the revelations that the Iraqi defectors were not legitimate, Hedges defended his comportment since he had done the story as a favor to Lowell Bergman, adding that "There has to be a level of trust between reporters. We cover each other's sources when it's a good story because otherwise everyone would get hold of it."
Exit from the Times
In 2003, Hedges was reprimanded by The New York Times for his opposition to U.S. involvement in the Iraq War because of perceived challenges to partiality. This was a motivating factor for his resignation from the Times in 2005.
Later career
In 2005, Hedges left The New York Times to become a senior fellow at Type Media Center, and a columnist at Truthdig, in addition to writing books and teaching inmates at a New Jersey correctional institution.
Obey, a 2013 documentary by British filmmaker Temujin Doran, is based on Hedges' book Death of the Liberal Class.
Truthdig (2006–2020)
Hedges produced a weekly column in Truthdig for 14 years. He was fired along with all of the editorial staff in March 2020. Hedges and the staff had gone on strike earlier in the month to protest the publisher's attempt to fire the Editor-in-Chief Robert Scheer, demand an end to a series of unfair labor practices and the right to form a union. Hedges has since been a writer for Scheerpost.
Citation error controversy
In June 2014, Christopher Ketcham published an article on The New Republic website accusing Hedges of improper citations, alleging the offenses constituted plagiarism. In response, some formatting and reference errors were corrected on the website for Truthdig. Additional accusations of plagiarism from Ketcham were countered by an independent investigation from the Type Media Center.
The Washington Free Beacon reported that a spokesperson for The New York Times said it "did not have reason to believe Hedges plagiarized in his work for the paper" and had no plans to investigate Hedges for plagiarism.
Prison writing teacher
Hedges has worked for a decade teaching writing classes in prisons in New Jersey through a program offered by Princeton University and later Rutgers University. A class that Hedges taught at East Jersey State Prison in 2013 went on to collaborate in the creation of a play titled Caged. Hedges has become a fierce critic of mass incarceration in the United States, and his experience as an educator in New Jersey prisons served as inspiration for his 2021 book Our Class: Trauma and Transformation in an American Prison.
Ordination and ministerial installation
On October 5, 2014, Hedges was ordained a minister within the Presbyterian Church. He was installed as Associate Pastor and Minister of Social Witness and Prison Ministry at the Second Presbyterian Church Elizabeth in Elizabeth, New Jersey. He mentioned being rejected for ordination 30 years earlier, saying that "going to El Salvador as a reporter was not something the Presbyterian Church at the time recognized as a valid ministry, and a committee rejected my 'call.
Political views
Economic views
Hedges contended at the Left Forum in 2015 that with the "denouement of capitalism and the disintegration of globalism", Karl Marx has been "vindicated as capitalism's most prescient and important critic". He said that Marx "foresaw that capitalism had built within it the seeds of its own destruction. He knew that reigning ideologies—think neoliberalism—were created to serve the interests of the elites and in particular the economic elites."
Environmental views
In a March 2009 column, Hedges warned that human over-population and mass species extinction are serious problems, and that any measures to save the ecosystem will be futile unless we cut population growth, and noted that, "As long as the Earth is viewed as the personal property of the human race, a belief embraced by everyone from born-again Christians to Marxists to free-market economists, we are destined to soon inhabit a biological wasteland."
On September 20, 2014, a day before the People's Climate March, Hedges joined Bernie Sanders, Naomi Klein, Bill McKibben, and Kshama Sawant on a panel moderated by WNYC's Brian Lehrer to discuss the issue of climate change. Hedges and Klein also participated in the 'Flood Wall Street' protests that occurred shortly thereafter.
Hedges' environmental concerns were his primary motivation to be vegan. Hedges authored an introduction to a vegan cookbook in 2015.
Other views
In March 2008, Hedges published the book titled I Don't Believe in Atheists, in which he argues that new atheism presents a danger that is similar to religious extremism.
In a December 2014 TruthDig column, Hedges compared the ethnic cleansing of ISIS to the actions of Israel's founding fathers in the late 1940s.
Hedges has repudiated the view that the Founding Fathers of the United States represented a legitimate form of democracy, writing that they rigged America's electoral process to thwart direct democracy and to protect the property rights of the aristocracy. He has written that the Electoral College has served to disenfranchise women, Native Americans, African Americans, and men who do not own property. He has praised abolitionists, labor organizers, women's suffragists, civil rights protestors, and anti-war activists for bringing some change to the structure of the U.S. government.
Hedges told Julian Casablancas, the lead singer for The Strokes who interviewed him for Rolling Stone on December 23, 2020, that one of the few events worth celebrating in American history took place on June 25, 1876 when Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho, led by Crazy Horse and Chief Gall, annihilated the 7th Cavalry under the command of Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer.
Activism
Anti-war activism
Hedges was an early critic of the Iraq War. In May 2003, he delivered a commencement address at Rockford College in Rockford, Illinois, saying: "We are embarking on an occupation that, if history is any guide, will be as damaging to our souls as it will be to our prestige and power and security." His speech was received with boos, "two students approached the stage to push [him] off the podium" (as he told an interviewer), and his microphone was shut off three minutes after he began speaking. Hedges had to end the commencement speech short because of the various student disruptions.
The New York Times, his employer, criticized his statements and issued him a formal reprimand for "public remarks that could undermine public trust in the paper's impartiality".
On December 16, 2010, he was arrested outside the White House along with Daniel Ellsberg and more than 100 activists who were protesting the war in Afghanistan.
In a piece published in Salon Magazine in March 2022, Hedges argued that NATO was at fault for Russia's invasion of Ukraine:The European Union has allocated hundreds of millions of euros to purchase weapons for Ukraine. Germany will almost triple its own defense budget for 2022. The Biden administration has asked Congress to provide $6.4 billion in funding to assist Ukraine, supplementing the $650 million in military aid to Ukraine over the past year. The permanent war economy operates outside the laws of supply and demand. It is the root of the two-decade-long quagmire in the Middle East. It is the root of the conflict with Moscow.
Occupy involvement
Hedges appeared as a guest on an October 2011 episode of the CBC News Network's Lang and O'Leary Exchange to discuss his support for the Occupy Wall Street protests; co-host Kevin O'Leary criticized him, saying that he sounded "like a left-wing nutbar". Hedges said "it will be the last time" he appears on the show, and compared the CBC to Fox News. CBC's ombudsman found O'Leary's heated remarks to be a violation of the public broadcaster's journalistic standards.
On November 3, 2011, Hedges was arrested with others in New York as part of the Occupy Wall Street demonstration, during which the activists staged a "people's hearing" on the activities of the investment bank Goldman Sachs and blocked the entrance to their corporate headquarters.
NDAA lawsuit
In 2012, after the Obama administration signed the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, Hedges sued members of the U.S. government, asserting that section 1021 of the law unconstitutionally allowed presidential authority for indefinite detention without habeas corpus. He was later joined in the suit, Hedges v. Obama, by activists including Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg. In May 2012 Judge Katherine B. Forrest of the Southern District of New York ruled that the counter-terrorism provision of the NDAA is unconstitutional. The Obama administration appealed the decision and it was overturned in July 2013 by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Hedges petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case, but the Supreme Court denied certiorari in April 2014.
Other activism
In the 2008 United States presidential campaign, Hedges was a speech writer for candidate Ralph Nader.
On April 15, 2016, Hedges was arrested, along with 100 other protesters, during a sit-in outside the Capitol building in Washington D.C. during Democracy Spring to protest the capture of the political system by corporations.
On May 27, 2020, Hedges announced that he would run as a Green Party candidate in New Jersey's 12th congressional district for the 2020 elections. However, he was informed the following day that running for office would conflict with FCC fairness doctrine rules because he was at that time hosting the nationally broadcast RT America television show On Contact. Hedges decided not to pursue office in order to keep hosting the show.
In September 2020, Chris Hedges spoke at the Movement for a People's Party convention.
Personal life
Hedges is married to the Canadian actress Eunice Wong. The couple have two children. Hedges also has two children from a previous marriage. He currently lives in Princeton, New Jersey. On November 11, 2014, Hedges announced that he and his family had become vegan. Hedges compared his decision to a vow of abstinence, adding that it is necessary "to make radical changes to save ourselves from ecological meltdown."
Hedges has post-traumatic stress disorder from his experience reporting in war zones.
Hedges studied Latin and Ancient Greek at Harvard, and speaks Arabic, French, and Spanish in addition to his native English.
Books
2002: War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning ()
2003: What Every Person Should Know About War ()
2005: Losing Moses on the Freeway: The 10 Commandments in America ()
2007: American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America ()
2008: I Don't Believe in Atheists ()
2008: Collateral Damage: America's War Against Iraqi Civilians, with Laila Al-Arian ()
2009: When Atheism Becomes Religion: America's New Fundamentalists, (), a retitled edition of I Don't Believe in Atheists
2009: Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle ()
2010: Death of the Liberal Class ()
2010: The World As It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress ()
2012: Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, with Joe Sacco ()
2015: Wages of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of Revolt ()
2016: Unspeakable ()
2018: America: The Farewell Tour ()
2021 Our Class: Trauma and Transformation in an American Prison ()
See also
Christian left
Sacrifice zone
References
External links
APB Speakers Bureau Chris Hedges
"Capitalism's 'Sacrifice Zones Bill Moyers talks with Chris Hedges, and comic-journalist Joe Sacco talking about their collaboration and showing drawings for their book Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, July 20, 2012. Retrieved July 30, 2012
Columns by Chris Hedges at Truthdig
What Every Person Should Know About War, first chapter at The New York Times
Chris Hedges at Scheerpost.
1956 births
Living people
21st-century American male writers
21st-century American non-fiction writers
American anarchists
American anti-capitalists
American anti-fascists
American Christian socialists
American foreign policy writers
American male non-fiction writers
American political writers
American Presbyterians
American reporters and correspondents
American socialists
American war correspondents
Anarchist writers
Anti-consumerists
Anti-corporate activists
Christian anarchists
The Christian Science Monitor people
Colgate University alumni
Columbia University faculty
Critics of atheism
The Dallas Morning News people
Harvard Divinity School alumni
Loomis Chaffee School alumni
The Nation (U.S. magazine) people
The New York Times writers
Nieman Fellows
PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award winners
People from Schoharie, New York
People from St. Johnsbury, Vermont
Presbyterian socialists
RT (TV network) people
War correspondents of the Iraq War
War correspondents of the Yugoslav Wars
Writers about religion and science | false | [
"\"What Did I Do to You?\" is a song recorded by British singer Lisa Stansfield for her 1989 album, Affection. It was written by Stansfield, Ian Devaney and Andy Morris, and produced by Devaney and Morris. The song was released as the fourth European single on 30 April 1990. It included three previously unreleased songs written by Stansfield, Devaney and Morris: \"My Apple Heart,\" \"Lay Me Down\" and \"Something's Happenin'.\" \"What Did I Do to You?\" was remixed by Mark Saunders and by the Grammy Award-winning American house music DJ and producer, David Morales. The single became a top forty hit in the European countries reaching number eighteen in Finland, number twenty in Ireland and number twenty-five in the United Kingdom. \"What Did I Do to You?\" was also released in Japan.\n\nIn 2014, the remixes of \"What Did I Do to You?\" were included on the deluxe 2CD + DVD re-release of Affection and on People Hold On ... The Remix Anthology. They were also featured on The Collection 1989–2003 box set (2014), including previously unreleased Red Zone Mix by David Morales.\n\nCritical reception\nThe song received positive reviews from music critics. Matthew Hocter from Albumism viewed it as a \"upbeat offering\". David Giles from Music Week said it is \"beautifully performed\" by Stansfield. A reviewer from Reading Eagle wrote that \"What Did I Do to You?\" \"would be right at home on the \"Saturday Night Fever\" soundtrack.\"\n\nMusic video\nA music video was produced to promote the single, directed by Philip Richardson, who had previously directed the videos for \"All Around the World\" and \"Live Together\". It features Stansfield with her kiss curls, dressed in a white outfit and performing with her band on a stage in front of a jumping audience. The video was later published on Stansfield's official YouTube channel in November 2009. It has amassed more than 1,6 million views as of October 2021.\n\nTrack listings\n\n European/UK 7\" single\n\"What Did I Do to You?\" (Mark Saunders Remix Edit) – 4:20\n\"Something's Happenin'\" – 3:59\n\n European/UK/Japanese CD single\n\"What Did I Do to You?\" (Mark Saunders Remix Edit) – 4:20\n\"My Apple Heart\" – 5:19\n\"Lay Me Down\" – 4:17\n\"Something's Happenin'\" – 3:59\n\n UK 10\" single\n\"What Did I Do to You?\" (Mark Saunders Remix) – 5:52\n\"My Apple Heart\" – 5:19\n\"Lay Me Down\" – 4:17\n\"Something's Happenin'\" – 3:59\n\n European/UK 12\" single\n\"What Did I Do to You?\" (Morales Mix) – 7:59\n\"My Apple Heart\" – 4:22\n\"Lay Me Down\" – 3:19\n\"Something's Happenin'\" – 3:15\n\n UK 12\" promotional single\n\"What Did I Do to You?\" (Morales Mix) – 7:59\n\"What Did I Do to You?\" (Anti Poll Tax Dub) – 6:31\n\n Other remixes\n\"What Did I Do to You?\" (Red Zone Mix) – 7:45\n\nCharts\n\nReferences\n\nLisa Stansfield songs\n1990 singles\nSongs written by Lisa Stansfield\n1989 songs\nArista Records singles\nSongs written by Ian Devaney\nSongs written by Andy Morris (musician)",
"\"What Would Steve Do?\" is the second single released by Mumm-Ra on Columbia Records, which was released on February 19, 2007. It is a re-recorded version of the self-release they did in April 2006. It reached #40 in the UK Singles Chart, making it their highest charting single.\n\nTrack listings\nAll songs written by Mumm-Ra.\n\nCD\n\"What Would Steve Do?\"\n\"Cute As\"\n\"Without You\"\n\n7\"\n\"What Would Steve Do?\"\n\"What Would Steve Do? (Floorboard Mix)\"\n\nGatefold 7\"\n\"What Would Steve Do?\"\n\"Cute As\"\n\nReferences\n\n2007 singles\nMumm-Ra (band) songs\n2006 songs\nColumbia Records singles"
]
|
[
"Bloggingheads.tv",
"Regular segments"
]
| C_467d776fbe03455fa80c2344fdfb40af_1 | What were the regular segments? | 1 | What were the regular segments on Bloggingheads.tv? | Bloggingheads.tv | Although most episodes and matchups do not occur on any kind of a regular basis, there are a few notable exceptions to this. There is a frequent (previously biweekly and weekly, but now less frequent) diavlog matchup between the two co-founders of Bloggingheads.tv, Robert Wright and Mickey Kaus, generally related to politics in some form, that usually occurs on either Wednesday or Thursday. While some of the other diavloggers are frequently matched against each other (e.g. David Corn & James Pinkerton) there is usually not a regularly scheduled time at which they take place. "Science Saturday" was the name given to the weekly episode appearing on Saturday that was always science related. Its last episode was released on December 24, 2011. It usually (but not always) involved either one or both of the science writers John Horgan and George Johnson. Many well-known people in the science community were a part of Science Saturday, including Michael Shermer of Skeptic Magazine, biologist PZ Myers, Craig Venter of the Human Genome Project, aging researcher and biogerentologist Aubrey de Grey, and philosopher David Chalmers, among many others. However, in September 2009, four high-profile science bloggers who had previously participated in Bloggingheads.tv discussions publicly distanced themselves from the site and stated they would no longer agree to appear in Bloggingheads.tv segments. The scientists - Sean Carroll, Carl Zimmer, Phil Plait and PZ Myers - all criticized what they claimed was a policy by Bloggingheads.tv to provide a platform for the anti-scientific ideology, Creationism without an opposing point of view for balance. PZ Myers said: "[Bloggingheads.tv] was setting up crackpots with softball interviews that made them look reasonable, because their peculiar ideas were never confronted." "The Week in Blog" was a weekly segment which normally appeared on the site on Fridays. Its last episode was released on March 7, 2012. The format was to discuss what has showed up on the past week on both liberal and conservative blogs, from both a liberal and conservative viewpoint. The three regular hosts of "TWIB" were Bill Scher of Liberal Oasis, Kristin Soltis of the Winston Group, and Matt Lewis of The Daily Caller. Original host Conn Carroll of The Heritage Foundation stepped aside in early 2009. Guests who appeared on the show are Armando Llorens (of Daily Kos), Amanda Carpenter, and Nate Silver (of FiveThirtyEight) among many others. CANNOTANSWER | There is a frequent (previously biweekly and weekly, but now less frequent) diavlog matchup between the two co-founders | Bloggingheads.tv (sometimes abbreviated "bhtv") is a political, world events, philosophy, and science video blog discussion site in which the participants take part in an active back and forth conversation via webcam which is then broadcast online to viewers. The site was started by the journalist and author Robert Wright and the blogger and journalist Mickey Kaus on November 1, 2005. Kaus has since dropped out of operational duties of the site as he didn't want his frequent linking to be seen as a conflict of interest. Most of the earlier discussions posted to the site involved one or both of those individuals, but since has grown to include a total of over one thousand individual contributors, mostly journalists, academics, scientists, authors, well known political bloggers, and other notable individuals.
Unregistered users are able to view all of the videos which are contained on the site, while free registration is required to comment on the individual discussions, or participate in the forums.
Format
Bloggingheads discussions are conducted via webcam between two (or more) people, and can be viewed online in Flash format, or downloaded as WMV video files, MP4 video files, or MP3 sound files. New diavlogs are generally posted daily, and are all archived for future viewing. The diavlogs are generally broken up into a series of topics and subtopics a few minutes in length, links to which are placed below the video window to allow viewers to navigate to a given topic if they do not wish to view the whole discussion.
Most of the discussions posted to Bloggingheads.tv involve well known (or semi-well known) journalists, bloggers, science writers, scientists, philosophers, book authors, or other specialists in segments of current world events. Many of the discussions are of a political nature or are related to the current political environment. Those with differing points of view are often matched against one another. Diavlogs involving guests appearing for the first time often take the form of an interview, more often than that of a discussion, with a longtime Bloggingheads contributor playing the role of interviewer.
Regular segments
Although most episodes and matchups do not occur on any kind of a regular basis, there are a few notable exceptions to this. There is a frequent diavlog matchup between the two co-founders of Bloggingheads.tv, Robert Wright and Mickey Kaus, generally related to politics in some form, that usually occurs on either Wednesday or Thursday. While some of the other diavloggers are frequently matched against each other (e.g. David Corn & James Pinkerton) there is usually not a regularly scheduled time at which they take place.
"Science Saturday" was the name given to the weekly episode appearing on Saturday that was always science related. Its last episode was released on December 24, 2011. It usually (but not always) involved either one or both of the science writers John Horgan and George Johnson. Many well-known people in the science community were a part of Science Saturday, including Michael Shermer of Skeptic Magazine, biologist PZ Myers, Craig Venter of the Human Genome Project, aging researcher and biogerentologist Aubrey de Grey, and philosopher David Chalmers, among many others. However, in September 2009, four high-profile science bloggers who had previously participated in Bloggingheads.tv discussions publicly distanced themselves from the site and stated they would no longer agree to appear in Bloggingheads.tv segments. The scientists – Sean Carroll, Carl Zimmer, Phil Plait and PZ Myers – all criticized what they claimed was a policy by Bloggingheads.tv to provide a platform for the anti-scientific ideology, Creationism without an opposing point of view for balance. PZ Myers said: "[Bloggingheads.tv] was setting up crackpots with softball interviews that made them look reasonable, because their peculiar ideas were never confronted."
"The Week in Blog" was a weekly segment which normally appeared on the site on Fridays. Its last episode was released on March 7, 2012. The format was to discuss what has showed up on the past week on both liberal and conservative blogs, from both a liberal and conservative viewpoint. The three regular hosts of "TWIB" were Bill Scher of Liberal Oasis, Kristin Soltis of the Winston Group, and Matt Lewis of The Daily Caller. Original host Conn Carroll of The Heritage Foundation stepped aside in early 2009. Guests who appeared on the show are Armando Llorens (of Daily Kos), Amanda Carpenter, and Nate Silver (of FiveThirtyEight) among many others.
History
On November 1, 2005, the site launched, with Robert Wright and Mickey Kaus as the only two initial participants in the video discussions. The site has since featured more than one thousand other diavloggers.
On October 18, 2006, a site redesign was launched, with a revised home page and improved functionality: ability to comment on diavlogs was added, and to participate in forum discussions.
In January 2007, it was announced that cable TV pioneer and C-SPAN founding chairman Bob Rosencrans, with a loose network of others, would become an angel investor of Bloggingheads.tv. The infusion of cash kicked off a dramatic expansion of the site's content, and a corresponding growth in viewers.
On March 24, 2007, in a diavlog between Garance Franke-Ruta and Ann Althouse, Althouse became quite animated and angry (to the point of yelling) over a comment Franke-Ruta made (in reference to an earlier controversy involving Jessica Valenti and former US president Bill Clinton) referred to as an on-air "meltdown" by some. This led to many blog posts and news stories in the following days on both the initial controversy and Althouse's on air behavior.
On October 13, 2007, a conversion to Flash format from the initial Windows Media format took place.
On October 24, 2007, Bloggingheads.tv entered into a relationship with The New York Times, whereby selected video segments from the Bloggingheads site would appear in the "Videos" section on the Times website, under the Opinion subsection.
On December 13, 2007, a site redesign took place which removed the familiar green pages in favor of a more "Web 2.0"-look, featuring more user generated content, new navigation, new forum software for the "comments" section, and other updated features.
In 2008, several new segments and diavloggers were added or made more regular, including "Free Will", "This Week in Blog", and "UN Plaza". Other updates and tweaks to the site, such as the addition of the MP4 video format were also gradually phased in.
Media recognition
Traditional media outlets, such at The New York Times and others, have written mostly favorable reviews of Bloggingheads.tv. Stories are also often written about individuals who take part in the video discussions, as they are often well known individuals in the scientific, academic, journalism, or blogosphere community.
The majority of coverage of the site, however, has been in the form of blog coverage sometimes on the form of the blog of the person participating in the Bloggingheads discussion, and sometimes in the form of other blogs.
Some events and personality appearances on Bloggingheads.tv have led to larger than usual amounts of media coverage, such as the March 24, 2007 Ann Althouse controversy described above, and the appearance of Andrew Sullivan on December 26, 2006 and January 1, 2007, when he discussed in the most clear terms up to that point his reversal of viewpoint on the Iraq War, and his plea of apology for supporting it in the first place.
Site terms, features, and technology
"Diavlog"
The term "diavlog" (sometimes written "dia-vlog" by some bloggers) means a type of video blog (or "vlog") generally in which two people participate, as contrasted with a (mono)vlog in which one contributor is featured. The word "diavlog" is a portmanteau of the phrase "dialog video weblog" (or, alternately, "video weblog dialog"). The diavlog format is most popular for political, world events, or other types of conversational video blog discussions in which two (or more) people are actively participating in a real-time, give-and-take discussion of ideas.
The term "diavlog" was first adopted and put into wide use by Bloggingheads.tv contributors, (initially by Robert Wright and Mickey Kaus), though its original coinage is subject to debate. The term is widely used both by people on air, as well as commentors, refer to a specific conversation.
Although initially coined on the Bloggingheads site, the term has come to be used in other parts of the blogosphere and among journalists who frequently (or infrequently) participate in the encounters.
The term is sometimes spelled "diavlogue" by those outside the United States. (see: American and British English spelling differences)
Direct video linking ("dingalink") and embedding
Dingalink is a direct link to a specific place in a video. (a beginning time and an end time) Dingalinks have the ability for users to direct viewers directly to a relevant part of a video, without the viewer having to watch the video in its entirety. They are used with video blogs when others who write blogs, articles, emails, etc., have the aim of discussing only one segment of an entire video post. The term was named after Bloggingheads.tv's technical advisor Greg Dingle, who initially developed the technology.
On Bloggingheads.tv, direct linking is often useful in the discussion surrounding a specific "diavlog" to refer to a particular point (or points) in the discussion to clarify what is being commented on. The direct linking can be automatically generated from the Bloggingheads Flash video player, through the adjustment of the beginning and end of the video that one might want to display. (Start/End time can also be manually edited once the code is generated.)
Embedding of video is a feature that was added to Bloggingheads.tv in 2008 as a consequence of converting to Flash Video. It allows for bloggers and other websites to embed the video player into their blog or website so that the content can be viewed locally instead of the need to visit the actual Bloggingheads.tv site. This feature is similar to the YouTube and Google Video (among others) feature which had previously become prevalent on the internet.
Contributors to Bloggingheads.tv
While many of the initial diavlogs featured Wright and Kaus exclusively, other regular participants at Bloggingheads.tv have grown to include many differing ideologies and viewpoints, politically, scientifically, and philosophically. Regular contributors include Ann Althouse, Peter Beinart, Rosa Brooks, Jonathan Chait, David Corn, Ross Douthat, Daniel Drezner, Conor Friedersdorf, Jonah Goldberg, John Horgan, Ezra Klein, Eli Lake, Glenn Loury, Megan McArdle, John McWhorter, James Pinkerton, Mark Schmitt and Matthew Yglesias, among many others.
Apart from the regular contributors, a host of well known occasional guests have appeared, usually in the form of being interviewed. Among others, the political scientist Francis Fukuyama talked about his book America at the Crossroads; the Israeli journalist Gershom Gorenberg discussed his book The Accidental Empire (about the history of the settlements); The Washington Post columnist Joel Achenbach on an article of his about global-warming skeptics (among other topics); Andrew Sullivan on his book The Conservative Soul; biogerentologist Aubrey de Grey on how to defeat the "disease" of aging; philosopher David Chalmers; Nate Silver (of FiveThirtyEight.com); and Craig Venter, director of the Human Genome Project, who spoke of future scientific innovations he is currently pursuing.
See also
Digital television
Interactive television
Internet television
Video on demand
Video podcast
Political podcast
Web TV
Webcast
References
External links
New York Times Article on the operation of Bloggingheads.tv
Associated Press article in the NY Sun on the BloggingHeads.tv setup
Business Week article on Bloggingheads.tv
Television channels and stations established in 2005
American entertainment websites
Video hosting
Internet properties established in 2005
Web syndication
Internet television channels
Video podcasts
Political podcasts
Educational podcasts
Science podcasts
American political blogs
Science blogs
Video on demand services
2005 podcast debuts | false | [
"The Ren & Stimpy Show is an animated series that premiered on Nickelodeon on August 11, 1991, directly following the premieres of Doug and Rugrats, and it ran for five seasons until December 16, 1995, with the ninth and final episode of its Nick run, \"A Scooter for Yaksmas\". The series initially did not have a consistent grouping of segments into episodes; episodes and interstitial segments aired out of production order, some episodes and interstitials were produced for one season and aired in another, and two episodes, \"Man's Best Friend\" and \"Sammy and Me / The Last Temptation\", did not air in the series' original Nickelodeon run at all. \"Man's Best Friend\" aired on the Ren & Stimpy \"Adult Party Cartoon\" for Spike TV in 2003 alongside the uncut show's pilot, \"Big House Blues\". \"Sammy and Me / The Last Temptation\", the series' finale, aired on October 20, 1996, on MTV.\n\nThe first list is ordered according to the original television air date, and a second list provides the episode order according to the DVD releases, which groups the cartoons into 52 episodes. The list does not include episodes from the spin-off Ren & Stimpy \"Adult Party Cartoon\".\n\nSeries overview\n\n \nThe episodes were interspersed with short segments that sometimes aired before or after the main cartoons, which are named below.\n\nEpisodes\n\nTheatrical pilot (1990)\n\nSeason 1 (1991–92)\nThe season's episodes were interspersed with short segments: three \"Ask Dr. Stupid\" segments, three different \"Log\" commercials, \"My Little Brother Doll\", a \"Powdered Toast Man\" commercial, \"Secret Oath\", \"Stimpy's Breakfast Tips\", four different \"What'll We Do 'Till Then?\" segments, and \"Yak Shaving Day\".\n\nAll episodes in this season were directed by series creator John Kricfalusi, credited as \"John K.\" in most of the episodes in this season. He is credited by his regular name in \"Space Madness\" and \"Big House Blues\", while he was credited as \"Raymond Spum\" in \"Nurse Stimpy\". In addition, the title cards for the episodes \"The Littlest Giant\" and \"Black Hole\" would have the director uncredited.\n\nSeason 2 (1992–93)\nThis season's episodes were interspersed with the short segments \"Ace Reporter, Ren Hoek: Mr Horse Returns\", \"Gritty Kitty Litter\", two \"Log\" segments, \"Powdered Toast Man: Vitamin F\", \"Secret Club: Susan Fout\", \"Sugar Sod Pops\", a new \"What'll We Do 'Till Then? Blow Yourself Up\" segment, \"World Crisis with Mr. Horse\", and the short segments from the previous season.\n\n\"Man's Best Friend\"\nProduced during the show's second season in 1992, the episode never aired on Nickelodeon due to violent content. The episode originally aired on the Spike network as part of the 2003 Ren & Stimpy revival series Ren & Stimpy \"Adult Party Cartoon\". \"Man's Best Friend\" is included in the first and second season DVD set.\n\nJohn Kricfalusi cites the violent imagery—Ren beating up George Liquor with an oar—as the primary reason for getting his production company and himself fired from the show.\n\nSeason 3 (1993–94)\nThis season's episodes were interspersed with the short segments \"Cheesefist\", \"Chicken in a Drawer\", \"Dog Water\", \"Flod\", \"You Are What You Eat\", and short segments from previous seasons.\n\nSeason 4 (1994–95)\nThis season's episodes were interspersed with short segments which included \"Field Guide\" and short segments from previous seasons.\n\nSeason 5 (1995–96)\nThis season's episodes were interspersed with the short segments \"Varicose Veins\", \"Dog Water\", and \"Kraftwork Corner\", and short segments from previous seasons.\n\nDVD releases\n\nEpisode order\nThe 2004/2005 DVD releases order the Ren & Stimpy cartoons into the following episodes:\n\nNotes\nThe \"No. overall\" column numbers the cartoons by air date, and the \"No. in season\" column numbers them by their order on the DVD set.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n \n\n \n1990s television-related lists\nRen\nRen\nRen",
"Vegetable Soup is an American educational children's television program produced by the New York State Education Department that originally ran on PBS from September 22, 1975 to December 14, 1978. NBC concurrently broadcast the series on Sunday mornings, with at least some affiliates showing it along with NBC's regular Saturday morning cartoon lineup; this was a rare instance of a television program seen on both commercial and public television at the same time.\n\nAll 78 episodes of Vegetable Soup were digitized by the New York State Archives and made available online in the American Archive of Public Broadcasting. Episodes are made up of a mix of live action, cartoon, puppetry, and mixed-media segments.\n\nConcept\nThe purpose of the program was to be a television series for children to help counter the negative, destructive effects of racial prejudice and racial isolation and to reinforce and dramatize the positive, life-enhancing value of human diversity in entertaining and affective presentations that children could understand and relate to. Vegetable Soup used an interdisciplinary approach to entertain and educate elementary age children in the value of human diversity.\n\nThe show combined music, animation, puppetry and live action film, on the subject of economic, racial and ethnic diversity.\n\nRegular segments\nThe Big Game Hunt - hosted by Gary Goodrow\nThe Big Job Hunt - hosted by Susan Taylor (Season Two only)\nChildren's Questions\nHow Do You Find Yourself?\nKnow Yourself\nLong Ago\nLuther\nMake A New Friend\nMr. Emeritus\nNigel\nOuterscope 1 (Called Outerscope II in season two)\nReal People\nStorytelling Time\nSuperlative Horse\nWhat Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?\nWhat Would You Do?\nWoody the Spoon Recipes\nWords Have Stories\n\nCharacters \nLong John Spoilsport (James Earl Jones) - regularly appeared on \"The Big Game Hunt\" and \"The Big Job Hunt\" segments\nLarry Hama - hosted various segments\nKingman Hui - child actor who starred on the \"Long Ago\" segment\nMartin Harris (Martin Brayboy) - regularly appeared in the \"Nigel\" segment\nEddie (Edward M. Beckford, Jr.) - regularly appeared in the \"Nigel\" segment, sang the opening theme song\nScot Richardson (Scot Smith) - regularly appeared in the \"Nigel\" segment\nBob (Daniel Stern) and Robin (Judy Noble) - regularly appeared in the \"Outerscope\" segment\nWoody the Spoon (Bette Midler) - regularly appeared in the \"Woody the Spoon Recipes\" segment\n\nAnimations\nAnimated segments on the show were created by Jim Simon's Wantu Studios, the musical opening plus 13 Woody the Spoon cooking spots for which Bette Midler did all the voice tracks, and also 48 thirty-second breaks.\n\nBeginning in the show's second season, many animated segments were also produced by Colossal Pictures, of which Vegetable Soup was one of its first assignments. Animators Drew Takahashi and Gary Gutierrez worked on Vegetable Soup during its first season, prior to Colossal Pictures' founding.\n\nSee also\n High Feather\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n TV.com: Vegetable Soup TV Show\n \n Vegetable Soup: Parent-Teacher Guide\n Flexitoons: Olga Felgemacher Biography\n Michael Sporn Animation: Jim Simon Biography\n Vegetable Soup Collection in the American Archive of Public Broadcasting\n\nPBS Kids shows\n1975 American television series debuts\n1978 American television series endings\n1970s American children's television series\nAmerican children's education television series\nPBS original programming\nNBC original programming\nPersonal development television series\nEducation in New York (state)\nAmerican television shows featuring puppetry\nAmerican television series with live action and animation"
]
|
[
"Bloggingheads.tv",
"Regular segments",
"What were the regular segments?",
"There is a frequent (previously biweekly and weekly, but now less frequent) diavlog matchup between the two co-founders"
]
| C_467d776fbe03455fa80c2344fdfb40af_1 | Who were the cofounders? | 2 | Who were the cofounders of Bloggingheads.tv? | Bloggingheads.tv | Although most episodes and matchups do not occur on any kind of a regular basis, there are a few notable exceptions to this. There is a frequent (previously biweekly and weekly, but now less frequent) diavlog matchup between the two co-founders of Bloggingheads.tv, Robert Wright and Mickey Kaus, generally related to politics in some form, that usually occurs on either Wednesday or Thursday. While some of the other diavloggers are frequently matched against each other (e.g. David Corn & James Pinkerton) there is usually not a regularly scheduled time at which they take place. "Science Saturday" was the name given to the weekly episode appearing on Saturday that was always science related. Its last episode was released on December 24, 2011. It usually (but not always) involved either one or both of the science writers John Horgan and George Johnson. Many well-known people in the science community were a part of Science Saturday, including Michael Shermer of Skeptic Magazine, biologist PZ Myers, Craig Venter of the Human Genome Project, aging researcher and biogerentologist Aubrey de Grey, and philosopher David Chalmers, among many others. However, in September 2009, four high-profile science bloggers who had previously participated in Bloggingheads.tv discussions publicly distanced themselves from the site and stated they would no longer agree to appear in Bloggingheads.tv segments. The scientists - Sean Carroll, Carl Zimmer, Phil Plait and PZ Myers - all criticized what they claimed was a policy by Bloggingheads.tv to provide a platform for the anti-scientific ideology, Creationism without an opposing point of view for balance. PZ Myers said: "[Bloggingheads.tv] was setting up crackpots with softball interviews that made them look reasonable, because their peculiar ideas were never confronted." "The Week in Blog" was a weekly segment which normally appeared on the site on Fridays. Its last episode was released on March 7, 2012. The format was to discuss what has showed up on the past week on both liberal and conservative blogs, from both a liberal and conservative viewpoint. The three regular hosts of "TWIB" were Bill Scher of Liberal Oasis, Kristin Soltis of the Winston Group, and Matt Lewis of The Daily Caller. Original host Conn Carroll of The Heritage Foundation stepped aside in early 2009. Guests who appeared on the show are Armando Llorens (of Daily Kos), Amanda Carpenter, and Nate Silver (of FiveThirtyEight) among many others. CANNOTANSWER | Robert Wright and Mickey Kaus, | Bloggingheads.tv (sometimes abbreviated "bhtv") is a political, world events, philosophy, and science video blog discussion site in which the participants take part in an active back and forth conversation via webcam which is then broadcast online to viewers. The site was started by the journalist and author Robert Wright and the blogger and journalist Mickey Kaus on November 1, 2005. Kaus has since dropped out of operational duties of the site as he didn't want his frequent linking to be seen as a conflict of interest. Most of the earlier discussions posted to the site involved one or both of those individuals, but since has grown to include a total of over one thousand individual contributors, mostly journalists, academics, scientists, authors, well known political bloggers, and other notable individuals.
Unregistered users are able to view all of the videos which are contained on the site, while free registration is required to comment on the individual discussions, or participate in the forums.
Format
Bloggingheads discussions are conducted via webcam between two (or more) people, and can be viewed online in Flash format, or downloaded as WMV video files, MP4 video files, or MP3 sound files. New diavlogs are generally posted daily, and are all archived for future viewing. The diavlogs are generally broken up into a series of topics and subtopics a few minutes in length, links to which are placed below the video window to allow viewers to navigate to a given topic if they do not wish to view the whole discussion.
Most of the discussions posted to Bloggingheads.tv involve well known (or semi-well known) journalists, bloggers, science writers, scientists, philosophers, book authors, or other specialists in segments of current world events. Many of the discussions are of a political nature or are related to the current political environment. Those with differing points of view are often matched against one another. Diavlogs involving guests appearing for the first time often take the form of an interview, more often than that of a discussion, with a longtime Bloggingheads contributor playing the role of interviewer.
Regular segments
Although most episodes and matchups do not occur on any kind of a regular basis, there are a few notable exceptions to this. There is a frequent diavlog matchup between the two co-founders of Bloggingheads.tv, Robert Wright and Mickey Kaus, generally related to politics in some form, that usually occurs on either Wednesday or Thursday. While some of the other diavloggers are frequently matched against each other (e.g. David Corn & James Pinkerton) there is usually not a regularly scheduled time at which they take place.
"Science Saturday" was the name given to the weekly episode appearing on Saturday that was always science related. Its last episode was released on December 24, 2011. It usually (but not always) involved either one or both of the science writers John Horgan and George Johnson. Many well-known people in the science community were a part of Science Saturday, including Michael Shermer of Skeptic Magazine, biologist PZ Myers, Craig Venter of the Human Genome Project, aging researcher and biogerentologist Aubrey de Grey, and philosopher David Chalmers, among many others. However, in September 2009, four high-profile science bloggers who had previously participated in Bloggingheads.tv discussions publicly distanced themselves from the site and stated they would no longer agree to appear in Bloggingheads.tv segments. The scientists – Sean Carroll, Carl Zimmer, Phil Plait and PZ Myers – all criticized what they claimed was a policy by Bloggingheads.tv to provide a platform for the anti-scientific ideology, Creationism without an opposing point of view for balance. PZ Myers said: "[Bloggingheads.tv] was setting up crackpots with softball interviews that made them look reasonable, because their peculiar ideas were never confronted."
"The Week in Blog" was a weekly segment which normally appeared on the site on Fridays. Its last episode was released on March 7, 2012. The format was to discuss what has showed up on the past week on both liberal and conservative blogs, from both a liberal and conservative viewpoint. The three regular hosts of "TWIB" were Bill Scher of Liberal Oasis, Kristin Soltis of the Winston Group, and Matt Lewis of The Daily Caller. Original host Conn Carroll of The Heritage Foundation stepped aside in early 2009. Guests who appeared on the show are Armando Llorens (of Daily Kos), Amanda Carpenter, and Nate Silver (of FiveThirtyEight) among many others.
History
On November 1, 2005, the site launched, with Robert Wright and Mickey Kaus as the only two initial participants in the video discussions. The site has since featured more than one thousand other diavloggers.
On October 18, 2006, a site redesign was launched, with a revised home page and improved functionality: ability to comment on diavlogs was added, and to participate in forum discussions.
In January 2007, it was announced that cable TV pioneer and C-SPAN founding chairman Bob Rosencrans, with a loose network of others, would become an angel investor of Bloggingheads.tv. The infusion of cash kicked off a dramatic expansion of the site's content, and a corresponding growth in viewers.
On March 24, 2007, in a diavlog between Garance Franke-Ruta and Ann Althouse, Althouse became quite animated and angry (to the point of yelling) over a comment Franke-Ruta made (in reference to an earlier controversy involving Jessica Valenti and former US president Bill Clinton) referred to as an on-air "meltdown" by some. This led to many blog posts and news stories in the following days on both the initial controversy and Althouse's on air behavior.
On October 13, 2007, a conversion to Flash format from the initial Windows Media format took place.
On October 24, 2007, Bloggingheads.tv entered into a relationship with The New York Times, whereby selected video segments from the Bloggingheads site would appear in the "Videos" section on the Times website, under the Opinion subsection.
On December 13, 2007, a site redesign took place which removed the familiar green pages in favor of a more "Web 2.0"-look, featuring more user generated content, new navigation, new forum software for the "comments" section, and other updated features.
In 2008, several new segments and diavloggers were added or made more regular, including "Free Will", "This Week in Blog", and "UN Plaza". Other updates and tweaks to the site, such as the addition of the MP4 video format were also gradually phased in.
Media recognition
Traditional media outlets, such at The New York Times and others, have written mostly favorable reviews of Bloggingheads.tv. Stories are also often written about individuals who take part in the video discussions, as they are often well known individuals in the scientific, academic, journalism, or blogosphere community.
The majority of coverage of the site, however, has been in the form of blog coverage sometimes on the form of the blog of the person participating in the Bloggingheads discussion, and sometimes in the form of other blogs.
Some events and personality appearances on Bloggingheads.tv have led to larger than usual amounts of media coverage, such as the March 24, 2007 Ann Althouse controversy described above, and the appearance of Andrew Sullivan on December 26, 2006 and January 1, 2007, when he discussed in the most clear terms up to that point his reversal of viewpoint on the Iraq War, and his plea of apology for supporting it in the first place.
Site terms, features, and technology
"Diavlog"
The term "diavlog" (sometimes written "dia-vlog" by some bloggers) means a type of video blog (or "vlog") generally in which two people participate, as contrasted with a (mono)vlog in which one contributor is featured. The word "diavlog" is a portmanteau of the phrase "dialog video weblog" (or, alternately, "video weblog dialog"). The diavlog format is most popular for political, world events, or other types of conversational video blog discussions in which two (or more) people are actively participating in a real-time, give-and-take discussion of ideas.
The term "diavlog" was first adopted and put into wide use by Bloggingheads.tv contributors, (initially by Robert Wright and Mickey Kaus), though its original coinage is subject to debate. The term is widely used both by people on air, as well as commentors, refer to a specific conversation.
Although initially coined on the Bloggingheads site, the term has come to be used in other parts of the blogosphere and among journalists who frequently (or infrequently) participate in the encounters.
The term is sometimes spelled "diavlogue" by those outside the United States. (see: American and British English spelling differences)
Direct video linking ("dingalink") and embedding
Dingalink is a direct link to a specific place in a video. (a beginning time and an end time) Dingalinks have the ability for users to direct viewers directly to a relevant part of a video, without the viewer having to watch the video in its entirety. They are used with video blogs when others who write blogs, articles, emails, etc., have the aim of discussing only one segment of an entire video post. The term was named after Bloggingheads.tv's technical advisor Greg Dingle, who initially developed the technology.
On Bloggingheads.tv, direct linking is often useful in the discussion surrounding a specific "diavlog" to refer to a particular point (or points) in the discussion to clarify what is being commented on. The direct linking can be automatically generated from the Bloggingheads Flash video player, through the adjustment of the beginning and end of the video that one might want to display. (Start/End time can also be manually edited once the code is generated.)
Embedding of video is a feature that was added to Bloggingheads.tv in 2008 as a consequence of converting to Flash Video. It allows for bloggers and other websites to embed the video player into their blog or website so that the content can be viewed locally instead of the need to visit the actual Bloggingheads.tv site. This feature is similar to the YouTube and Google Video (among others) feature which had previously become prevalent on the internet.
Contributors to Bloggingheads.tv
While many of the initial diavlogs featured Wright and Kaus exclusively, other regular participants at Bloggingheads.tv have grown to include many differing ideologies and viewpoints, politically, scientifically, and philosophically. Regular contributors include Ann Althouse, Peter Beinart, Rosa Brooks, Jonathan Chait, David Corn, Ross Douthat, Daniel Drezner, Conor Friedersdorf, Jonah Goldberg, John Horgan, Ezra Klein, Eli Lake, Glenn Loury, Megan McArdle, John McWhorter, James Pinkerton, Mark Schmitt and Matthew Yglesias, among many others.
Apart from the regular contributors, a host of well known occasional guests have appeared, usually in the form of being interviewed. Among others, the political scientist Francis Fukuyama talked about his book America at the Crossroads; the Israeli journalist Gershom Gorenberg discussed his book The Accidental Empire (about the history of the settlements); The Washington Post columnist Joel Achenbach on an article of his about global-warming skeptics (among other topics); Andrew Sullivan on his book The Conservative Soul; biogerentologist Aubrey de Grey on how to defeat the "disease" of aging; philosopher David Chalmers; Nate Silver (of FiveThirtyEight.com); and Craig Venter, director of the Human Genome Project, who spoke of future scientific innovations he is currently pursuing.
See also
Digital television
Interactive television
Internet television
Video on demand
Video podcast
Political podcast
Web TV
Webcast
References
External links
New York Times Article on the operation of Bloggingheads.tv
Associated Press article in the NY Sun on the BloggingHeads.tv setup
Business Week article on Bloggingheads.tv
Television channels and stations established in 2005
American entertainment websites
Video hosting
Internet properties established in 2005
Web syndication
Internet television channels
Video podcasts
Political podcasts
Educational podcasts
Science podcasts
American political blogs
Science blogs
Video on demand services
2005 podcast debuts | true | [
"Bird and Roger Smith were cofounders of the Scouting movement in the Malaysian state of Negeri Sembilan in 1926, and founders in the state of Perlis in 1931.\n\nScouting pioneers\nYear of death missing\nYear of birth missing\nScouting and Guiding in Malaysia",
"Mekkhaya (; also spelled Mekkara) is a small town just south of Mandalay, Myanmar. It was a co-capital of the Myinsaing Regency from 1297 to 1313.\n\nNotable people\n Yazathingyan: one of the cofounders of Myinsaing Regency\n Prince of Mekkhaya: 19th-century prince who tried to educational and administrative reforms during the reign of King Mindon\n\nReferences\n\nPopulated places in Mandalay Region"
]
|
[
"Bloggingheads.tv",
"Regular segments",
"What were the regular segments?",
"There is a frequent (previously biweekly and weekly, but now less frequent) diavlog matchup between the two co-founders",
"Who were the cofounders?",
"Robert Wright and Mickey Kaus,"
]
| C_467d776fbe03455fa80c2344fdfb40af_1 | Around what year did these take place? | 3 | Around what year did the Bloggingheads.tv regular segments take place? | Bloggingheads.tv | Although most episodes and matchups do not occur on any kind of a regular basis, there are a few notable exceptions to this. There is a frequent (previously biweekly and weekly, but now less frequent) diavlog matchup between the two co-founders of Bloggingheads.tv, Robert Wright and Mickey Kaus, generally related to politics in some form, that usually occurs on either Wednesday or Thursday. While some of the other diavloggers are frequently matched against each other (e.g. David Corn & James Pinkerton) there is usually not a regularly scheduled time at which they take place. "Science Saturday" was the name given to the weekly episode appearing on Saturday that was always science related. Its last episode was released on December 24, 2011. It usually (but not always) involved either one or both of the science writers John Horgan and George Johnson. Many well-known people in the science community were a part of Science Saturday, including Michael Shermer of Skeptic Magazine, biologist PZ Myers, Craig Venter of the Human Genome Project, aging researcher and biogerentologist Aubrey de Grey, and philosopher David Chalmers, among many others. However, in September 2009, four high-profile science bloggers who had previously participated in Bloggingheads.tv discussions publicly distanced themselves from the site and stated they would no longer agree to appear in Bloggingheads.tv segments. The scientists - Sean Carroll, Carl Zimmer, Phil Plait and PZ Myers - all criticized what they claimed was a policy by Bloggingheads.tv to provide a platform for the anti-scientific ideology, Creationism without an opposing point of view for balance. PZ Myers said: "[Bloggingheads.tv] was setting up crackpots with softball interviews that made them look reasonable, because their peculiar ideas were never confronted." "The Week in Blog" was a weekly segment which normally appeared on the site on Fridays. Its last episode was released on March 7, 2012. The format was to discuss what has showed up on the past week on both liberal and conservative blogs, from both a liberal and conservative viewpoint. The three regular hosts of "TWIB" were Bill Scher of Liberal Oasis, Kristin Soltis of the Winston Group, and Matt Lewis of The Daily Caller. Original host Conn Carroll of The Heritage Foundation stepped aside in early 2009. Guests who appeared on the show are Armando Llorens (of Daily Kos), Amanda Carpenter, and Nate Silver (of FiveThirtyEight) among many others. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Bloggingheads.tv (sometimes abbreviated "bhtv") is a political, world events, philosophy, and science video blog discussion site in which the participants take part in an active back and forth conversation via webcam which is then broadcast online to viewers. The site was started by the journalist and author Robert Wright and the blogger and journalist Mickey Kaus on November 1, 2005. Kaus has since dropped out of operational duties of the site as he didn't want his frequent linking to be seen as a conflict of interest. Most of the earlier discussions posted to the site involved one or both of those individuals, but since has grown to include a total of over one thousand individual contributors, mostly journalists, academics, scientists, authors, well known political bloggers, and other notable individuals.
Unregistered users are able to view all of the videos which are contained on the site, while free registration is required to comment on the individual discussions, or participate in the forums.
Format
Bloggingheads discussions are conducted via webcam between two (or more) people, and can be viewed online in Flash format, or downloaded as WMV video files, MP4 video files, or MP3 sound files. New diavlogs are generally posted daily, and are all archived for future viewing. The diavlogs are generally broken up into a series of topics and subtopics a few minutes in length, links to which are placed below the video window to allow viewers to navigate to a given topic if they do not wish to view the whole discussion.
Most of the discussions posted to Bloggingheads.tv involve well known (or semi-well known) journalists, bloggers, science writers, scientists, philosophers, book authors, or other specialists in segments of current world events. Many of the discussions are of a political nature or are related to the current political environment. Those with differing points of view are often matched against one another. Diavlogs involving guests appearing for the first time often take the form of an interview, more often than that of a discussion, with a longtime Bloggingheads contributor playing the role of interviewer.
Regular segments
Although most episodes and matchups do not occur on any kind of a regular basis, there are a few notable exceptions to this. There is a frequent diavlog matchup between the two co-founders of Bloggingheads.tv, Robert Wright and Mickey Kaus, generally related to politics in some form, that usually occurs on either Wednesday or Thursday. While some of the other diavloggers are frequently matched against each other (e.g. David Corn & James Pinkerton) there is usually not a regularly scheduled time at which they take place.
"Science Saturday" was the name given to the weekly episode appearing on Saturday that was always science related. Its last episode was released on December 24, 2011. It usually (but not always) involved either one or both of the science writers John Horgan and George Johnson. Many well-known people in the science community were a part of Science Saturday, including Michael Shermer of Skeptic Magazine, biologist PZ Myers, Craig Venter of the Human Genome Project, aging researcher and biogerentologist Aubrey de Grey, and philosopher David Chalmers, among many others. However, in September 2009, four high-profile science bloggers who had previously participated in Bloggingheads.tv discussions publicly distanced themselves from the site and stated they would no longer agree to appear in Bloggingheads.tv segments. The scientists – Sean Carroll, Carl Zimmer, Phil Plait and PZ Myers – all criticized what they claimed was a policy by Bloggingheads.tv to provide a platform for the anti-scientific ideology, Creationism without an opposing point of view for balance. PZ Myers said: "[Bloggingheads.tv] was setting up crackpots with softball interviews that made them look reasonable, because their peculiar ideas were never confronted."
"The Week in Blog" was a weekly segment which normally appeared on the site on Fridays. Its last episode was released on March 7, 2012. The format was to discuss what has showed up on the past week on both liberal and conservative blogs, from both a liberal and conservative viewpoint. The three regular hosts of "TWIB" were Bill Scher of Liberal Oasis, Kristin Soltis of the Winston Group, and Matt Lewis of The Daily Caller. Original host Conn Carroll of The Heritage Foundation stepped aside in early 2009. Guests who appeared on the show are Armando Llorens (of Daily Kos), Amanda Carpenter, and Nate Silver (of FiveThirtyEight) among many others.
History
On November 1, 2005, the site launched, with Robert Wright and Mickey Kaus as the only two initial participants in the video discussions. The site has since featured more than one thousand other diavloggers.
On October 18, 2006, a site redesign was launched, with a revised home page and improved functionality: ability to comment on diavlogs was added, and to participate in forum discussions.
In January 2007, it was announced that cable TV pioneer and C-SPAN founding chairman Bob Rosencrans, with a loose network of others, would become an angel investor of Bloggingheads.tv. The infusion of cash kicked off a dramatic expansion of the site's content, and a corresponding growth in viewers.
On March 24, 2007, in a diavlog between Garance Franke-Ruta and Ann Althouse, Althouse became quite animated and angry (to the point of yelling) over a comment Franke-Ruta made (in reference to an earlier controversy involving Jessica Valenti and former US president Bill Clinton) referred to as an on-air "meltdown" by some. This led to many blog posts and news stories in the following days on both the initial controversy and Althouse's on air behavior.
On October 13, 2007, a conversion to Flash format from the initial Windows Media format took place.
On October 24, 2007, Bloggingheads.tv entered into a relationship with The New York Times, whereby selected video segments from the Bloggingheads site would appear in the "Videos" section on the Times website, under the Opinion subsection.
On December 13, 2007, a site redesign took place which removed the familiar green pages in favor of a more "Web 2.0"-look, featuring more user generated content, new navigation, new forum software for the "comments" section, and other updated features.
In 2008, several new segments and diavloggers were added or made more regular, including "Free Will", "This Week in Blog", and "UN Plaza". Other updates and tweaks to the site, such as the addition of the MP4 video format were also gradually phased in.
Media recognition
Traditional media outlets, such at The New York Times and others, have written mostly favorable reviews of Bloggingheads.tv. Stories are also often written about individuals who take part in the video discussions, as they are often well known individuals in the scientific, academic, journalism, or blogosphere community.
The majority of coverage of the site, however, has been in the form of blog coverage sometimes on the form of the blog of the person participating in the Bloggingheads discussion, and sometimes in the form of other blogs.
Some events and personality appearances on Bloggingheads.tv have led to larger than usual amounts of media coverage, such as the March 24, 2007 Ann Althouse controversy described above, and the appearance of Andrew Sullivan on December 26, 2006 and January 1, 2007, when he discussed in the most clear terms up to that point his reversal of viewpoint on the Iraq War, and his plea of apology for supporting it in the first place.
Site terms, features, and technology
"Diavlog"
The term "diavlog" (sometimes written "dia-vlog" by some bloggers) means a type of video blog (or "vlog") generally in which two people participate, as contrasted with a (mono)vlog in which one contributor is featured. The word "diavlog" is a portmanteau of the phrase "dialog video weblog" (or, alternately, "video weblog dialog"). The diavlog format is most popular for political, world events, or other types of conversational video blog discussions in which two (or more) people are actively participating in a real-time, give-and-take discussion of ideas.
The term "diavlog" was first adopted and put into wide use by Bloggingheads.tv contributors, (initially by Robert Wright and Mickey Kaus), though its original coinage is subject to debate. The term is widely used both by people on air, as well as commentors, refer to a specific conversation.
Although initially coined on the Bloggingheads site, the term has come to be used in other parts of the blogosphere and among journalists who frequently (or infrequently) participate in the encounters.
The term is sometimes spelled "diavlogue" by those outside the United States. (see: American and British English spelling differences)
Direct video linking ("dingalink") and embedding
Dingalink is a direct link to a specific place in a video. (a beginning time and an end time) Dingalinks have the ability for users to direct viewers directly to a relevant part of a video, without the viewer having to watch the video in its entirety. They are used with video blogs when others who write blogs, articles, emails, etc., have the aim of discussing only one segment of an entire video post. The term was named after Bloggingheads.tv's technical advisor Greg Dingle, who initially developed the technology.
On Bloggingheads.tv, direct linking is often useful in the discussion surrounding a specific "diavlog" to refer to a particular point (or points) in the discussion to clarify what is being commented on. The direct linking can be automatically generated from the Bloggingheads Flash video player, through the adjustment of the beginning and end of the video that one might want to display. (Start/End time can also be manually edited once the code is generated.)
Embedding of video is a feature that was added to Bloggingheads.tv in 2008 as a consequence of converting to Flash Video. It allows for bloggers and other websites to embed the video player into their blog or website so that the content can be viewed locally instead of the need to visit the actual Bloggingheads.tv site. This feature is similar to the YouTube and Google Video (among others) feature which had previously become prevalent on the internet.
Contributors to Bloggingheads.tv
While many of the initial diavlogs featured Wright and Kaus exclusively, other regular participants at Bloggingheads.tv have grown to include many differing ideologies and viewpoints, politically, scientifically, and philosophically. Regular contributors include Ann Althouse, Peter Beinart, Rosa Brooks, Jonathan Chait, David Corn, Ross Douthat, Daniel Drezner, Conor Friedersdorf, Jonah Goldberg, John Horgan, Ezra Klein, Eli Lake, Glenn Loury, Megan McArdle, John McWhorter, James Pinkerton, Mark Schmitt and Matthew Yglesias, among many others.
Apart from the regular contributors, a host of well known occasional guests have appeared, usually in the form of being interviewed. Among others, the political scientist Francis Fukuyama talked about his book America at the Crossroads; the Israeli journalist Gershom Gorenberg discussed his book The Accidental Empire (about the history of the settlements); The Washington Post columnist Joel Achenbach on an article of his about global-warming skeptics (among other topics); Andrew Sullivan on his book The Conservative Soul; biogerentologist Aubrey de Grey on how to defeat the "disease" of aging; philosopher David Chalmers; Nate Silver (of FiveThirtyEight.com); and Craig Venter, director of the Human Genome Project, who spoke of future scientific innovations he is currently pursuing.
See also
Digital television
Interactive television
Internet television
Video on demand
Video podcast
Political podcast
Web TV
Webcast
References
External links
New York Times Article on the operation of Bloggingheads.tv
Associated Press article in the NY Sun on the BloggingHeads.tv setup
Business Week article on Bloggingheads.tv
Television channels and stations established in 2005
American entertainment websites
Video hosting
Internet properties established in 2005
Web syndication
Internet television channels
Video podcasts
Political podcasts
Educational podcasts
Science podcasts
American political blogs
Science blogs
Video on demand services
2005 podcast debuts | false | [
"Angel novels have been published since 2000 by Pocket Books. The last was published in 2004.\n\nChronology\n\nSeason 1\n\nThese Buffyverse tales take place during Buffy season 4, and Angel season 1 (from autumn 1999 to spring 2000).\n\nSeason 2\n\nThese Buffyverse tales take place during Buffy season 5, and Angel season 2 (from autumn 2000 to spring 2001).\n\nSeason 3\n\nThese Buffyverse tales take place around Buffy season 6, and Angel Season 3 (from autumn 2001 to spring 2002).\n\nSeason 4\n\nThese Buffyverse tales take place around Buffy season 7, and Angel season 4 (from autumn 2002 to spring 2003).\n\nAuthors\n\nAuthors who have written Angel novels:\n\nScott Ciencin\nDenise Ciencin\nDon DeBrandt\nCameron Dokey\nDoranna Durgin\nCraig Shaw Gardner\nChristopher Golden\nChristie Golden\nNancy Holder\nDan Jolley\nAshley McConnell\nJeff Mariotte\nYvonne Navarro\nMel Odom\nJohn Passarella\nThomas E. Sniegoski\n\nCanonical issues\n\nThe books featured in this list are not part of Buffyverse canon. They are not considered as official Buffyverse reality, but are novels from the authors' imaginations. Unlike internet fan fiction however, all of these stories have been licensed as official Angel merchandise. Furthermore, the overall concept for each Buffyverse story had to be accepted by Joss Whedon (or his office), who did not want these stories to venture too far from his original intentions.\n\nSee also\n\n List of Buffy/Angel novels\n List of Buffyverse novels\n List of Buffy the Vampire Slayer novels\n List of television series made into books\n\nNovel series",
"The Gulf War Did Not Take Place () is a collection of three short essays by Jean Baudrillard published in the French newspaper Libération and British paper The Guardian between January and March 1991.\n Part 1, \"The Gulf War will not take place\" (La guerre du Golfe n'aura pas lieu) was published in Libération on January 4, 1991.\n Part 2, \"The Gulf War is not really taking place\" (La guerre du Golfe a-t-elle vraiment lieu?) was published in Libération on February 6, 1991, and\n Part 3, \"The Gulf War did not take place\" (La Guerre du Golfe n'a pas eu lieu) was published in Libération on March 29, 1991.\n\nContrary to the title, the author believes that the events and violence of the Gulf War actually took place, whereas the issue is one of interpretation: were the events that took place comparable to how they were presented, and could these events be called a war? The title is a reference to the play The Trojan War Will Not Take Place by Jean Giraudoux (in which characters attempt to prevent what the audience knows is inevitable).\n\nThe essays in Libération and The Guardian were published before, during and after the Gulf War and they were titled accordingly: during the American military and rhetorical buildup as \"The Gulf War Will Not Take Place\"; during military action as \"The Gulf War Is Not Taking Place\", and after action was over, \"The Gulf War Did Not Take Place\". A book of elongated versions of the truncated original articles in French was published in May 1991. The English translation was published in early 1995 translated by Paul Patton.\n\nSummary \nBaudrillard argued the Gulf War was not really a war, but rather an atrocity which masqueraded as a war. Using overwhelming airpower, the American military for the most part did not directly engage in combat with the Iraqi army, and suffered few casualties. Almost nothing was made known about Iraqi deaths. Thus, the fighting \"did not really take place\" from the point of view of the West. Moreover, all that spectators got to know about the war was in the form of propaganda imagery. The closely watched media presentations made it impossible to distinguish between the experience of what truly happened in the conflict, and its stylized, selective misrepresentation through simulacra.\n\nReferences\n\nFurther reading\n Baudrillard, Jean (1991) La Guerre du Golfe n'a pas eu lieu, Paris: Galilée.\n Baudrillard, Jean (1995) The Gulf War Did Not Take Place, Bloomington: Indiana University Press\n\n1995 non-fiction books\nBooks by Jean Baudrillard\nEssays about hyperreality\nFrench non-fiction books\nGulf War books"
]
|
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